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LRNT 526 Unit 1, Activity 3: Specific Issue Exploration: Can Social Media Apps be Used Ethically in the Classroom?

By on Apr 18, 2022 in Uncategorised | 11 comments

In today’s fast changing world, what social media is popular among adolescents can shift quickly. TikTok’s sudden rise in popularity has many looking carefully at what the app is, its terms of service, privacy policy, and its algorithms. Our team has chosen to examine TikTok as a learning tool in the classroom.  In our team of Stephanie, Angela and London, half of us had a TikTok account and half didn’t. Members who were new to the app were tasked to record their experiences and feelings using this technology for the first time. For myself who had been a holdout to adopting this technology, finally signing up was easy and quick. I was immediately presented with the terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy (PP) which I decided to review carefully. Next, there was a short orientation followed by a request to allow notifications. All of these steps seemed very...

In Bloom

By on Mar 27, 2022 in LRNT 525 | 6 comments

One year ago, this tree was blooming as it is now but there were no people on the seawall, no tourists on the paths, and I was the only one taking in the beauty of this tree. One year ago, everything was so bleak. Many of my colleagues were being laid off . Although I was eager to begin my master’s degree, I was worried if I would be able to handle it all. With a degree in dance and my only teaching experience as an ESL teacher, I was full of uncertainty.   Today, as I took in the beauty of the tree surrounded by many, I reflected on our time in LRNT 525. It has been the course that was the most arduous for me. I am someone who prefers templates and structure. I understand that this course has been the course where I had to make clearer decisions about what direction I wanted my coursework and assignments to go. This course has been the one that  brought all the other courses...

LRNT 525, Unit 3, Activity 2: Leading Projects

By on Mar 6, 2022 in LRNT 525, Uncategorised | 4 comments

Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC), has been leveraging Microsoft tools in our work supporting newcomers to Canada. Many of the teams in our organization are located in different departments and occasionally on different campuses. For instance, our settlement team worked in a different location than the Language and Career College (LCC). Very often one team was unaware of what the other team was doing. Often there were a lot of paper files in cabinets or files located on computers in their respective departments that were not accessible to the organization as a whole, creating data silos. Emails and phone calls made retrieving information time consuming.  Some of our senior leaders realized that as a midsize nonprofit organization that was growing fast and as we approached our 50th anniversary, we needed to think ahead and plan for the next 50 years. The goal of...

By on Feb 27, 2022 in Uncategorised | 1 comment

Our organization uses a hyflex model that was initially adopted as a temporary measure but has proven popular with students and less so with instructors. A hybrid-flexible or hyFlex course is a student-centered model of class delivery that can integrate in-class instruction, online synchronous video sessions, or asynchronous content delivery. Due to its popularity with students, it is likely to become a permanent change. There are three main challenges I see that could be addressed to better manage this digital change: instructor burnout, instructor buy-in and lack of data analytics for larger classes and classes that have a longer duration.  First, now that the hyflex model is here to stay, instructor burnout should be a priority for our organization. By gathering data about the time instructors spend on preparing, creating, and marking could be the first step. Understanding how much...

External Scan Assignment 1

By on Feb 20, 2022 in LRNT 525 | 0 comments

  In today’s intricate and involved educational environments, higher education organizations operate in an ever-changing world. It is imperative that when considering change that we understand technology, student demographics and our connected world (Castelli 2016). Outdated traditional thinking will not help organizations progress. Complex change needs a leadership strategy that is flexible, supportive, and ethical (Khan 2017). Higher education organizations are presented with many opportunities and challenges because of the information revolution (Weller 2013).  For my LRNT 525 assignment one I was asked based on our readings and networking activities in Unit 2 to create a one-page visual that displays how change is addressed by leaders in digital learning environments using a tool of our choice including an explanatory text that helps frame our current thinking about how...