My Alternative Community Service Learning Placement: Deep Interactions with Digital Literacies4/21/2017 The two year Teacher Education program has included many changes, specifically in relation to the types of placements that are both required of and available to us as teacher candidates. We have been so extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience multiple teaching placements over the last two years, spending even more time in the classroom than teacher candidates have in the past. In addition to longer and more diverse teaching placements, the Teacher Education program has also put into place a final three week Alternative Community Service Learning Placement which takes place during the last three weeks of year two.
I had the opportunity to conduct my Alternative CSL with Professor Michelle Shira Hagerman at the University of Ottawa. I had the opportunity to learn in two of Professor Hagerman's classes over my two year B.Ed. degree. I developed a digital hub in my first class as part of the course requirements but continued to use it as a space for curation, reflection and professional networking over my two years. Professor Hagerman is an assistant professor of educational technology who has a long history of helping graduate students develop professional digital presence through teaching and leadership in a Master’s of Educational Technology program in the US. She studies questions related to digital literacies development and digital literacies pedagogies and teaches courses in the B.Ed. program focused on technology integration and curriculum planning, assessment and evaluation. Professor Hagerman and I outlined three specific goals that I would be working towards during my three week placement with her. The first of which was to create, analyze and report on a survey designed to gather information from Year 2 teacher candidates about their experiences in relation to the creation of a professional digital hub throughout the program. The survey gathered information from 74 Year 2 teacher candidates. I went through all responses and conducted qualitative data analysis in search of themes in the data. Professor Hagerman and I went through these themes and created a presentation which we delivered to the Teacher Education Program Council stating our findings and recommendations for the implementation of the Digital Hub Strategy. The link to the presentation is below. The second goal was for me to use the information which we gathered from the survey and the TEPC meeting to design a workshop for the Teachers Teaching Teachers 2017 symposium put on by the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. This workshop was designed to inform attendees of the Faculty's Digital Hub Strategy, offer guidance to students for building their own digital hubs and running a 'playtime' to help students explore digital hub platforms and begin their hub architecture. The link to this presentation is here. The final goal of my placement was to co-author an article with Professor Hagerman on our findings, reactions and recommendations to the world of education through an academic journal. This article is currently being drafted and Professor Hagerman and I will continue to work on it in the coming weeks for submission. Thank you for following me through my final experiences in the Teacher Education program. This journey has been one of the most memorable of my life so far and I can't wait to begin my teaching career. -Miss Coleman
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AuthorJessica Coleman holds a Bachelor of Education as well as an Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences, both from the University of Ottawa. She is an Ontario College of Teachers certified teacher, currently working towards a Masters of Education degree at uOttaw, as well. Archives
September 2018
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