Creating an iTU course was challenging, engaging and reflective. For my course, I chose a unit we do with all 9th graders on Culture. We have essential questions to guide us, standards to follow, and assignments we share, but what we didn’t have was ways to creatively use the iPads. Creating a course through iTU enabled me to reflect on the course through a different lens.
Preparing for creating the iTU course was greatly enhanced by looking at courses Mia provided and reading her text , One Best Thing. There were several aspects of the text that helped me to contextualize my course before creating it. For example, in detail she discussed the Anatomy of a Course and gave images on the course book layout. I referred to this often as I was beginning to create my first post. Then later, she discusses vertical scaffolding in iTU, keeping “the build” in mind. During parts of my course, I struggled a bit with one assignment, because I felt as though I introduced a more challenging technological concept, Explain Everything, early on in my unit. I was going to use a writing assignment instead, but went back at the last minute and changed it back to Explain Everything. The “Mia Style” action verbs were also very helpful in creating my course. Many times throughout my creation, I went back to this screen or other iTU courses I reviewed.
I spent a great deal of time reflecting on the assignments and how each assignment built to a more challenging assignment. In the beginning of the post Appreciating other Cultures, I researched background information on teaching multicultural texts. Although I have done this in the past, I felt the need to review how I teach this type of literature to my students. I also provided a short article for students to read on multicultural literature. This process I found time consuming but important. I was able to come across new information to share with my colleagues regarding our shared unit.
I also spent time reviewing the material on culture shared with my colleagues in Google Drive. Although we share different approaches and styles to teaching this culture unit, we do share the same assignments. As I created with iTU, I found it easier to think about apps to use that made sense for the assignment.
I researched many how to videos for the apps I wanted students to use. I wanted to be sure that the how to videos were short, to the point, and gave pointers on what I wanted students to address in the assignment. This part of the assignment was fun.
After I was done with each post, I would go through it three or four times, making sure it made sense, that it was easy for my students to follow, and that the materials flowed. I revised my posts many times during this process. As I “finished” and turned in the course on Moodle, I left knowing it was a work in progress. There are still grading rubrics and a couple of assignments I want to add, but haven’t quite flushed out in my mind the exact details. I thought about certain students in my class who would struggle with a few assignments and considered how I could scaffold and make it more accessible. I am still not sure how I would incorporate this directly into my classroom, but I do know that in the past when I am not exactly certain about something, I just try it and my students will usually show me the way.
