Extend Activity #4 – Reflection

A response to the I’m an Experimenter! Activity
created by Cory M (@C)

Number of views: 30

Which three experimenter activities did you choose to complete and why?
I chose to experiment with H5P, Virtual Field Trips/Tours and Padlet.

The reasons why I decided to choose each of these experiments is for the following:
H5P – I had attempted to use this recourse a while back but unsuccessfully so thought it was a good opportunity to try again as I thought the “drag and drop” feature would be an amazing practice tool for the students to learn the proper terminology. There are many terms and components in structural steel and can see this as being extremely valuable.

Virtual Field Tips – Field trips are always a struggle in the construction industry. Aside from requiring the proper safety equipment for each student, there is also a lot of liability forms that need to be filled in when going to a physic construction site. I have certainly brought our students to sites over the years but with the growing class sizes it becomes very difficult to manage 50 students on a trip. The virtual field trip is a fantastic option to have the students see various sites from the comfort of the classroom early on in the program without having to make outside arrangements which can be time consuming. I would still want to bring them to a real job site at some point during their time in the program but this certainly allows for more flexibility with timing.

Padlet – I have not experimented with Padlet much at this point so wanted to see the potential it had to offer. I found the flash cards option interesting and a great way to pose self-guided questions to the students similar to the H5P that I created. Instead of the students needing to create study tools, I would be able to create some pre-defined questions that the students could use to study for assessment or to simply create a better foundational understanding of the topics being covered in class.

Links to your Activity Bank:
Extend Activity #1 – H5P
https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/response/extend-activity-1-h5p/
Extend Activity #2 – Virtual Field Trips and Tours
https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/response/extend-activity-2-virtual-field-trips-and-tours/
Extend Activity #3 – Padlet
https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/response/extend-activity-2-padlet/

Identify and explain three overall lessons learned from experimenting with these three activities. How might you use these activities going forward in your teaching practice?
The obvious lesson learn for me is that there are great tools available to help teach and guide my students. I am relatively new to teaching so often unaware of the various resources available to me.

Moving forward I plan to integrate H5P and the Virtual Field Trips into some of my courses. The Virtual Field Trip is more relevant to the program itself but there are times that I can think of when it would be useful to show specific examples such as a galvanized steel canopy or a architecturally exposed steel structure. H5P will be very useful in level 1 and level 2 courses in which we are learning terminology for structural steel. I certainly do my best to cover the topics but this tool will allow me to setup examples similar to what I did in the Extend Activity #1 for the various member types encountered on a project.

You were asked to complete at least one experimenter activity on a tablet or a smartphone.

    • Identify the activity completed and on what type of mobile device?
      Extend Activity #2 – Virtual Field Trips and Tours
    • Identify and explain the advantages and challenges of using this technology tool on a mobile device.
      I honestly struggle with using phones and tablet to do any type of work. I am really comfortable with a computer/keyboard/mouse, etc so I found that it took more time and I was able to be as precise with using my smartphone. The advantages of course would be having the ability to create or view various locations at the tip of my fingers without having to open up a computer and/or various applications.
    • Comment on how you might plan for an upcoming assignment to be completed on a tablet or a smartphone.
      Out of the examples I chose, I believe H5P or Padlet would be much easier for the student to use from a tablet or smartphone. Both examples of activities that I create would be very simple to use from a APP.
    • Explain the steps you might take in making access to these devices available to all students.
      The current program that I teach is a “bring your own device” program but the requirement is having a laptop. Most students have a phone so that should not be a program but having a tablet would not be possible as most of the students struggle financially as it is. My program could not switch to tablet as we need the laptops to run 3D modeling software amongst other high end software.