A (Very) Brief History of Education in Alaska

The history of education in Alaska is about as diverse as the land that surrounds it. Those who have participated in education in Alaska, whether forced or voluntary, have likely experienced the extreme peaks and valleys of humanity's desire to educate the masses. This blog will discuss a few key players who have historically contributed to what we now define as education in this great state of Alaska.

Education, unlike how we understand it in its western philosophical sense, has likely existed well before the Russian invasion from 1741-1867.  In order to maintain healthy communities, families must continue teaching the ways of climate and land adaptations, social organization, belief systems, and cultural norms (These topics are defined in Alaska Native in Traditional Times: A Cultural Profile Project, Gaffney, 2011.) It wasn't until the late 18th century, when Grigory Shelikhov's first permanent settlement was established in Alaska, that the Native ways of knowing would fall under constant duress. In 18th century Russia, a nation controlled by an absolute monarchy, hard labor was reserved for the laymen (and slaves), law and wealth for nobility, and education for the church.

Russian priest Ioann Veniaminov, later known as Bishop Innocent, was known as one of the most remarkable educators during Russian occupation of Alaska. Veniaminov worked closely with Native leaders on Fox Island to learn the Aleut language and help develop a system of writing. From these efforts Russian liturgical texts could then be translated to the Aleut language (The Russian Orthodox Mission, Alaska Humanities Forum.) In 1835 he moved to southeastern Alaska where he learned the Tlingit language and continued to promote religious literacy among the Native peoples of Alaska. His work helped to recognize the importance of literacy, and the importance of Alaskan Native languages. Though his work was done under the guise of Christian conversion, he forged a new approach to education in the distant lands of Russian Alaska.

After the US purchase of the Alaskan territory, Sheldon Jackson was appointed General Agent for Education in 1884. Many saw his efforts to be solely in the light of Christian conversion, as his work prior to leaving to Alaska was as a Presbyterian minister. His educational leadership in Alaska advocated English-only policy forbidding the use of Native languages. Decades of punishment for speaking Alaskan Native languages had greatly contributed to a hesitation of speaking indigenous languages well into the 21st century.

Creating Unique Video Lessons

We all know there are a ton of sites out there that provide videos. It is one thing to provide students with a link to a video, acting as passive receptacles of information. It is another thing to engage the viewer with the content being shared, providing thought-provoking questions and pushing for a deeper level of understand. In this post I would like to present two powerful video lesson creation tools that you can use to begin flipping your classroom.

EdPuzzle


I've seen a few online video editing sites in my career (Popcorn Maker being the first), and I feel this one really takes the cake. EdPuzzle is a free service that allows you to add your voice and questions to educational videos. You can search for educational videos from Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, YouTube, National Geographic, TED, Veritasium, Numberphile and Crash Course. Once you've inserted a video you can add your own voice comments. You can also insert formative assessments anytime during the video and check your students' understanding. Questions are inserted along a timeline that pauses the video and allows students to answer.

Assign Videos


There are a few options to dispersing your video to students. Once the video is completed you can share a direct link to the video or share to Facebook and Twitter. However, these options will not allow the user to complete the questions you have assigned to the video. You can also opt to have students create an account and watch the videos through their account. This option may prove to be the most beneficial. You can assign videos to one or more students, as well as track analytic data on how much of the video they watched and which questions they answered. Account creation is easy and can be completed in a few steps.

 TED Ed

TED-Ed seeks to define what flipping the classroom is all about. This service has been out for what seems a few years, and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it until recently. The concept: find a video explaining a topic and flip it by adding questions, providing links to further concept(s), and promoting discussions all in one nice little package. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student. They even created a video personifying TED-Ed.

Features

The features explored include the ability to add multiple choice questions, open answer questions, "dig deeper" materials, and custom discussion topics to any video on YouTube. Like EdPuzzle you can have students create an account and engage in your videos, collecting data on how students are engaging with the activity.

While the TED Ed service is incredibly helpful for educators and learners all around the world, I do have one qualm: YouTube. Obviously there are a ton of videos being posted every day on YouTube, but there are other sites on the web that produce educational videos. Either way, if you're looking to create your own flipped classroom, or want to borrow content from other educators, these two resources might just be the ticket.

Designing Effective K-12 Online Courses - Learning Objectives

First off, hello and welcome to my new blog! This blog will be an outlet for me to share my ideas, philosophies, and educational technologies with the blogging world. I already have two blogs started through this service, Calle Luna which focuses on my artistic mind. The other is Activando el Éxito, which focused on my initial learning experiences as a newbie teacher. Both have acquired quite a bit of virtual dust, so instead of adding posts to them, I created a new one. Sounded good at the time.

I think a blog specific to my "musings" as an educator is more than appropriate, and actually something that is very much needed. I've only been on this career path for three years (four if you count my student teaching at Ashland High School) and I have learned quite a bit about myself, what I enjoy teaching, how I teach, and what qualifies as good teaching. 

The past year and a half I have had the extreme pleasure of working for the Kodiak Island Borough School District as the Virtual Learning Educational Technologist under what is titled the ENLIVEN Grant (Engaging Native Learners in Virtual Education Now...it's a mouthful). Click here to view the goals that were set for this grant. As I see it, my position focus is to facilitate the goal of "Improving Rural/Town Linked Virtual Learning." I have taken it upon myself to conduct the most current of research in online pedagogy, design, and instruction, a path of self-learning and improvement that proves a bit arduous at times. 

Learning Objectives

In this blog post I wanted to focus on one element of a successful virtual learning standard that I have been learning in my Quality Matters PD at Kodiak Community College. Without divulging too much information about the standards (copyright infringement, etc) I will summarize it as this: Learning Objectives. A simple concept, but one that even veteran teachers may happen to overlook when designing an online course. Let's break it down as I understand it.

Course Objectives

Course objectives are the meat and bones of your online course. The bread to the educational butter. The chocolate at the bottom of your intellectual drumstick. (Can you tell I am hungry?) Without course objectives, you have nothing to develop in your course. Consider the educational trend towards the use of standards-based instruction. Many terms have been created in the world of education to define what a standard actually is: performance expectations, content standards, GLEs.  What we are looking for is "What should students know and be able to do?" (Source)

Throughout the course of the semester, the school year, or however your class operates, students should be FULLY aware of well-defined course objectives, standards, performance expectations, whatever you wish to call it. Course objectives should be written in a language that students understand, and should avoid educational jargon.

Unit Objectives

 The Unit objectives help the students to actualize the course objectives. They provide the framework for students to be successful in your class.  Unit objectives could consist of completing tutorials, writing essays, creating math problems, or representing an element of art.  They are the building blocks to the foundation of your course. It is crucially important that the Unit objectives are also written in a language students can understand, are measurable, and lead up to the course objectives you have set for your class.

"Students will be able to..." or SWBAT is what I frequently came across in the beginnings of my teaching career. These objectives help students to understand what they are studying, why they are studying it, and how they can be successful in your class. 

Bloom's Taxonomy

Many of us are very good at remembering facts. For example, the pancreas produces insulin (and you thought it was useless). But it's what we do with those facts and how we apply them to higher levels of thinking that really make us the wonderful creatures we are. Enter Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist who established a framework for categorizing educational goals, or in this case, learning objectives. (Source) His framework has since been revised (2001) in such a way that it reflects the dynamic and active nature of learning by using verbs instead of nouns.

Why is this important? Action verbs lend themselves quite nicely to the SWBAT sentence. Depending on what type of cognitive function you are looking for, action verbs can help students know exactly what you are expecting from them. Conveniently there are a slue of action verbs available at your fingertips that can help you create your course and unit objectives. Recommended verbs to use with instructional design.

Examples

I have always recognized myself as a learner who needs to see examples of a concept in order to fully understand it. I have included some links below that focus on how to develop these objectives. In our next post we will look at types of activities and assessments that you can include to help students meet these objectives.

Writing Objectives for Lesson Plans using Bloom's Taxonomy (.doc)

Developing Instructional Objectives

Develop Activities to Meet Objectives

Video - Communicating Learning Goals