Final Touches

This course has been interesting.  I found that working collaboratively in a group was very positive for me.  Having amazing colleagues that are all driven and willing to put in a little extra helped me push through the hard parts of the semester.  For the finishing touches of our final project we met and discussed the thorough feedback we received from our peers.

Areas we needed to focus on were: Common Concerns, Appropriate Grade Leveling, and Connecting our Summative Assessment Tool of Blogging.

As my group stepped up for me in my time of need I went through and touched up our Course Profile adding in specific information about the Common Concerns and explained how we would deal with a variety of scenarios if they came up.  As for the grade level conversation we felt that the overall work could be modified for our original grades 3-8 but after reading numerous peoples feedback and their concern for the language throughout the unit being a little to high for some of the younger grades we decided to change the scope to grades 5-8.  We still feel that this unit could be done in a grade 3 and 4 classroom, especially because Jorie teaches a grade 2 class and is doing most of what we have created over the course of the semester as her class has been her guinea pigs for a lot of her learning.

As for the Summative Assessment Danielle went and created an additional video that explains the the 'prior learning' that was assumed to have taken place prior to this unit as an add on for anyone who has not began with the blogging before taking on our project of Genius Hour.

I am very pleased with the overall outcome of our assignment and feel that we all developed not only creative content but also a useful and almost complete unit around Genius Hour that is ready to go.  If anyone is interested in viewing our course please feel free to log in using our student code: ku6m8y.

As for my Summary of Learning, I enjoyed walking back through the different classes and taking snapshots a variety of tools, and learning opportunities I had taken advantage of over the course.

Kyle DuMont's Summary of Learning

Again it has been a pleasure to be a part of an amazing learning community.  Thank you Alec and Katia for facilitating and teaching another outstanding EdTech course.

Final Steps

So this is supposed to be a blog about my final steps for my prototype.  What transpired inthe last 13 days has completely thrown me and my family for a rollercoaster ride.  On Friday, March 24th my wife and I took Ainsley into the ER in Regina, thinking we were being "those parents" who take their kid in for a little cough. Turned out to be an extremely sever case of RSV (which is a fancy term for a lung virus). Apparently all children under the age of 2 get this and in adults it looks like the cold. But for our little Ainsley it was a pretty rough one. The doctors in Regina recognized it quickly and took immediate action by intubating her within a couple of hours and then flew Ainsley and Tenille up to Saskatoon to be in the Paediatric ICU where they see upwards of 100 RSV cases a year in infants. After almost 6 full days of being on intubation the doctors took the tube out Thursday afternoon and we were hoping to be sent home in the next day or two (providing she continued responding well to being off the ventilator). We were then sent back to Regina in the middle of the night on the 31sth/1st and have been in the General Hospital here since.  

Now what does this mean for my prototype....  technically not much because I did zero , but I was able to utilize some of my new found skills from this class to prep and plan for my time away from school.  While most of the artifacts that I produced to ensure my students learned what I wanted them to were wordy and certainly not polished I did get an opportunity to ensure my students were able to do the assignments that I wanted them to complete.  

I used the Tech Smith Snagit Screencasting Chrome add on to walk my students through their Big Idea in their Pearson text, review the material they needed to learn over the course of the week.  I was able to post a video about how I wanted them to do their science experiment as well.  I did use some YouTube videos throughout the week because the content I wanted covered I could not produce from a hospital room.  As for connecting to my prototype I did use one of my videos to have my students start a slideshow as a culminating "Summary of Learning" for this unit we have been working on over the last 8 weeks.  The video worked well from what I can tell because my students have already started their group presentations and are looking good.  Doing these activities along with the typical math assignments I use my Google Classroom for I felt very confident that I did not need to be in my classroom physically to ensure my students were getting what they needed from a curriculum point of view while I was tending to my little girl.

In terms of finishing off our prototype.  I need to say a HUGE thank you to my group members: Danielle, Adam, Lorranie, Jenn and Jorie.  They went over and above and ensured our page was completed and that each section met the requirements of the assignment from Alec and Katia.  Finishing off and polishing the final look of the Google Classroom would not have been an easy task, and I apologize for not being present for this portion of the assignment.  I know it was a team effort and some in the group really took a lead and organized the framework amazingly.  


As of this morning Ainsley has been off oxygen for almost 3 hours and is doing well.  She is also almost weened off the narcotics that she was on.