Flow, Activities, and Networking in Modules
The experience of Extending calls on actions of sharing and reflecting on your work, in public or community spaces, as well as participating in some kind of networking practices with colleagues near or far. How you do this depends on the how and where you are doing his. The program has been designed so that you can do this individually, in small local groups, in open web spaces, or as part of a course/professional development program/private community.
Below we describe some of the modes and ways you might be doing your Extending. Also keep in mind that the modules are all independent, so the order you choose to do them does not matter.
The flow of any Extend Module includes:
- Extend Opening Scenario – A module opens with a brief situation and a video that sets the stage for the module topic.
- Extend Module Content – This includes brief descriptions of concepts, plus external readings, videos, and web sites to explore.
- Extend Activities – Each module includes (check) 5-12 activities to practice skills specific. These generally ask you to produce some kind of publically viewable artifact (document, media, blog post) that shows your work via a public web address, This makes it easy for providing evidence when applying for a Module Badge. Activities described fully in this book but are also available in the Ontario Extend Activity Bank[1] where you can submit your own responses and see the work of others. It is even a place where you can add more activities. We call it a bank because you can put stuff in and take stuff out. Where you create the work is up to you, and options include:
- Writing and sharing in your self-managed blog. We provide a Blog set up guide[2] and an option to add your blog to the Extend Hub. You can take advantage of free hosted blogging services like WordPress.com and Blogger or explore the more versatile route of creating a Domain of One’s Own.
- Publishing as a shared document, e.g Google Docs or equivalent, which can be made public or shared via a service like OneDrive or DropBox.
- Summarized and shared in a course/program’s Learning Management System or other online community/work space.
- Extend Small Stretches. Extending can be a lot of work! We believe firmly in the potential of small regular challenges that are aligned with the odule content. Small Stretches are a set of activities that help you to practice your media and networking skills while you explore new technologies or approaches to designing learning activities. These are all optional, and you are welcome to just try the ones included in this book or explore the ones published online as the Daily Extend[3].
- Extend Networking. The modules are not the entire Extend experience; one of the most valuable parts of the program are creating and expanding your own distributed professional learning network. How and where you do this is again up to you, and may include:
- Informal conversation, messaging with other colleagues who are working their way through Extend
- A private Learning Management System or other online community/work space.
- Openly in twitter by mentioning @ontarioextend and/or using the #oextend hashtag (more details below).
- Via annotation of the online version of this book via the Hypothes.is[4] web annotation tool (more details below).
- Extend Extras. For those who want to do a bit more, each module will include a set of optional activities with technologies and strategies to explore.
- Extend Badges. If you want to earn a microcredential for your Extending work, the end of each module includes the steps to organize your evidence and submit to earn and Ontario Extend Module badge. Completion of all six module badges then earns you the coveted Empowered Educator Badge.
Extend Networking in Twitter
Using twitter is not a requirement of the Ontario Extend program, but many educators report it as one of the most beneficial ways to connect to other educators. You will learn more about collaborating in twitter in the Collaborator Module.
If twitter is new or relatively new to you, please explore our Guide to Extending with Twitter[5]to get you started by creating a new account to deciding to use an existing one.
Stay informed about Ontario Extend on twitter by following us as @ontarioextend[6] and including us in any extend related tweets, as well as the #oextend hashtag.
This might be a good time to introduce yourself to us in twitter! Just send a message such as (yes we made up a college name):
I’m a sociology teacher from Grand Thumb College and am very excited to be starting my @ontarioextend via the Pressbooks version of the Extend Modules. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/oextend/ I’m getting all the badges. #oextend
Extend Networking with Hypothes.is
Web-based tools annotation such as hypothes.is provide a new level of collaboration by giving us the ability to attach notes, commentary, discussion to any document or web page that exists at a URL. This provides another space to connect with other educators, by adding annotations and notes to this book.
If you like to learn more about how Hypothes.is works, they have a great introduction[7] But others just like to dive in. You will want to follow their directions for creating an account and enabling the browser tool to activate it.
We use a special “trick” to automatically activate the Annotation tools on the online version of this page, just use this special link to open the page we are gathering around[8]You know Hypothes.is is present when you see the < button in the top right corner.
From the tool that opens, you can Log in to Hypothes.is if you already have an account. But if you are new, you can create one right there by clicking Sign up.
Now what? When Hypothes.is is active, any part of the document that already has a note is highlighted in yellow. You may see on example on the text that reads Come on and say hello. Clicking the annotated text shows the note someone has already added. As annotation can be conversation, you can use the reply button to respond (and say hello).
In this way, you can interact with everyone else that uses Hypothes.is in the online version of this book. You can have discussions, add commentary, suggest resources, even add links to your activity responses. It offers a different kind of connectivity than social media, and all annotations are anchored to content in this book.
You will get a chance to explore more with Hypothes.is as an extra activity in the Collaboration Module.
- Ontario Extend Activity Bank https://extend-bank.ecampusontario.ca/ ↵
- Connect Your Blog to Ontario Extend, https://extend-domains.ecampusontario.ca/connect/ ↵
- Ontario Extend Daily Extend, https://extend-domains.ecampusontario.ca/ ↵
- Hypothes.is web annotation, http://hypothes.is/ ↵
- Guide to Extending with Twitter, https://extend-domains.ecampusontario.ca/twitter/ ↵
- @ontarioextend on Twitter http://twitter.com/ontarioextend ↵
- Introduction to Hypothes.is, https://web.hypothes.is/ ↵
- Open this page of the book with Hypothes.is enabled, https://via.hypothes.is/https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/oextend/chapter/flow/ ↵
