Today we heard a little bit from Dr. Verena Roberts via video conference from Calgary. She has taught K-11 in BC and Alberta throughout the years. Her area of expertise is education technology, and her specialized research  area is “open education practices”, which focuses on expanding learning beyond classroom walls (also known as open design learning intervention[OLDI]). A main point to take from Dr. Roberts is that learning is learning, and it doesn’t really mater how one does it (blended, etc.). The point is to give students access to the tools they need in order to learn, and to ask ourselves how we can explore informal modes of education. Dr. Roberts defined 4 stages stages to building learning environment, with reflection being a common underlying theme: 1) build relationship (learn how to best support student learning 2) co-design learning pathways 3) build and share knowledge (how students show the evidence of their learning) and 4) building personal learning networks.
She also described 4 lesson plans she used with her students, centered around 4 inquiry-type questions: 1) how do I search/communicate online 2) who is my online audience 3) how do I solve a community problem (do by enforcing stages using prototypes) 4) what is my story and how does my story inform my identity. A couple major takeaways from Dr. Roberts talk is that students may resist inquiry-based learning at first, so the teacher must proceeded slowly and provide sufficient scaffolding. However, as you develop digital literacy with students, hopefully you will have the same experience Dr. Roberts had and they will begin to take some ownership over improving their proficiency with digital tools (i.e. move from creating simple Google slides to creating/remixing their own videos). Last, we should start students at a young age with digital literacy/open learning design/inquiry based learning using blended online distributed learning strategies in order to facilitate their development of valuable technological skills!