Category: EdTech

Wow, I can’t believe how fast the time has passed, this is my final reflection for 336 this semester! This week we learned about incorporating gaming into the classroom. I really liked talking about gaming because I think that it is one of the best ways to engage students in content. I believe that work students to learn about things, it’s important to present information in ways that are familiar to them.

It’s safe to say that with the surge of online gaming surfacing over the past decade, gaming not only very popular with students but very accessible for teachers. Whether it’s playing a Kahoot like we did in class, exploring/creating new worlds in Minecraft, or practicing math skills in Prodigy, I would say that gaming definitely has a place in the classroom.

This week I had the honor of attending EdCamp 2021! I had a great time switching up my schedule and being able to have conversations with a variety of educators. I chose to spend my time in the “First Practicum Survival” breakout room, and I learned a lot about how I should prepare myself for my first practicum one day. Even though I am not able to have my first practicum this year because of the pandemic, I am grateful that I got the chance to get some advice to prepare myself for my future practicums. For this weeks reflection, I will be sharing the notes that I took during my experience learning from Sandra McAulay from SD54.

• know the school, know the teacher, know the grade
• have communication with your mentor teacher
• keep an open mind, sometimes your mentor teacher might not have the same teaching style as you, try to adapt and discover the pros and cons of different teaching styles
• work on building relationships with your students, start with something engaging (2 truths and a lie?)
• try to find the balance between having good relationships while being a trusted adult
• you aren’t going to be able to do everything you plan on doing
• make good impressions!!! practicum is a 6-week long job interview
• become a part of the school culture (coach something, volunteer for the play…)
• keep a daybook
• the practicum will be hard work! expect to stay up late nights
• pick a big topic to explore throughout each practicum (classroom management, inclusion…)
• ask to visit other classrooms
• keep a collection of pictures and resources from this experience
• have specific learning intentions
• you are leading the learning, lead it!
• be kind to yourself!!!!!

In all, I had a great time attending EdCamp this year and I hope to attend for years to come!

This week in class we talked about Distributed Learning, which was quite interesting considering I have been experiencing distributed learning for about a year now. For my reflection, I will be sharing the list of the pros and cons of online learning that we discussed in class, as well as my one personal thoughts.

List from class:

Positives:

• You can all type at once
• No commute
• More homework and personal time
• Wearing pajamas and doing class in bed
• Not taking the bus.
• You can multi-task a lot more things on the go
• Lectures can be recorded a lot easier, discussions are saved
• Notes are accessible online
• Ability to multitask during class.
• Less gas money
• More sleep
• Don’t have to worry about forgetting things at home
• We get to meet people’s pets!
• Closed captioning on zoom calls
• Being able to have people’s names and pronouns right there in case you forget

Negatives:

• Tired bodies and eyes from too much screen time
• Lack of ability to study with/connect with classmates
• When the internet is down, no accessibility to class
• Hurts looking at a screen all-day
• I feel like I am way less active and do not get the fresh air I need
• More home distractions
• Hard to do homework after already sitting at the desk all-day 
• Tech can really be a pain and not always work when you need it/want it too
• Get tired easily
• Back pain 
• No resources for more hands-on classes (music, art, physical ed, tech, drama)
• Headaches (from the screen)
• Difficult to connect with profs

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZKVzGxBedlHexl-S3lpZy_6UfIcWRZxkUBp1qcGeo4/edit%23&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1616201792258000&usg=AOvVaw1h1nJi9NAvRPVZHTinxv3V

Online school definitely comes with some advantages and some challenges. When it comes to my opinion about online school, I find it really hard to disassociate my feelings about online school and my feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic. Personally, I am an outgoing and sociable person that cherishes the space for connection that can only be provided by in-person learning. I consider myself to be very lucky to be a part of a cohort with all the same classes as my peers. By seeing familiar faces every day, I have gotten the chance to create relationships and feel comfortable speaking up in classes. This is not always the case. I have a lot of friends from different faculties and different Universities who have had not as good experiences. I would say that for most, online school is uncomfortable, boring, and frustrating.

In all, I think that there is definitely a time and place for online learning. Post-pandemic, I think that this year will be seen as a time for adapting and growing. Though I would have never planned to have such an extensive online learning experience, it forced me to further my understanding of online learning and how I can use technology to enhance the learning experiences of my students in the future.

This week we were lucky enough to be visited by Tracy Humphreys from BCED Access. We discussed inclusion in education from the lens of a parent. Throughout her presentation, we went into breakout rooms and discussed some important prompts, for this reflection this week, I am going to share what I talked about in my breakout rooms.

1. How would you approach support for a classroom?

• establish a questionnaire system about how to address students needs at the beginning of the year
• meet with the students’ past teachers and discuss how they were supported in the past
• documentation!! Make note of your students behaviour so that, if needed, external support can be justified
• have an open mind, always be ready to get corrected
• don’t assume you know how to teach
• never host field trips that aren’t inclusive of all the students in your specific classroom
• TALK TO THE STUDENTS

2. How can you find out what a student needs?

• TALK TO THE STUDENT, they are the experts on themselves
• student-teacher conferences?
  • we had a great conversation about how normalized parent-teacher conferences are, yet student-teacher conferences aren’t?
  • we suggest that maybe on the afternoon of whatever day parent-teacher conferences are, the class can have a work block to get caught up on assignments and during it, the teacher can go student-by-students conducting small student-teacher interviews where the teacher can ask the student how they are doing and talk about how they can be better supported in the classroom.
• formative assessments
• READ IEP’s!!!

Overall, it was a very insightful conversation that taught me a lot about how to welcome any learner into my classroom!

This week in class we learned about video editing and using videos in the classroom. During our lesson, we broke out into breakout rooms and worked on an activity exploring youtube videos. For my reflection this week, I will be responding to the questions from the activity.

 

1. Find an educational video on YouTube related to your teaching area, inquiry project, or technology resource project
   
2. Consider how was the video was created and what type of video it is (screencast, lab/on-site video, digital story, lecture, simulation, or some combination of these)
   I would say that this video is a lecture video with visuals added to it.
3. Explore video player features in Youtube 
   1. Linking to a section within a video
      • https://youtu.be/bJzGkZwkHt4?t=88
   2. Turn on automatically generated subtitles if available 
      • accomplished by clicking the “CC” (closed captions) button and the bottom right of the video
   3. Adjust video playback speed
      • accomplished by clicking the gear in the bottom right of the video, then clicking playback speed, then selecting your desired speed
   4. Make sure you know how to embed the video in your WordPress site
      • Elements of Art: Shape | KQED Arts
4. Consider how you might use the video as a teaching resource and integrate it into a learning activity
   This video is a great teaching tool to use in the art classroom. I would consider using this video and other videos in this video series to introduce the elements of art for each lesson.
5. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of using Youtube video as a source as well as a place to store and share your own educational video

I think that there are definitely a lot of advantages of using Youtube videos as an educator. First of all, I am currently using Youtube as a place to store and share my videos for my Free Inquiry project for this course and I have really enjoyed it. By being able to upload my videos unlisted and only have them viewable by those who have access to the link to it, I get the amount of privacy I look for in a video sharing service. Not only that, but I have my videos on Youtube which is what I would consider being the most well-known video sharing service on the internet. Moreover, educational videos are quick and easy ways to teach important content to students. Videos satisfy the needs of both visual and auditory learners and add inclusivity to lesson.

With these advantages, it is also important to consider the disadvantages. When using Youtube, there is always a tab to the right of the video you’re viewing is a tab full of recommended videos that are typically unrelated to the video you’re watching. This cannot be changed and may distract students when presenting the video. Furthermore, if the kids are watching the videos on their own IPads, they can click on those videos instead of watching the video they are supposed to be watching. In all, I think that when it comes to Youtube videos in the classroom, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and Youtube videos will definitely be part of my teaching practice.

 

 

This week our class was lucky enough to be visited by the principal of the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII), Jeff Hopkins. After last week’s discussion with Trevor MacKenzie, I think it was really insightful to learn how a school could be based on this inquiry process. I really like the steps of developing a set of questions, doing research, developing new questions, and developing learning outcomes that Jeff Hopkins talked about. I would definitely consider following those steps with my future students. Jeff made a great point about how open-ended the elementary curriculum is here in BC. As future elementary school teachers, we are going to have a lot of freedom when choosing how to cover the curriculum and free inquiry is a really good option that engages students and leads to holistic learning. I find it so interesting that as a society we generally accept that everyone is unique but when it comes to education, we generalize everything and expect everyone to be able to succeed. Over time, as we are going towards inclusion and accepting diversity, yet we definitely have work to do. With that said, I think that inquiry-based learning is definitely a step in the right direction.

This week in class we were visited by guest speaker Trevor MacKenzie. We started out by looking at the following diagram and talking about the types of student inquiry.

I really like this visualization of student inquiry. In fact, that semester in my seminar for my Wednesday school visits, the teachers that lead the seminar showed us this diagram when we were doing our own free inquiry projects. By scaffolding the types of student inquiry and relating them to a swimming lesson in a pool, these concepts become clear to teachers, students, and parents alike. I think that I will definitely put this or something like this up in my future classroom so that I can create a shared understanding of these concepts.

 

Moreover, we explored 10 reasons to use Inquiry-Based learning. I think that this graphic depicts some compelling arguments as to why Inquiry-Based learning should be incorporated into the modern classroom. Reading this list, I certainly want my classroom environment to be composed of all of these things. We were asked to read this list and decide what we are lacking. Now, because I haven’t had much teaching experience yet, I had a little bit of a hard time answering this question. Most of what I think is my teaching style is completely hypothetical and I am not sure what will be my strengths and weaknesses until I can put my teaching into practice. With that said, I picked number 6, “make research meaningful and develop strong research skills”, as something that I want to develop. I am confident in my own researching skills, however, I am not too experienced in adapting my skills to more child-friendly tools. I hope to explore this concept with my Ed Tech inquiry this semester and transform this uncertainty into an asset in my future classroom.

This week we welcomed guest speaker Jesse Miller into our classroom. With his presentation, he brought a very interesting conversation about social media and how it relates to education.

Our discussion began by talking about the role of social media in the classroom. When it comes to integrating social media into the classroom as tools for projects, I think that it’s unnecessary and avoidable. There are plenty of technological tools that could easily replace social media’s potential role in the classroom that are much less risky and reliable for students to use. With that said, I’m not saying social media doesn’t belong in the classroom as a very important topic of conversation. I would say that my generation is very unique in its ability to have grown up at the same time that the internet has. Personally, I remember Instagram coming out just around as I was old enough to use it and using first-generation iPod touch’s to text with my friends on Kik instant messenger towards the end of elementary school. I never really had the problem of social media negatively influencing my life when I was too young because generally, the technology just didn’t exist yet. With that said, I cannot say the same for future generations. I know that social media use is going to be a pressing topic in the young lives of my future students and something that will be frequently discussed with their parents. Though I don’t think I will necessarily integrate social media use in my classroom, I will frequently have discussions about it. I think that it is necessary to talk about the dangers and benefits of social media and how to use it in a healthy way.

This week I had a lot of fun learning about editing photos in PowerPoint. I would say that I was already familiar with photo editing before class but it was interesting learning about it from a teaching perspective and brainstorming the ways that it could be useful for me in my future career. With that said, I think that for this blog post I am going to share some interesting Bernie creating that I made during the class. Enjoy the following Bernia visits UVic series:

 

Bernie at the Library/Fountain

 

Bernie on the Bus

 

Bernie at Clearihue

 

Bernie on Zoom