Category: Weekly Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

For my Sketchnote Reflection, I decided to take a journey through the blog posts that we created and what we learnt each week. This course has helped me feel more confident in using different technologies in the classroom to aid comprehension as well as add different elements to my teaching. I appreciated how we covered both digital technology as well and more conventional classroom technology.

This week, we discussed digital devices and their role in the classroom. When we began this class, I became very aware of my usage of my phone and how much I rely on it for entertainment and to fill the gaps in my day when I am not doing anything. I intentionally moved my phone away from where I was so I could focus on the class and what was being said instead of being distracted by it just being there. I think that this is something that teachers in Middle school would have to deal with as their students get cell phones. This connects to the cell phone ban that has been implemented in SD61 schools.

Take a look at this link of the Code of Conduct Update regarding Cell Phones and Personal Digital Devices

It would be both a distraction and a tool at the age level that I am looking at teaching, Grades 2-4. You can find many tools online that can improve students’ learning and aid in their understanding of certain concepts. However, these devices would need to be monitored so that the students would not navigate away from the app that they are using and use it for other things.

EDCI 336 Weekly Reflection

This week, we had a guest speaker, Brittany Johnson, who is a Grade 1 French Immersion teacher at Macaulay Elementary in Victoria, BC. She shared and discussed what it is like to work in her classroom and the strategies and classroom management tools she uses.

We first discussed routines and expectations, she mentioned how these are helpful to get everyone on the same page as the learners step into the classroom. This also allows for the teacher to have an understanding of where each of the students is at the beginning of the day so their individual needs can be met. She mentioned having a chart on the door with just colours that represent how they are feeling as they enter so no words are needed if they are not in the headspace to communicate.

We went into depth on online portfolios and how they are tools that can help share students’ work with parents and change how report cards are done. Throughout the term, she takes photos of students’ work, either an example of a specific competency such as reading, writing, or numeracy and displays their work online in this portfolio. She will then write notes regarding how the student performed and include the rubric they used to evaluate the work so they can have the chance to self-assess as well.

It was a very informative class, and I appreciated how much we learnt about her classroom and how she manages the class and is there for her students. It was really interesting to hear her real-world examples and strategies and how they have directly helped or impacted her teaching and her students.  

In class this week we learnt about coding and educational games. Coding is something that I have a little bit of experience with, my dad introduced me and my siblings to CodeAcademy (https://www.codecademy.com/). Through this website, you can learn different coding languages and create games or other fun tasks with code. This is what code academy looks like.

However, in class, we learnt more about how to apply learning code in a more academic way as well as games that can be used to learn new things. During our hands-on class time, we were able to play around with coding through different games. I chose the Frozen-inspired coding game where you use different directions to tell Anna and Elsa how to move around the screen and at the end we designed a snowflake. It took a lot of computational thinking, which is something we learnt about, to process how to use the code in the most effective and efficient way. There was one step that I remember working through where instead of using the bracket to repeat the same step multiple times, I just copy and pasted the step multiple times. This was a moment where I had to rethink coding and how much I need to think it through before I think I am done.

One thing we learned that I found really interesting was computational thinking. This is the process of analyzing all information, recognizing patterns, and then developing a way to deliver the information. An example we had in class was the Peanut Butter and Jam video, where a father asks his children to write step-by-step instructions on making a sandwich. Through this activity, the kids were able to learn who you need to be when giving instructions in order for someone to preform them how you would like. This goes for people and machines. Machines and coding are both very literal and will do exactly what they are told. This video we were able to learn how specific we need to be when writing code for it to execute exactly what we want.

Check out this link to see what I made in the end! https://studio.code.org/c/2347473754?qr=true

I unfortunately missed this class but I did it on my own time and this is what I got from it.

First, we learnt about the SAMR model which stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. Substitution is just changing the tech that is being used without changing anything. Augmentation, on the other hand, improves the functionality of the tech. Modification is when there is a redesign and Redefinition creates new tasks with tech. The SAMR model helps teachers reflect on and evaluate if they are using technology effectively. The second acronym was TPACK which involves intersections between Technology, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge. I think that TPACK overlaps with SAMR but also dives deeper in to how technology can be merged with teaching methods to create a better lesson.

The next part was sketchnoting which was about “ideas and not art”. To combine images, words, arrows, boxes, lines, and any other elements to create notes that help the learner remember more. Some things that you can use sketchnoting for include language learning or summarizing articles.

There was a hands-on portion where everyone practiced sketchnoting and I tried it myself but I found that I used more words than pictures. I also tend to want to make things look right instead of just being in the moment and noting things down, so I get caught up in the drawing of it and miss parts of the lecture because of that. This is what I did following the links and prompts on the UVic library website.

This week we looked at assistive technology and how to make learning more accessible for all learners. We learnt about what accessibility is for different learners and their needs. In one of the videos we watched, there were many different needs that each learner had that they described and their reasons for needing it. This ranged from needing larger text displayed to needing information presented in different manners either auditorily or visually. We also discussed what digital accessibility is and how different websites are either more or less accessible for different learners. How things like contrast, links, screen readers and other factors either increase or limit the accessibility of a website or other digital sources.

We also discussed how making technology more accessible to those who need it also creates a better experience for all learners using these sources.

After having these discussions we each altered the videos that we created in our first in-person class and added captions to them to make them more accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQNLyGqhcqE

Another element of technology that we looked at that can make things more accessible is adding alternative text to images that are on our blogs and doing this moving forward so that we can continue to improve our blogs and make them more accessible moving forward.

This week in class we had the opportunity to visit the Digital Scholarship Commons where we had a 3-D Design and Printing workshop. During this workshop, we learnt about the uses of 3-D Design and printing in K-12 classrooms. I had never had hands-on experience with anything to do with 3-D design or printing but I have heard a lot about it so having the opportunity to try it for myself was a great experience.

We had the opportunity to design and submit our creations for printing, there were so many different ideas and everyone had the chance to be creative and express their interests. I chose to make a fish key chain, I had to find an image of a fish that I liked and then import it into TinkerCad. TinkerCad is the program that we used to design the object or item to be printed, using this platform was a bit of a learning curve. Trying to figure out how to manipulate the objects, how to create certain shapes and how to adjust the perspective were a few things that took me a second to understand. But once I did, I had such a feeling of accomplishment and success, I was very proud of myself in that moment.

One way that I think this technology can be used as a cross-curricular learning opportunity is when connecting it with history. Specifically, by re-creating historical landmarks or historical artifacts, by doing this you can bring the structures and the artifacts into the classroom without having to get the actual object or go to the space. Let’s think about Stonehenge, a very famous monument. This monument is in a completely different country and on a different continent so; by creating the structure by using 3-D printing, you can bring a piece of history into the classroom to touch and see not just as an image.

I am hoping to teach in the 2-4 grade level and a pro of using 3D design and print in these grades is the amount of creativity and freedom that this technology provides. You can create anything you can think of and that is such a valuable lesson for learners, that there are no bounds to creativity and that if you can think it there is a way to create it. A con that I can think of, however, is the fact that there is a bit of a learning curve that may deter some students. The program that we used, TinkerCad, was a little challenging for some of my classmates to understand so it may be even more challenging for those who are younger. Also, the fact that it is on a screen and not a tactile project may not be the best for some students. Overall I think it is valuable to think of ways that you could use 3D design and print in the classroom and modify it for the age you are teaching.

This is the fish keychain I designed

Some of the major limitations of generative AI mainly revolve around the information that the AI is being given. If the information is biased then the AI will also be biased, this can result in biased results that may discriminate or marginalize underrepresented and minority groups solely based on the information provided. Another limitation of generative AI is the fact that it will try and help to the point of going too far and just creating or citing information that does not exist or has not happened. So you must always double-check the work and information that is given to you by generative AI because it may not always be correct. Generative AI is also completely reliant on the information that it is given and there is not always a way to check the information that it is being given and who is giving the information to the generator. When using a generative AI resource you also have to be very particular with the words that you use and the requests that you make so that you are given exactly what you asked for.

Check out this video on human bias in AI and how we can keep it separate.

Some ways that I have found GenAI useful for educational purposes have been around citations and citation generators. Having to cite papers and articles in writing was new in university and not something I am very good at, so using generative AI to create the citations has been very helpful. Another way that I have found generative AI useful is through Grammarly, which is an app that you can install and looks over any writing for grammar mistakes and gives suggestions on how to structure sentences and spelling corrections.

You can take a look at Grammarly here: https://www.grammarly.com/.

EDCI 336 – Weekly Reflection

This week we took a look at educational resources and the tools that are available for teachers and students. We created an interactive video on a website of our choice, my choice was The Spinnacle Yarns website a local yarn shop. Creating the interactive video allowed me to look at video creation differently. Having to create an interactive element of the video made me look deeper into how videos can help teach learners difficult information while continuing to have confirmations throughout that make sure learners are paying attention and engaging with the information. Including different confirmations such as questions or polls can also gauge how many students are interacting and how well the information is being retained.

My video

The multi-media learning theory describes how the use of multimedia is beneficial for learners if used in the right way. Multimedia is a combination of media, this could be text and image, image and sound, or text and sound. It has been found that the combination of text and sound, such as someone reading the text, is the least impactful combination of media. The combination of image and sound is the more impactful combination, where there is an image related to the topic on the screen as someone speaks in greater detail about the topic. For example, if the topic is goats, having an image of a goat on the screen with very little text while the speaker goes into greater detail about the information. This combination allows for learners to be engaged in the subject matter and learn from the speaker while simultaneously having external stimulation that can continue to engage them. By using this knowledge of multimedia learning theory, instructional videos and tutorials can be improved to limit the amount of text on the screen and increase the amount of information that will be retained.

In video image citation: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/step-by-step-sweater