Category: Weekly Reflections

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Joanna Lake’s Presentation

Today we were so lucky to be visited by Joanna Lake, a practicing grade 8 science teacher! I am going to list some of my notes and takeaways from her presentation below.

• LOVE the guinea pig SEL feeling check-in for both verbal and non-verbal participation. These can also be linked to the curriculum (medieval owls).
• Students design the room and help with designing the bulletin boards. Student designed art board, they get to choose what to display! I really like this idea for building community and relationships with students, as well as the connection with leadership!
• Middle school MEMES, jokes, puns are a hit!
• Joanna talked about building low risk connections: would you rather, mood scales, class playlist, post it notes, student survey
• Survey question: how do you learn best? Where do you like to sit in class? What helps you learn?
• You can never have too many images, visuals, displays etc. Visual schedules are a great tool!
• First, then tasks (good for all ages, middle school included!)
• The proficiency scale is a tricky transition for students, especially for older students. Talk about the language of the proficiency scale!
• Digital brainstorming also written on charts or whiteboard to be visible-anchor charts are important!
• Co-create rubrics and give examples so they know what is expected! Make a rubric where students can highlight and draw arrows, and they don’t have to write.
• FLIPGRID-yes. Use this. I have used this before with grade 5 and it was awesome!
• Stretch and strength-I like this language.
• Media as differentiation allows for students to participate in different ways if they are not comfortable speaking up in class. This helps build confidence!
• Would you rather questions for attendance!
• Focus on competencies, content is a suggestion. Relevancy is key!

This was probably one of the most useful guest speakers we have had this year! I have always found that hearing directly from teachers themselves is where I learn the most, because nobody knows the experience or the content like they do! Not only did I find the presentation to be super engaging and informative, but it was really inspiring to see a teacher who is so passionate about teaching. I think during this pandemic and as we emerge into lifted restrictions, teachers seem to be quite burnt out and sometimes it is discouraging, so it was really awesome to hear Joanna speak with suck knowledge and enthusiasm. I can tell she loves her students and it has made me even more excited for practicum!

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Fresh Grade and Android Science Journal

Fresh Grade looks like a cool way to accumulate a portfolio for kids! I would like to check this out and ask my mentor teacher if they use this at all. I would also be curious to know if my teacher uses it at all or if the focus is mainly on google classroom. It is good to know that it is a safer option for no data sharing. I would be curious to know how this compares with Seesaw (an app I used with students in the US).

Arduino Science Journal also looks like a great tool for measuring scientific data, cause and effect relationships, and could even be used in math for observing and learning about graphs! You can check out the two categories I tested out below. I think this would be fun to send kids off around the school to experiment with this.

A few things to consider would be…

-Appropriate age/grade level for using this software

-Access to technology, equity considerations

-How to apply it to the curriculum and navigate measuring data, if it is developmentally appropriate for the kids

-Privacy in downloads, permissions etc.

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Today we had a presentation by Nicole Kent who talked to us about multi-access/blended/flipped learning and we had the opportunity to critically think about the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid learning and other modalities of online learning. One thing that wasn’t mentioned in our discussion in class was about the impact of covid/pandemic online learning on teachers. When everything went online, teacher’s jobs were made so much more difficult for many reasons, and one of those reasons was being held to the same expectations and outcomes for when they were teaching in-person. One of the downsides of the pandemic is that students fell behind, some by a whole year or more. So now, teachers have classes which have some students who were supported greatly during the pandemic and were able to keep up relatively well, and other students who are a whole grade level behind. So what is the answer to this? Is it the implementation of multi-age learning and grouping kids by development? At the very minimum, teachers should be given a break when it comes to data results and provincial exams. Most often the lack of reaching proficiency with online learning is that exact reason: online learning. I think a lack of support for struggling teachers through this process explains a lot of the mass exodus of teachers from the profession post-covid.

Now, this isn’t to say that all of the online learning is negative. As we have learned in this class, there are so many productive uses for technology in the classroom. I do believe; however, that direct instruction through flipped learning is not the answer (might be a controversial opinion). In my opinion, students should have the opportunities to do hands-on learning whenever possible. Viewing the lesson through a screen is not the same as doing hands-on learning, and I think the video we watched lacks the consideration of the benefits of receiving direct instruction from the teacher in real time, as well as being given the chance to collaborate with other students in the class and share ideas. I would be interested to learn more about the video we watched in class-is it an American classroom where test scores are more highly valued? How is the proficiency data being collected? How can the teacher verify that students are developing number sense/comprehension and being given the opportunity to collaborate and talk with one another? I am skeptical…

Kelsey had a good idea in our discussion about introducing the videos after direct instruction has been given so that struggling students can re-watch the video at their own pace. I think I like this idea a lot more than watching the video before class because it is used more as a supportive tool rather than a direct support in the direct instruction.

3D Design Project with TinkerCad

We also had the chance to experiment with 3D printing and I went off the average path and made this nice scene! It’s not something I will get printed… but still fun to experiment with! I imagine this would be really fun for students to do!

I also had a lot of fun making this keychain and I am excited to paint it once it is printed!

Learning about coding in class today was a blast! It is cool to see how creative you can get with making games and learning resources when you begin to get a bit more familiar with coding!

For now, I started with baby steps by customizing the Flappy Bird game to make a ‘Swimmy Shark‘ game! Next, I want to try experimenting with creating something more unique! Developing this game was honestly very easy and fun to customize! I really like how the interface is so user-friendly and gives the step-by-step instructions so that anyone can participate-even if they are not well versed in coding. One thing is for certain: if I can do this, my grade 6 practicum students should be able to do it too!

Hearing the story about the goat condo was a good reminder to implement a variety of different projects and subjects in a coding context. When students see the application in what they are learning, they are going to be able to grasp the concepts and be more interested in them! When I was in school, I never really saw the application in most math subjects, and it just goats to show (ha-ha) that with effective context math can not only be applicable for students, but engaging as well!

Thinking about the application of math in the classroom and projects/problem solving, I wonder if I can start thinking of a year-long project that could be used for this purpose. I know I would need to get it approved by admin and probably others… but how cool would it be to create something over the course of a school year that incorporates a lot of different math concepts as well as modeling or coding? It makes me think about the documentary we watched earlier on the technology institute for high school students when they had long-term projects that they worked on to complete to show their families. I am going to put some brainstormed ideas below (these are just off the top of my head…)

• School garden beds (area, perimeter, plant spacing etc.)
• Wind vane (math and science concepts)
• Class-made morning message games (customized wordle with science terms or terms for other subjects?)
• Coding related to science dissections online

The other day, we were lucky to have Science Venture come to our science classroom to teach us about coding with micro bits and sphere robots! I thought it connected really closely to what we learned about when using scratch, and it showed another aspect of how to incorporate coding into the curriculum in subjects other than math! I thought this was really useful and I might try using microbits in my grade 6 practicum (if SD62 schools have them on-hand)! Coding has also been used to help with developing technology for voice-to-text and other areas of equitability and accessible technology, so I think that if this is discussed with students, it could be quite inspiring! I had a grade 6 student in my observation class do a bunch of coding on their google browser and little characters would start falling around the screen. Now, I have no idea how they did this, but it just shows the capability of thee students! This student in particular loved coding but had a general distaste for school, so when I told them that there are lots of career opportunities that involve coding, they seemed to really light up! I think sometimes coding is solely associated with video games which sometimes get a bad reputation from parents and teachers, but I have learned how much strategy is involved, and if a student develops their own? Even better!

Accessible Photo Using Alt Text

This week in class we began to learn about accessible technologies and how to use it to create a more equitable learning environment for our students. We had a wonderful guest speaker, Tracy Humphreys who told us all about BC Ed Access and how to effectively integrate assistive technologies in the classroom. One of the most helpful things I took away from hearing Tracy speak was about her personal experience both as someone with ADHD on the autism spectrum, and being a mom to three children, one of whom also requires additional support through assistive technology. I found it to be so heartbreaking that Tracy had to pull her child from school because they were not getting the support they needed, and I am sure she is one of many parents who have had to do this. Hearing about her experience is definitely something I will take with me as I go into a classroom full of students with different needs!

I started experimenting with closed captions CC on videos I have uploaded to Youtube. Something that Emmanuel taught me is that once you turn on CC on Youtube, they will stay on for any other videos you play-which is really cool! I also experimented with the translation feature on Youtube and it seems to be quite accurate! I can speak Spanish as a second language (not totally fluently), but I was able to understand the translation and verify that it matched up with the English we were speaking in the video. I didn’t know this was a feature, it is so useful!

While learning about accessibility this week, it reminded me of other platforms that make accessibility a key feature. As I have been learning ASL for my free inquiry, I feel like I have a heightened awareness of my privilege and how to use my privilege to support others, like advocating for more assistive technology in the public school system. This experience from this week made me think of Tik Tok and how nearly all of the videos have closed captions on them, and if there are videos without closed captioning, people in the comments are quick to hold the creator accountable. I think this is fantastic because it really demonstrates how large of a community there is for supporting those who need other avenues of experiencing or creating.

When I started looking into Tik Tok and their accessibility features, I found more than I even knew existed! Tik Tok has photosensitive warnings, text to speech, auto captions, and animated thumbnails! You can read more about Tik Tok’s accessibility HERE.

Okay everyone, this may have been my favourite class of all time! Not only were we able to connect with students from the other cohort, but we were able to have extremely rich conversations about topics that interest us. EdCamp is such a cool way to connect and discuss ideas about things we actually WANT to discuss. In a way, it reminded me of socratic seminars, but with more autonomy to choose topics to discuss. I have a feeling that this kind of idea could work well with middle school students, especially if they are the ones bringing up the topics that they want to discuss. I also like that it doesn’t put students on the spot, and that all ideas are considered for discussions.

Fortunately, one of my topics was chosen to be a discussion piece. I was curious to have discussions regarding parent communication (which I have discovered through conversation that a more appropriate title would be ‘Home Team Communication’. Check out my video below for some key takeaways I had from the discussion! As I wrote on the whiteboard, some lovely humans took notes on this google doc that should be accessible to view!

What a cool way to learn! It reminded me of the film we watched early on in the semester called ‘Most Likely to Succeed’. It really demonstrated how different ways of learning can be so effective and engaging for students! Talking to each other and sharing ideas is so incredibly valuable, and it is definitely a technique I would like to include as much as possible in my future classroom.

This week we learned all about two theories to have as resources when choosing technologies to use in our future classrooms. I found this to be really helpful to evaluate a resource and reflect on the objective of using a technological resource. We also learned all about Sketchnote and Canva. It was a great reminder of how useful drawing and taking notes simultaneously are for memory and comprehension. It has made me think that I should probably start bringing a blank notebook to class!

How can the SAMR theory of technology adoption help you evaluate technologies that you might consider using in your classroom?

This theory helps with generally reflecting on what the true use of the technology is for. Is it acting as a substitute where hand-drawing or doing it another way would yield the same result? Will it improve upon the function of the activity or assignment?

This model helps to think about different components of usefulness such as equity, prior skills needed to use the technology introduced, and whether it is age-appropriate (for example, we talked as a class how making a WordPress blog probably wouldn’t be appropriate for a Kindergarten class). It really made me think critically about what the technology I introduce to students is for and what the pros and cons to using the technology might be.

How could the SECTIONS model help you select the most appropriate tool or technology to help meet your learning objectives for your class?

The sections model gets into a lot more detail of what needs to be considered when choosing to integrate a technological tool into your classroom. How might certain technologies fit the needs of your students or not fit the needs of your students? What about equitability? Do students have access to this technology at home? This theory also addresses questions that I hadn’t thought of. For example, I never really considered the cost of time for a teacher to learn how to use the technology (I feel like this is common among teachers who just want to bring great things to the classroom without thinking of the extra work it is for them). Another important consideration brought up is the privacy and security issue and if it is a technology that can be used by the school. I imagine that many incoming teachers (myself included) could be tempted to integrate all kinds of technology, but it all needs to be cross-checked with what the school allows. This model truly demonstrates the complex considerations when introducing technology to the classroom.

Could sketchnoting benefit learners in the grade level you hope to teach at? If so how?

I am hoping to teach upper elementary or middle school and I can definitely envision Sketchnoting being a useful tool for students at those grade levels. When I was observing grade 6 last semester, students were constantly doodling and drawing, so why not encourage students to turn some of that doodling into a productive way to pay attention in class?

Something I wonder is if this is a technique that should be explicitly taught to students in order for it to be used effectively? Or do you verbally encourage drawings in notes? I assume explicitly teaching could be helpful…

Overall, I found this to be really useful in making sure I keep being mindful about technology use and whether or not it is actually appropriate for certain lessons or activities. I also found comparing Canva and Sketchnote to be interesting because I think there are benefits to using both. Sketchnote is cool because of the pen to paper technique and having it be a productive way to take notes for personal use. I do think that Canva might be a more useful tool for creating items to share with a broader community, as it is a clear and organized way to share information with lots of colour and other graphic design elements that can draw a reader’s attention!

WOW! Today’s guest lecturer, Jesse Miller, gave me a lot to think about when it comes to my online presence and digital footprint. Fortunately I grew up with my Dad in tech who gave me the low-down of what to post/not to post etc. My Mom was always iffy on me being introduced to social media, but my Dad was all for it, and we used the argument that I could connect with my extended family more easily around Canada-which was true! Although I absolutely recollect becoming mildly addicted and being limited on my time at our family desktop computer, over the years I feel as though I have developed a healthier relationship with the tech world and how to utilize it to my advantage.

After attending today’s lecture, I have never been more grateful that my Grandparents were my first Facebook friends. In hindsight, it almost provided a kind of auto-censor on what I posted online. Anything I posted in my middle-school angst that was at all deemed ‘inappropriate’ by my extended family was immediately reported to my parents. Fortunately my grandparents were pretty chill and I was a (mostly) well-behaved kid. The only thing that remains from those days are some pretty embarrassing quotes and music videos that my friends and I made. Luckily, to be a teacher you need to have thick skin, so that kind of embarrassment is doable.

Regardless of having a general idea of the permanency of a digital footprint and data storage by big companies, I (like many others) probably would have been more mindful with what I posted in the past. Was I too immature to have access to social media at such a young age? Probably. Do I regret it? Not really. My main love for the socials has been the ability to connect with family and friends, especially those I am not able to talk to everyday. Although I have pondered the negative aspects on social media and tech (especially on the influence of youth using photoshop and affecting body image etc.), I do think that this technology is an inevitable part of our social structure, so the focus should now be on how we use it and how we teach our children to use it. After Jesse Miller’s lecture, I did go through my Instagram and chose to delete a photo taken at an ABC party several years ago. My Instagram is private and the photo wasn’t anything particularly incriminating, but it is also not worth dealing with an aggravated parent or to have anyone question my credibility teaching kids. This was a good reminder; however, to integrate some more mindfulness into my social presence online.

So how can I help my future learners manage their digital footprints? I remember when I was in school, admin/educators used the fear-based approach where all they talked about were predators on the internet. Although this is incredibly important to raise awareness about, I don’t think this idea alone helps students develop a healthy relationship with technology. Students should not fear technology, but accompanying the positives, they should also be encouraged to question the things they see on the internet, and especially any strangers they come into contact with. Students should be made aware that having private accounts and security are important for their social media, which requires shifting the ideology that likes/followers/influencer culture is not all it’s cracked up to be. Not to mention that most of it is fake anyways. A good way I think this can be integrated is by teaching children how to critically think and analyze. In the past, questioning has been taboo because children were always supposed to believe adults, but that is not reality anymore! Students should be encourage to think critically and question things. Obtaining these skills will hopefully transfer to be used while using technology and social media.

Googling myself was a crazy interesting task to do. I have a common name, so searching just my name isn’t interesting. When I searched my name and added ‘UVic’ all of a sudden my work in a sustainable project done on campus in 2019 resurfaced. I had completely forgotten that ‘Break Up with your Paper Cup’ day made the news-pretty cool! Nothing else has really come up other than my high school alumni list, but I should have some factsheets being published with the UVic history department, so I might have some more academic things related to my googled name. I hope I can keep it that way!

Today in class we learned all about how to use Screencastify as a tool for recording your screen with a voice-over, or with your webcam video in the corner of the screen. This is an easy-to-use tool and definitely applicable to classroom use, especially in upper elementary and middle school. Not only can this be a cool tool for teachers to record tutorials and instructional videos, but this could be a unique way for students to create online presentations of their work. I imagine this could be particularly useful for students who do not feel comfortable immediately presenting in front of their class, but would feel more comfortable with recording themselves and presenting the video to the class.

Alongside Screencastify, we learned how to use H5P within’ WordPress to add interactive elements to our Screencastify video. In my video, I added posters that pause the videos and give instruction to the viewer. For mine, I recommend the viewer pause and create a Bitmoji account before continuing the tutorial. Another really cool element that I think would be useful for teachers is the periodic multiple-choice questions that pop up in the video. I feel like this could help by holding some accountability for the viewer (student) to pay attention to the content of the video. I imagine this content could be useful for both teacher-student communication/teaching for homework assignments etc., but also for parents if they need to help their child with any assignments etc. I could also see myself using this even as an instructional video to help navigate parents through my website, google classroom, etc. I used to use a lot of screenshots to help explain or give instruction to people, but screencasting could save so much time!

As my learning pod discussed these interfaces more, some important brainstorms and considerations appeared:

• These could be a useful tool share with TTOCs to explain lesson plans, classroom content etc. in a more user-friendly way
• Equity is an important consideration when considering designing any of this in an ‘at-home’ format. Students should always have access to these interfaces for projects/watching at school on the computers.
• It is important that these recorded videos do not substitute the teaching that should be taking place and act more as an aide
• For middle schoolers, if the instructions are recorded and posted on a google slides (or whatever format a teacher uses in their classroom), while still giving live instructions in the classroom, any students who are not paying attention (even after multiple explanations, can be directed to the google slides video rather than spending more time on repeating instructions)

I thought that learning about Multi-media learning theory was really useful because even though I find myself instinctively using some of the techniques we talked about, some of my slides still end up being too wordy and could probably be more useful if they were more image-based. I particularly found it useful that having the webcam video on while screen casting can actually be counterproductive and works best as a voiceover.

Constantly reimagining education in our fast-paced and rapidly changing world is imperative for delivering high-quality education to our future generations. We cannot expect children to learn the same way and through the same processes we did while we were growing up. Even subjects as perceivably consistent as mathematics are evolving to focus on skill and character development, rather than merely getting the correct answer on a convoluted worksheet. In the fascinating film, Most Likely to Succeed, the standard pedagogy of how students learn is challenged through the demonstration of project based learning, socratic seminars, and freedom for teachers to instruct how they want and what they want as leading to highly achieving students in a standardized education system.

So what is stopping teachers from implementing this model in their schools? The impression I get from talking to teachers and viewing teacher grievances on social media is a tug-of-war struggle between teachers, administration, and parents. I think an issue that is not often discussed is that although teachers do have a fair amount of control in how they run their classroom, they are also reporting to administration who have guidelines and rules for teachers to follow. Additionally, each individual parent has an idea of how they would like their child to be educated, and flipping a switch on pedagogy is much easier said than done. In this film, parents share their unease with trying to balance their children learning important skills while still getting standardized education that can get them into good Universities. Although this film is set with older students, this kind of input and involvement is consistent throughout all elementary and middle school education as well.

As much as I am excited to teach the new BC curriculum and can already see the improvements in moving toward a system based on true learning rather than rote memorization and a hierarchical model of instruction, the complex dynamic between teachers and other stakeholders does cause me some concern. A good friend of mine is an EA in Canada, and through this pandemic has communicated how defeated they feel by how their school’s administration has handled taking care of their staff during this pandemic. With an allotted amount of sick time to use during the year which hasn’t wavered in the face of rising cases, how does the increased pressure of attendance affect worried teachers and their students? That may be an issue to discuss in another blog post; however, my point remains that with the many obstacles educators are juggling, changing pedagogy seems to generally fall lower on the priority list. I hope that when I am teaching, I will have the capacity to effect meaningful change while still prioritizing my mental health.

_{**I would also like to note that this is not in any way a jab at school administration. I have beloved family members who are in admin positions and acknowledge the difficulty of managing this pandemic. I also acknowledge that each individual has different experiences and there is no one-size fits all when it comes to this topic}

As I come to a close on this post, a few questions remain:

~ How might a high-tech model such as in the film contribute to a more equitable graduating class entering the workforce?

~ Does this high-tech model adhere more productively to different learning styles of students?

~ How much power do teachers really have in effecting systemic pedagogical change? What other powers are at play?

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The Process

The process for setting up a blog post or website is relatively easy (registration-wise). Now that I have a general understanding of WordPress, I find the whole process much less intimidating. I know that for first time users, it can be quite the learning curve. I myself find that I have forgotten a lot of how to make it aesthetically pleasing and to coordinate the links and all the fancy tricks, so I am hoping that will start coming back to me.

The Product

I think blog pages are a fantastic way to document learning, projects, and experiences. Digital portfolios are so cool because you can really see where growth occurs. I would love to teach any grade in school, but lately have been drawn to middle school after my observations. I think that blogs can be a good use for students to document learning or experiences, and even for parent communication if they want to see what is happening in the classroom or what students are learning. For this to happen, there would clearly need to be some protection of privacy with passwords for certain pages or to have specific photo releases for a class. I also feel like developing blog pages and building these skills can be so valuable for the future of both teachers and students.