Category: EdTech Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

This week we reflected on the course ad did another ed-camp. Some of my biggest takeaways from this course are the many resources and skills that we learned about, this blog here where I see potential for curating resources in the future, and the inquiry project which was the longest an most in depth inquiry I have done.

In the Ed-camp I had the opportunity to sit in and participate in conversations about gamification of learning, and cellphones in the classroom. Both were interesting, but I appreciated that I had looked into this topic in my ed-tech inquiry so I had much to share.

After class I read Isaac Asimov’s “The Fun They Had” a short story of two children in the year 2155 reading about the schools of today. Maggie imagines that school now must have been a lot more fun as unlike her day, schools happen in person, together, with living teachers. Asimov I think was hitting on one important and often overlooked by laypeople aspect of education. That is its social nature. During the pandemic I felt like Maggie isolated and bored receiving my lessons from a machine (at least in my case the was a person on the other side). When classes returned to in person I was very excited. I feel that any predictions of future education that doesn’t have a social element are unlikely to happen or would not be good if they did.

For this post I thought it would be useful to collect some of the great resources from the course all in one place for my future reference.

Free to use content sources:

Unsplash

BC Open Access

Open Educational Resources

Pexels

Jessie Miller on Social Media:

Media Literacy on Mediated Reality

Tech Skills Resource:

UVic’s Digital Commons for leaning new digital skills

PSII and Inquiry Resources:

Inquiry flowchart

PSII Core Values

PSII Assessment Framework and how it connects to the BC curriculum

Trevor Mackenzie and Inquiry

Trevor Mackenzie’s website

Trevor Mackenzie’s Twitter

Tracy Humphries and BCEd Access

 Exclusion Tracker

a good video of a BC student using an assistive technology

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Tracy’s presentation on zoom but I have spoken with classmates who have, and I have reviewed the resources online. She spoke about BCEd Access, a volunteer run organization to help disabled students succeed in their studies. She also talked about how ablism affects students in BC. I think the Exclusion Tracker, which is run by BCEd Access is an interesting and valuable resource. Tracy in her slides asked the class to think about three ways that technology could support students in their classroom. While I wasn’t there, 3 ways I would like to use technology in my class are: allow students to access materials online and in person, record instructional time to help students who may not be able to make it in on a given day, and use translation and subtitles to support ESL students.

I have also taken some time to familiarize myself with some assistive technologies that may be available in my future classroom. The resource on our course website was was very useful for this.

Chromebooks: In many of the of the schools I have volunteered in, or have done my observations in I have seen Chromebooks. They are very useful as an assistive technology as they can do voice to text dictation, and they allow students who may have difficulty with writing to complete assignments at the same time as all their peers.

This week in class we had guest speaker, Trevor MacKenzie, from Oak Bay High in virtually. He challenged us to think about our own histories as learners. This was interesting for me as it made me reflect on a tension I have felt throughout my time in the program. On one hand, in high school and in university I have been successful with the traditional approach to learning ,and I have learned lots from it. However, on the other hand I don’t believe it’s the best method or one that works with the most learners. I know many others who that style of teaching has been very discouraging. I liked the discussion around co-constructing the lessons and assessments with the students. That’s something I would like to incorporate into my practice.

This week's sketch: Nurturing the Whole Child to engage in cultivating the conditions, each and every day, for a meaningful and fulfilling schooling experience for all students.

Find them all at https://t.co/lcR9O17Eyn#inquirymindset #inquiry #aussieed #ukedchat #edchat #ibpyp pic.twitter.com/W8VQwc9ba4

— Trevor MacKenzie (@trev_mackenzie) August 30, 2021

I enjoyed the example he gave on constructing students’ understanding of the core competencies. How he has his students define what those competencies mean to them rather than just using the Ministry’s definition.

This week in class we discussed different ways of learning. We looked both face to face learning and distance learning. As well as synchronous and asynchronous learning.

Synchronous Learning: the class happens at once place (digital or physical) at one time. Eg our tech class meeting every Friday in person.

Asynchronous Learning: the learning can take place whenever the learner wants to engage. Eg a MOOC class that’s accessible online.

In class we also looked at the usefulness of the explore function of Google Slides and below I show an example of what can be done with it.

This week in class we discussed a few different Technology integration models.

SAMR: SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. They represent increasingly intense changes to the learning based on technology. Substitution means moving a task to digital medium with no changes to the task itself. Eg using Word instead of handwriting. Augmentation means there is some added functionality in the new medium. Eg using a spelling or grammar checker. Modification means that the task is significantly changed, like going from film to editing digital photos in Photoshop. Finally, Redefinition is creating a new task with technology that wasn’t possible before. Eg creating an algorithm that helps you find sources.

TPACK: TPACK involves thinking of your knowledge in three different but intersecting areas: your content knowledge, your pedagogical knowledge, and your technological knowledge. All three of these knowledge areas support each other.

Constructive Alignment: Constructive Alignment stress the importance of keeping the goals/ the big ideas you want to teach in mind when planing your learning strategies and assessment methods. There is room for technological integration in how you align these things.

Here’s an image to help explain two of the models I made in PowerPoint

We ended class with an Edcamp conference where we formed groups based on our interests in certain topics and shared what we know collaboratively. I enjoyed this and could see myself using this as a lower prep high engagement activity when bringing in a new topic.

This week In class we had guest speaker, Jeff Hopkins, in class. Hopkins is the principal of the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII). PSII is an independent school located in downtown Victoria that uses inquiry based learning. The 110 students don’t have a timetable or set classes. Instead they come up with questions about what they are interested in and teachers help them along the way. Hopkins said that he was inspired to create the school after feeling like he had to ignore what he knew about learning in order to teach. I really enjoyed seeing what inquiry based teaching can look like at a high school level. I experienced a lot of inquiry as part of the education program but it was nice to see a real world example of it working at a high school. I also enjoyed discussing what problems the school has faced how how they were overcome. I think when it comes to my own teaching I was inspired how PSII was able to incorporate any subject into the inquiry model. I would like to bring a number of elements of inquiry based learning into my own practice.

PSII also had some resources I found useful. I have listed them below.

Inquiry flowchart

PSII Core Values

PSII Assessment Framework and how it connects to the BC curriculum

This week in class we discussed graphic design elements and used PowerPoint as a graphic design tool. I found PowerPoint to be a particularly useful tool. Previously, I used Google Slides because I found it easier to collaborate with other students. However, after getting more familiar with PowerPoint I may make the switch. I really liked the ability to create a wide variety of common and useful graphics like pie charts, flow charts, and word maps. I also never considered using PowerPoint to create graphics to use elsewhere. I appreciated the conversation around the effectiveness of combining images and text to help learners. This connected very nicely to my classroom psychology class where we discussed dual processing theory, which is about how people learn better when information is presented to them through more than one medium.

This week in class we had a guest lecturer named Rich McCue. He manages UVic’s Digital Scholarship Commons. This is a really cool resource that I was unaware of until now. It offers free courses in a number of different topics, such as Microsoft Excel and iMovie. It even offers “digital badges” that link to the course outcomes, which is useful for resumes and portfolios. I spent the bulk of the class working through the workshop on iMovie. It wasn’t too difficult as I already had a passing familiarity with the software from high school video projects I had done. I uploaded the video I created with some basic green screen and audio editing below. We also discussed screen capture software and the opportunities that it provides. For example, it can be a very useful resource for doing lectures online.

This Friday we had guest speaker Jessie Miller to talk about issues surrounding the internet and high school. We discussed strategies for handling phones in the classroom in a way that both respects student autonomy and property, while also limiting their ability to distract. We also discussed the importance of your online persona as a teacher, and being cognizant that students and teachers will be looking you up online. Finally, we talked about how to teach students about online safety. Stepping back from the previous method of scaring them that if they post anything that they would’t want their grandmother to see they wouldn’t get a job. That being said it’s also important that they understand how internet companies use their data and the laws around their privacy and content.