Category: Weekly Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

The group presentations this week were lots of fun! It was great to see our classmates present and was a learning opportunity for us all. Of course I loved the BandLab video, but I want to reflect on Classroom Screen.

The introduction to the Classroom Screen presentation was awesome. It’s true that most of us won’t have our own classroom for many years. Classroom screen can allow us to personalize part of our teaching experience and bring it with us if we have to switch rooms or even schools. I also loved the randomizer component. A teacher at Royal Bay told me that she uses randomizers all the time to ensure fairness in the classroom. With Classroom screen, this becomes even more accessible!

I could also use classroom screen to set up time limits for tasks or share fun images during attendance or in other situations with students. I found on the website that it has a canvas feature for students to use their creativity. One drawback would be making sure what students add is appropriate for a classroom setting.

I’m curious to know which technologies my classmates will use in their classroom. Let me know in the comments, especially if it’s one that wasn’t mentioned in class!

This week we continued to talk about AI in education. One question posed is how we can minimize plagiarism in the classroom. I know a lot of teachers already use google classroom. A useful part of google docs is being able to see the version history and how the student has worked on the assignment over time. This is a good tool to detect any potential issues. If we suspect plagiarism, we need to address the issue gently because we don’t ever want to send the message “I don’t think you’re capable of creating this work”, especially if we could be wrong.

I have been especially interested in AI this week and have tried to understand what’s going on with the firing and hiring of Sam Altman. If you want to look into this like I did, check out this article. If you read this, let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below.

With the future of AI uncertain, and the possibility of it all going behind a paywall, many ethical issues come up. If only the rich and privileged get access to AI, this is a huge issue because knowledge is power, and open sources can somewhat reduce this discrepancy.

I tried using AI in the creation of this post, but unfortunately, it’s down. This reminds me of an analogy I learned. Elevators and escalators do make movement within buildings faster and more efficient, but what do you do in the case of an emergency? You take the stairs. Do not remove stairs just because elevators and escalators exist. In the same way, we all still need skills that we can draw on when AI is down, even though it’s a great resource.

During this week’s class, we talked about gamification and teacher education. We watched some informative videos on games like minecraft and had some thoughtful discussions about using games for learning. For example, I hadn’t considered that games could trigger health problems in students such as motion sickness. I looked into this issue more and found a really interesting article on kidshealth.org. It is also important to note that not all kids enjoy video games and those students would maybe not be reached through introducing games to the class. 

Another issue when it comes to video games is age appropriateness. If a game is introduced with social ‘chat’ functions, it’s important to check if these chats are being monitored for inappropriate content. Games with reward systems can also produce decreased intrinsic motivation once rewards are removed or not present for a task. Of course, games do have many benefits and can increase engagement in even completely disinterested kids. 

I already mentioned Gizmos as a resource for games related to science. Another platform is called Habitica which can gamify your entire life. You can create your character and give it rewards for doing something as simple as chores. Teachers can also use it in their classrooms as a class points system. This is a really interesting resource that I definitely want to look further into. 

If there are any other cool ways to incorporate gamification into the classroom, comment them below!

I learned a lot in this week’s zoom class. We talked about accessibility in education and tailoring lessons to be accessible to all learners. Not all disabilities are visible and I was reminded how important it is to make accommodations all the time, not just when someone asks for them. Something that stuck with me from the first video we watched was that trees grown on sidewalks make them inaccessible. I didn’t intuitively realize this from my point of view, so it showed me how important it is to hear other people’s perspectives.

The lesson today reminded me of a cool accessibility feature I noticed this summer while travelling. On the Tube in London, there are signs that remind others that not all disabilities are visible. Those who wish can get pins that say “please offer me a seat”. I think this is good practice that can be used in Canadian public transit, or be modified to make other services more accessible as well.

We talked about UDL a bit in multiliteracies but our talk today reinforced the power of the framework. Providing options for many aspects of learning is definitely needed and I will consult the UDL website as I create my lesson plans. I also find the UDL framework table super helpful. While a drawback of the UDL may be too much planning time, a benefit for us new teachers is that we can use it as a baseline to build all of our new lessons.

I also tried using speech to text and it was a new experience I don’t feel too comfortable with yet. This was my speech-to-text output: “I’m using SpeechTexter to test out speech-to-text. To be honest I think I’m slower in speech-to-text because I think so much about what I’m going to say versus with typing I know I can go back and delete part of my sentence and it still will make sense. My sentences out loud don’t always make sense.”

Are there places and services that stand out to you as being very accessible/ inaccessible? Could their strategies be used across many different services and situations, or are they specific to the service? Let me know what you think!

Today we talked about online teaching and how we viewed online learning, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. For me, online school was hard. I felt less engaged, unable to apply myself and generally apathetic about school. In person, there was a lot more to look forward to. I liked that I could do work at my own pace online, but I disliked not seeing my friends and getting to interact with others. Given the option, I would almost always choose face-to-face learning because I find I can just get more out of it.

As a future teacher, a tool I have in my back pocket is the Gizmos tool. It allows for the use of lessons online and many of the teachers at Royal Bay still use it today. It has many biology demonstrations, simulations, and interactive lessons available and delivered online. Another resource is online dissection tools like this bird dissection website. With tools like this one, students can explore anatomy without being in person.

We also talked about synchronous and asynchronous learning this class. In my opinion, online learning should be mostly asynchronous because choosing when to do school work is one of the only benefits of online learning. For high school students, I can see why asynchronous might be bad though, especially for unmotivated students.

Throughout the pandemic, I thought a lot about the elementary-aged kids who had to do school online. It would be really easy for kids to fall behind if their parents weren’t around to facilitate their learning. This is an accessibility issue for sure. Many high school-aged kids do not have their own laptops and this is a consideration for online learning as well.

I would love to hear others’ thoughts on online learning. Are there any online tools that would be especially useful for online classes that I haven’t mentioned? It would be awesome to compile a list of resources for my future career.

We talked about digital content creation using Photoshop, Adobe, Powerpoint, Canva, and AI like Microsoft Bing. Microsoft Bing is an interesting tool that I could potentially incorporate in my classroom. It would be cool to either start with an image and create a story around it, or write a story and create an image to represent it in an English class.

Try out Microsoft Bing Image creator for yourself!

There are some ethical implications when it comes to using Microsoft Bing image creator. First of all, it’s hard to know how to cite the content. It seems decently safe and appropriate to use in the classroom because it inhibits making any images that are outside a certain ‘safe’ criteria in their guidelines. You can find an article about their censorship rules here. If these rules stay the same, I would feel pretty confident that it would be age-appropriate at a high school level. It also scares me a little, like much AI, that images and artwork can be created so quickly. If students have all this at their fingertips, would they be less inclined to develop their artistic skills? Or perhaps it could be a tool to further develop them? I’m not quite sure but time will tell.

I had a great time using Microsoft Bing to create images. My favourite was this picture of rats at a disco concert.

I decided to create digital content on Canva for my free inquiry blog post as I already have a header image that I like for my website. I used an animated image of a frog and tree and surrounded it with information on tree frogs. I went a little crazy with it so it might actually fit into the seductive category of imagery. There is a lot going on and it might take away from the message. I used text boxes, animations, stickers and a colour scheme.

Do you think that my content fits into the ‘seductive’ category? Is it distracting to look at? What aspects could be made more clear to facilitate learning?

We dove into the world of interactive videos this week. Screencastify surprised me with how easy and intuitive it was to use. I will be bringing this plugin with me throughout my career as a teacher. The H5P plugin was also very user-friendly once I got it downloaded but the downloading process was definitely frustrating.

Trying to figure out H5P installation made me think about the technologies I want to bring into my future classroom. I know my limits, and I would not describe myself as a tech-savvy computer whiz in any way. That means if I want to bring a specific website or application into my class, I might have some trouble helping with technical difficulties. I picture a lot of hands up asking questions and not being able to give many answers. Hopefully, through my learning in this class, I can get a bit more confident in using educational technology. I also would crowd-source help within my class, and ask students who had figured out a particular step to assist the students around them. If nothing else works, I would have to get creative and provide an alternative for those students who experienced technical difficulties.

The reward of using technology in the classroom is building self-competence and accessing some really cool features. For example, screencastify and H5P are some awesome resources that I would not have known about unless they were brought into this classroom. I think usually, the risk is worth the reward in an increasingly tech-heavy world. It is important to give students skills in a wide array of technological avenues. For an interesting article on this subject, check out Drexel University’s page on technology in the classroom. I’m curious to find out other future teacher’s thoughts on technology in the classroom. How do you feel about its use and how confident are you in teaching tech?

My H5P video was on Pinterest and using Pinterest boards to save images for my free inquiry project. Although this 2-minute video took me a very long time to complete, I learned a lot in the process.

If you want to learn how to use Pinterest, check it out here:

During this week’s lesson, I was very interested in liberating structures and how they can be used to facilitate group work. One that I looked into was the Conversation Cafe where each student gets to share what they think, how others influence how they think, have an open conversation and then share their take-aways. This is a great tool for conversations on deep and meaningful discussions. I would want to make sure that students knew each other before using this format because it requires individuals to speak to a group, which not all students would feel comfortable with.

Another strategy is 1-2-4-all. You work alone, then in pairs, then foursomes, then share altogether. This is a great strategy for students who may not be as outgoing but have valuable ideas that another student can share for them.

The celebrity interview is also interesting. This allows students to ask an expert questions. If I had a guest speaker in my classroom, I could use this strategy to allow for an open discussion.

For my teachable, I think the most relevant strategy is 1-2-4-all. It allows for students to throw around ideas and address each other’s misconceptions before they share as a group. I think it would be awesome to use this in a biology class.

Are there any strategies from the Liberating Structures website that you have used in the past? What has been effective and what hasn’t worked as well? Let me know in the comments!

Wow! Setting up a WordPress account wasn’t too bad.

I always find setting up new accounts on unfamiliar platforms a bit stressful but everything worked out! I learned that by following step-by-step instructions, creating an account is quite easy. Now comes the more difficult part- figuring out how to make posts and make the site look pretty. I have never taken any sort of computer science course so I expect the learning curve to be quite steep. I see using WordPress as a growth opportunity where I can get some website creation skills.

I hope my blog gives me the opportunity to learn some new skills. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing it on yet but I think it will be something arts or crafts related. I find it hard to set aside time for hobbies like arts and crafts so this blog is a great opportunity! After this class is over, I can take some technology skills and new art-related skills with me into my career as a teacher.