Category: EdTech Page 1 of 2

Greetings everyone! Today I will be posting my final EdTech blog post for EDCI 336! Today we watched the final class presentations and learned about coding in the classroom. We looked at Scratch, Google Coding, and CodeBC Teachers’ Guide. We watched a video called “exact instructions challenge” which I had trouble viewing in class because the screen was lagging a bit. Before the video, Rich described coding as “hands-on problem-solving.”

My group EdTech Inquiry presentation went really well and I learned a lot from Rich’s input at the end. Now that I know that you don’t necessarily need to do all of the preparation quizzes to be able to do the final quiz become a Google Educator Level 1, it might become my special project for the quarantine times. The logistics of doing a presentation online are definitely different than doing it in real life. You have to take into account varying bandwidth speeds between computers, microphone quality, and video quality. All in all, I have had a great experience using zoom over these past two classes.

Rich posed the question of “How could Computational Thinking help my students? Or not?”

According to CodeBC, “Computational Thinking (CT) is a critical thinking process which is not only vital to the improvement and ongoing innovation in personal computing applications, but can likewise be utilized to bolster critical thinking over all orders, including the humanities, math, and science.” CT helps students “start to see relationships between scholastic subjects, as well as in day to day life, both inside and outside of the classroom.” These are skills that would definitely help students because problem-solving and critical thinking can be applied to all subjects. The earlier that children are aware of solving problems independently and thinking critically about things, the better.

Here is my snowflake that I coded with Frozen Coding.

https://studio.code.org/c/49768924

Here is another design I coded with Frozen Coding.

https://studio.code.org/c/618940565

My computer was kind of overloaded with coding and other tabs being open so my final creation did not show up as a link to share. I made spirals and flower shapes. I had a lot of fun coding with Anna and Elsa. Coding teaches students lots of principles of math and computers and physics without you as the teacher even having to express what they are learning, they learn it without you even pointing it out.

Greetings everyone! I hope you are all having a great time self-isolating and keeping yourselves safe! Today I will be recapping our first online class and the presentations we saw. I will be supporting my post with my personal pros and cons of Zoom. I will also touch on what I learned about Twine.

Class Schedule

• Used Zoom
  • Kicked us off twice of Heather’s computer
  • Had to switch to mine
• Pros of Zoom
  • Large classes can participate
  • Screen mirroring of the desktop to view presentation
  • everyone can participate and speak if they wish by raising their hand and unmuting themself in a calm manner
• Cons of Zoom
  • hard to hear everyone if computers pick up feedback from other computers
  • some students may be able to goof off in the background
  • if someone does not have access to a laptop or wifi they are not able to participate
  • there is a hard learning curve for the set up for those who are not technologically educated

Next, I will be outlining what I learned from the presentations today

Presentation #1: Photography in the Classroom

• Photography in the classroom
  • Students can take the camera home and take pics of their life
  • Learn about photo editing and uploading
• Photography as an assessment tool
  • Portfolios 
  • Reggio Emilia → portfolio of learning
• Pros:
  • Place-based pedagogy
  • Displays work in authentic ways 
  • Documenting memories
  • Connects personal lives to class
• Cons:
  • Equipment (expensive)
  • Have to teach how to use a camera
• Ethics:
  • Photo release forms 
• Primary Ideas:
  • Photo scavenger hunt (eg. go take pictures of nature)
  • Take pics-write story
• Intermediate Ideas:
  • Start a photography club
    • Historical building photoshoot
  • No copyright if they take their own photos

Presentation #2: How is Kahoot Beneficial to student learning and understanding?

• What is Kahoot
  • A website/app to create quizzes
  • Have to use own devices and connect 
  • Promotes sociability amongst students
• How to create a Kahoot:
  • Make an account as a teacher or student
  • Different templates: eg. slides, formative assessment, puzzles
  • Type in a question and put an image
    • True or false, multiple-choice, open-ended questions
•  Game-based student response system
  • Class/individual competition
• Pros:
  • Provokes attention amongst students 
  • Promotes student interaction
  • It’s fun!
• Cons:
  • Usually one answer only
  • Technology issues 
  • Usernames
• Solidifies learning

Presentation #3: Technology shortcuts in the classroom

• Spellcheck, Talk to Text, and Text to Talk
• While these technologies are very crucial for some students with designations and learning differences, they can be used by other students in a way that makes them lazy and causes them to lose necessary literacy and language skills

Presentation #4: SMARTboards

• A controlled whiteboard connected to a computer and projector
• Have a touch-controlled screen 
• Digital ink
• Pros:
  • Interactive and engaging
  • Reduce paper
  • Low maintenance 
  • Write notes on a whiteboard → they are save 
• Cons:
  • Expensive $$$
• Ideas: 
  • Group activities 
  • Videos and games
• Tips and Tricks
  • Change pen size, font, colour
  • Recording function 

Presentation #5: Screen Time: Beneficial or Detrimental 

• How might we incorporate meaningful screen time in the classroom?
• Misconceptions:
  • Stupid
  • Unhealthy
  • Social awkward
  • Earlier death
• Have a discussion with students
  • Personal information
  • Stranger danger
  • Digital footprint
  • Seeing is not believing 
• Lastpass.com
• Useful Applications for kids:
  • Raz-kids → reading levels, tracks student progress, fee
  • Mystery science → interactive activities
  • Explain everything

Our final activity of the day was Twine:

• Twine was used to make Bandersnatch
• Use to make poetry
• Use to make choose your own adventure stories
• Can insert images or links
• Interviews: buyers guide 
• Use Chrome, saves to your hard drive in cookies. Don’t clear your cookies!
• Do not use on safari 

Here is a screenshot of my Twine story. It is a fictional tale about my friend Heather.

Today in class we were joined by an educator from Colquitz Middle School and some of her learners. They discussed Minecraft in schools and how it can be used to engage even the most disruptive/distracted classes.

There are different modes used in Minecraft: creative and survival. In creative mode you can fly, travel over obstacles such as mountains and water and create whatever you want.

In Minecraft EDU, creative mode and survival mode are blended. The teacher can put limitations on the world and can allow the limitations to lesson over time. Students have to decide what goes with what to produce what. They do phenomenal things by creating and memorizing codes. Kids can get timeouts and their characters can be frozen if you need to talk/address the entire class.

Here is a link to the MinecraftEDU website.

It is also a way for students to learn math concepts such as X and Y axes, area, perimeter, and ratios.

Minecraft may become addictive to students and may cause them to lose interest in other school subjects. That is why it must be used in a positive and purposeful way.

Last week we went to Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt’s Kindergarten classroom to learn more about her Inquiry approach to teaching Kindergarten.

Photo by Mark Spitse on Unsplash.

Here are some of the key points I jotted down during our visit.

• We must support students in the things they are passionate about – be flexible and find ties to the curriculum with what your students are interested in. Rebecca really emphasized getting to know your students and making strong relationships with each of them so that this personalized learning can occur. This in turn will make each year of teaching unique, keep you on your toes and also makes sure each unit is tailored to your unique group of learners. For example, her class is doing an inquiry unit on Dinosaurs right now because a lot of her students showed great interest in that topic.
• Your classroom layout is important. Rebecca’s classroom layout was beautifully Reggio Emilia style and created an environment that was very much conducive to learning featuring pictures of the kids everywhere, wooden/natural material toys, natural material decorations, natural lighting, a class pet (a fish named Elsa Bubbilies), and many other things that created systems and structures that allow Rebecca to teach in a calm, organized fashion.
• The three questions for inquiry-based learning are what do you see? What do you know? And what are you curious about? These questions are really effective for inquiry in Kindergarten all the way up to high school too. I can’t wait to find ways to incorporate these questions into my practicum teaching middle school in Sweden.

Photo by Gautam Arora on Unsplash

• They have a great emphasis on outdoor experiential learning with their weekly trips to the garden. They also go on regular field trips and Rebecca teaches in a flexible way that promotes inquiry “when it snows go outside – don’t shut the blinds!”
• Provocations can be a video, a picture, a book, a display of toys, an “artifact” — anything that students can touch, feel, smell, taste, or see. Provocations can help students begin to wonder and answer the three questions for inquiry based learning outlined above.
• Have many books in the classroom that promote inquiry and curiosity such as the Ada Twist Scientist series.
• Rebecca promotes the use of the Padlet app and the FreshGrade program which both allow the uploading of videos, voice recordings, images, and text. It is a useful tool for student work to be documented in a way that both the teacher and parents can see.
• The toys in her classroom were beautiful and she got them at thrift stores, garage sales, Tidal Toys, and Dilly Dally Toys (Grapat, Grimms). She said she bought them all with her own money over the course of teaching for nine years. One thing that may not be realistic for us when we are new teachers is to have a stunning set up with beautiful toys and chairs and tables like this if we are not willing to spend a lot of money in one go.
  

  Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

• Finally, Rebecca emphasized that you must instill a love of reading in your students while they are at school because they may not always be read to at home, they may get lots of screen time instead. She went on to maintain that technology/screen time at school can be supplementary to effective learning but it needs to be purposeful.

Hello everyone! Today in EDCI 336, we discussed many educational theories surrounding memory such as multimedia learning theory, dual coding theory, and sketchnoting.

Multimedia Learning Theory discusses how when you teach with text and images together, that enhances a student’s learning a lot more than just with text or images alone.

Dual Coding Theory is where you “anchor” an image and talk about what is related to it: this technique moves ideas from short term memory to long term memory more effectively.

Sketchnoting is using the technique that uses the idea that text and visual representations help anchor things in memory with drawing rich visual representations of notes.

Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash

There are many educational videos we may wish to use as teachers such as TeacherTube, Khan Academy, and YouTube. The following are pros and cons of using these kind of videos in the classroom:

• Pros = visual representation of a subject, if you’re not strong at teaching a particular subject you can use it to supplement it, different way of teaching, something the students can come back to if they need more help another day, option to slow down and speed up the lesson
• Cons = sometimes students don’t watch them or tune them out, can’t regulate what advertisements may pop up before the videos, videos aren’t always completely on topic

Flipping The Classroom

• putting key ideas of the lesson in a video before class for students to watch so they are prepared
• pros:  extra knowledge and students have a background in the subject when you teach it for the first time
• cons: some people won’t do it and won’t be prepared

Educational Resources:

When should I make a new one myself?

• if you know your students and know there is a certain way they learn best (make it for them)
• local and unique things without resources – make it yourself!! indigenous localized learning vs math concepts

How should I evaluate a resource?

• try it out a couple of times, experiment that it will work with that age group
• need to have time to make them though!
• check if its a trustworthy source

Today we also used Screencastify, a helpful app for screen recording. I like how this app allows you to mark up the screen and also be in a video in the corner of the screen recording. One setback of this google chrome extension was that it lagged, thus making my screen recording video choppy. All in all, today’s lesson provided me with a lot of insight into teaching materials and teaching styles that best promote memory and attention of students.

Last week in EDCI 336, Jesse Miller came and spoke to our class. He is a very talented speaker who captivated our class and inspired us all to make sure we are using the internet safely. This safety is not only important for ourselves as professionals but also eventually for when we have our own classrooms, we need to be aware of the rules and laws that are in place surrounding children and the internet.

Here are some of the interesting points from the presentation:

• Jesse designed the erase bullying campaign
• He also designed digital scholarship/literacy component of the new BC Curriculum
• “We live in a world of new media where there is evidence of everything you have ever done.”
• He compared the generations: being a child, teen, or young adult today is way different than 10, 20, or 50 years ago.
• We live in a world of “mediated realities” of social media and mobile technology. We have professional responsibilities online, our personal lives merge with our public lives and all of these things can affect our place in the hiring process as a teacher.
• Our job as guiding the youth of the 21st century isn’t to prepare them for the realities of days past. Today, we need to “help children make sense of their on-demand media and online experiences while teaching and guiding them how to uphold enduring values.”

Here is my video that I edited today during our video editing session

• Jesse went on to claim that all of the technology education that are our students will receive needs to “empower their communication expectations in the reality they live in, not the one we grew up in…”
• He argues that “too much screen time is not a thing” when there is a “quality of purpose rather than a quantity of time on screens.”
• It is 2020 – “time to focus on networked citizenship. digital identity, digital rights, digital literacy, use of communication networks – social, professional, personal, safety – networked connections, the security of self, and communications in networked spaces.”
• He pulled up contrasting articles saying that tweens’ brains are simply too immature to use social media appropriately (they breed issues such as bullying or warp the school climate) and another one from Scientific American that said: “kids who use tech are all right.” This was to show us that the stances on children and technology are vary and are always changing and that in the end, “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” (John Culkin).
• Jesse asked us what social media is worth to us: would we pay $1 a day to use Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook? It was a resounding no from our cohort which shows us that we need to be careful of what we put on these apps that we do not pay to use: they can sell all of our information and pictures. We need to “let [our] morals dictate [our] choices.”
• He closed his presentation by saying Social Media & Youth presents opportunities for success and conflict. We can make our classrooms a safe internet environment by “1. addressing the existing and emerging social media concerns in your environments with education and media literacy conversations. 2. opening up constructive solutions-based dialogue with co-workers, stakeholders, clients, employers, and the public about social media trends and communications concerns.”

What an informative presentation that we all thoroughly enjoyed and took a lot away from! Happy Reading Break everyone!

Tools for Students with Anxiety

Meditation Apps:

• Stop, Breathe & Think → Free: A mindfulness app designed for students with anxiety disorders that uses meditation and other breathing techniques to regulate their emotions.
• Pacifica → Ranked as one of Apple’s “Best Mental Health Apps”. This app allows you to track how you are feeling. It also has a unique audio playlist that you can use when feeling anxious. 
  • Cons: Free but also has a paid option of $3.00 a month
• Headspace → A meditation app for teachers to use in the classroom. Has a series of 10-minute voice-guided meditation exercises that students can follow.
• Dreamy Kid → an app that offers meditation “guided visualizations and affirmations” to help kids and teens to work towards a happier and more mindful life. 
• Happify → games that are designed to conquer stress and make you happier. These games are tailored to your specific needs based on an entrance quiz. 
  • Cons: Free but Happify + costs $11.65 a month

Analysis →

These apps allow students and teachers to have a guided form for students to combat their anxiety. This is an excellent tool for teachers as often they cannot always support a student who may suffer from anxiety, and using apps allows students to self-regulate their emotions. However, we did notice that many of the apps require payment for additional materials and students are unable to do so. Also, additional investigation is necessary as we would have to ensure the security of the student and their privacy. 

Other Apps:

• Recolour → a digital colouring app that allows you to select from a variety of photos and colour in using the colour palette you enjoy
• Super Stretch Yoga → a fun educational tool to teach yoga and the importance of physical activity and mindful breathing.
• Positive Penguins → an interactive and simple tool that helps students understand why they are
  

  Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

  feeling certain feelings and how they can move forward and feel better. It helps to change the way children process certain experiences and emotions so that they can cope with them in a positive way. 

Analysis →

These apps are a way to help students cope with anxiety and negative thoughts. They can be a way to re-centre a student, a way to distract them, or a way to teach physical activities that will help them cope with these negative feelings. These are good things to offer in a centre time or free play to allow students to explore coping mechanisms or just have fun while having the benefits of the app.

Videos:

• CosmicKidsYoga

• This youtube channel describes this video and others in the same series as a way to “find your centre to help ease worries and anxiety.” 
• This could be displayed on a smartboard and the class performs the yoga in front of the screen. If an individual student needs time to calm down, they could bring a computer or iPad into a quiet room and perform some of the yoga.

• GoNoodle Flow

• Positive thinking and relaxation exercises
• GoNoodle is free for teachers, parents, and kids!
• This could be displayed in the same way as CosmicKidsYoga

Analysis →

These videos are a great way for students who experience anxiety to still feel included in the classroom because they teach skills that are important for all students to learn such as mindfulness, self-regulation, and managing self-draining emotions. They are presented to the entire class at the same time and promote connectedness and belonging within the classroom community.

Non-Technological Tools We Have Seen In Practice In Schools:

Photo by Kiran C Kon Unsplash

• Squeeze balls, squishies, fidget spinners, fidget balls, water-based toys, noise-canceling headphones, desk shields, tattle phones
• Going for a walk, riding a stationary bike, etc.

We hope you found this post helpful!

Sincerely,

Sarah, Heather, and Alexa

Wow. On Tuesday, January 28th, the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation provided our cohort with a concrete example of inquiry-based, personalized learning.

The Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation is a highschool that allows it’s students to “develop interdisciplinary pathways leading to learning activities that take them through a curriculum all their own, while also meeting or exceeding BC graduation requirements.” The school’s founder and principal, Jeff Hopkins, gave us a fascinating presentation on why he created this school and how it operates. He then answered many of our questions that arose after the thought-provoking lecture.

Hopkins explained how the school does not have set blocks during the day, classes split by grades, mandatory classes, or even homework. Learners go through an inquiry process to find a couple of topics each year that interest them. These topics can apply to many different subjects in the BC curriculum. They could also apply to optional “sessions” run by the teachers. For example, on Tuesday I saw a chemistry session on atomic orbitals. The school has a “collaborative space,” a science lab, multiple meeting/session rooms, a sensory room, a drama space, an art space, a shop space and much more that I didn’t get to explore fully. All of this inquiry-based learning takes place in an office building in downtown Victoria.

It was very exciting to see a school that encompasses pretty much all of the values that we have been taught to channel in our future classrooms. These values, thoughts, and ideologies include inquiry-based learning, personalized learning, flexible seating, collaborative learning, self-determination theory, the Circle of Courage, the Three A’s of Motivation, and multiage classes. Despite how interesting it was to see these models put in practice, this inquiry school does have some downfalls that may be tricky to implement successfully both in an elementary school setting and in general:

• Self-determination: some people who have attended “regular” school may not be used to having full control, autonomy and responsibility for their learning.
• Grade-oriented learning: students from “regular” schools are used to learning something to get a good grade. Oftentimes after they receive that grade, they forget what they have learned. Students are not used to the idea of mastering a subject for the sake of learning.
• Collaboration and Cooperation: although these learning ideas are emphasized throughout the new BC curriculum, students have been trained to be individualistic learners in competitive learning structures. Having to switch over to a cooperative and collaborative learning style may feel uncomfortable for some students.
• Specifically for primary years, having the drive, passion, and diligence to be autonomous over their own learning would be a big challenge. At this age, learners need guidance and routine to learn how to learn.

Despite some challenges that self-directed, inquiry-based learning may bring,  I believe it is a very valuable education style that should be implemented into every classroom at every grade level: it is up to the teacher to understand their learners and know the ways in which to do so.

During our class today in EDCI 336, we watched the “RiP! Remix Manifesto” documentary. Before this, Rich presented us with various apps and google chrome extensions that could be useful for us as future teachers. Diigo is a chrome extension that is useful for organizing and curating your bookmarked resources. I found it to be particularly useful because Rich outlined how we can create folders to put your bookmarks in and separate it by grade and subject. This would be particularly useful for practicum. I cannot find very many downfalls to this website other than, after some further research, I found that the extension was hijacked and all traffic was sent to different malicious websites. Other than this Diigo seems very useful and interesting.

“RiP! Remix Manifesto” documentary is about copyright laws. The narrator of the documentary talks about his favourite musical artist, Girl Talk, who mashes up many songs together to make album-long remixes. I actually know Girl Talk myself and my favourite album of his is “All Day”. The narrator outlines how a lot of Girl Talk’s music goes against many copyright laws and that the rights to the music that he samples “doesn’t depend on who made the songs, but who owns the copyright.” Intellectual property is locked up until purchase for the copyRIGHT and for the copyLEFT, there needs to be a global free exchange of ideas in order for our society to learn and grow. There was a main “manifesto” of the documentary that outlined 3 main truths. These included:

1. Culture always builds on the past. The film showed how the moral dilemma surrounding copyright is split into the public domain (freely build on earlier works) and private corporations. An example the film brought up was Napster (largest free library of human resources) – this brought power back to the people.
2. The past always tries to control the future. The copyright laws in place made 52 million US citizens copyright criminals. Lessig, a lawyer, wrote the manifesto that inspired this film. He claimed that there is “no way to kill this technology, we can only criminalize its use.” He explained how fair use is a copyright law that allows for free speech. small amounts of copyrighted material to make an argument. His and the documentary’s narrator’s main point is that “copyright is out of control and has been manipulated for profit at everyone’s expense worldwide.” Making mashups like Girl Talk is explained to be a form of “literacy for a new generation,” it helps build a different democracy and culture. Disney is revealed to be huge player in the story of copyright. Walt Disney himself was a “mashup artist” who was “always continuing the conversation of a culture.” He built on the past and then he died. His corporation then changed the law so that no one could do what he did again.
3. Our future is becoming less free. Record and movie companies want Canada to lock up everything just like the States.

My final thoughts about the documentary are that I agree with the point made about how it is hypocritical that people can cite literature works and then build their own work off of that but the same is not true for media. I also agree with the point that revealed the harm in scientists not publishing their data. This withholding of information could potentially be holding us back as a society from advancing with vaccines, biological data, etc. We need to move away from our current Eurowestern, individualistic, capitalistic beliefs and move towards a more Indigenous holistic and relational view of sharing art and science for the benefit of everyone, not just the chosen few CEOs at the top of society’s hierarchy.

After the documentary, we discussed copyright licensing, options for teacher/educational resources, and our personal thoughts on the film. I think for most teachers, avoiding copyright infringement can be hard because they may not have received education on what is legal and what is not. I will have to work hard to make sure I am citing materials that are not my intellectual property in my lessons. I can see how teachers photocopying worksheets and collaborating/integrating various lesson plans from many different sources can be tricky in regards to copyright. I will be using the resources brought up in class such as the digital scholarship commons and open education resources (OER).

In EDCI 336 today, we all set up our own Trello accounts. Compared to opened and WordPress it was a much smoother set-up process for me, although this might be because I have had experience following detailed website-making instructions from last week.  The email confirmation came extremely quickly from Trello which allowed me to set up my account and page in a prompt manner.

I like how the site is very easy to use and navigate. The only trouble I had was setting up checklists. This is because I was typing the checklists into the “checklist title” box. Once I realized where I needed to put the actual checklist information, it was smooth sailing from then on. Having the option to have checklists is very motivating for me because I always look forward to completing work and being able to cross it off my to-do list.

Another aspect of Trello that I enjoy is its wide range of high quality, beautiful photos that can be the background to my page.

Click here to see my Trello as of right now. I am excited to add to it every week and be able to see my progress in learning all about Sweden and attempting to learn some Swedish. My personal inquiry project is to prepare for my first practicum in Sweden this coming April. Trello is an excellent platform for me to visually see what I need to do and the ways that I can achieve those things.

The appealing visual design and ease of use of the website Trello, once you know how to use it, make it an excellent platform for individual or group inquiries. I think it might be difficult to use in a K-5 setting but with middle school years, it could be very successful. I can see how younger students would have trouble following the instructions to create their own Trello pages which is why it could be used for a classroom inquiry rather than an individual one.

I look forward to seeing where my personal inquiry, and Trello, will take me!