Category: edtech

Scratch (Coding & Gaming)

Scratch is a visual programming language. Within scratch, you can mix clips of movement, sounds, costumes, and scripts. Simple coding is used to create scratch animations, such as asking the user “What is your name” and taking the information they input and putting it into the next line (e.g. “Hi Jill”). Coding is useful to practice in the educational system for many reasons. For one, coding is used in some upper level Math courses in High School, including Computer Science 11 and 12. Scratch can introduce the concept of coding in a fun and relatively easy way, and demonstrate the interesting outcomes that can result from successful coding.

The games that can be created through scratch can have positive implications on learning in the following subject areas: biology, english, technology, math, and physics. For biology classrooms, games can be created in scratch to introduce students to various classes of animals, for example, and have students appropriately classify these animals into their classes along their journey in the game. In English class, scratch games can help students with story telling. Playing games within scratch can model the effective use of story telling in writing, and creating games in scratch can be hands-on way of actually telling stories in a multimodal way. Scratch also teaches students multiple technological skills, skills that are increasingly important in this day and age. Math and physics can also be applied to scratch games; for example, a person could explore firing a canon at various angles to hit a target, continuously estimating and re-estimating what a successful angle looks like. I am excited to explore scratch in more and more ways in order to incorporate it into my future classrooms.

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Distributed Learning & Assessment

Distributed learning is a form of learning in which a student and teacher are (for the most part) not physically in the same place. Thus it takes advantage of the Internet’s capability of connecting people via video and audio features. Distributed learning can be intermingled with some face-to-face instruction as well. There are many distributed learning programs in BC, both for public education and independent education. I can see advantages as well as disadvantages to distributed learning, but overall I think it is a great option to have in BC. Some advantages of distributed learning include: 1) the ability to study while travelling, working, or otherwise unable to be available for set class times, 2) the vast bank of schools and instructors to choose from, 3) the flexible pacing and scheduling, and 4) the cost effectiveness. However, I can also imagine a few disadvantages to the structure of distributed learning, including: 1) the potential for a lack of motivation, 2) the deficiency of social learning, 3) the lack of certain courses, and 4) the availability of the Internet. Overall, I believe that distributed learning is a very useful option to have for the learners who will benefit from this style of education.

In my various courses at UVic this semester, I have learned many pieces of information on assessment and how to make it valuable for students, parents, teacher, and administrators. First of all, it has been emphasized in the Psychology of Classroom Learning course that assessment and feedback are best to be frequent, immediate, and specific. As a student, it is highly valuable to receive feedback that can actually guide towards improvement of learning. For this to be the case, teachers must focus on specificity in their delivery of assessment. In addition, we have learned a lot about the importance of both formative and summative assessment styles. Formative assessment consists of assessing during the process of learning. This can be done through the Think-Pair-Share method, through homework and in-class questions, or through summaries/reflections of the lesson by the students. Summative assessment consists of assessing students’ knowledge at the end of a unit and comparing this to some sort of standard. This can be done in the form of tests, quizzes, projects, presentations, etc. It has been emphasized in my coursework this semester that formative assessment is very important for student success. This is because formative assessment allows the teacher to get a grasp of where the students are at, and adjust their pacing or teaching style to suit the students’ needs

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GAFE and PLN

GAFE (Google Apps For Education) is a free set of applications provided by Google for educational institutions. It is highly valuable because it provides a workspace that is in the cloud, meaning that your work can be accessed from any device at any time as long as there is internet connection. One component of GAFE that I just started to use this school semester is Google Docs (which also includes the service of Google Slides). These two components of GAFE have been very helpful for individual work as well as collaborations. For anything that I am working on individually in Google Docs or Google Slides, I do not need to worry about the transportation of a laptop or other device with me when I travel, when I go to and from school, or otherwise. As long as there is access to an electronic device with internet service where I am going, I can simply log in to my Google account and continue to edit my work from wherever. Despite their benefits for individual work, I have found Google Docs and Google Slides to be even more helpful for collaborative work with peers. Through these two services, a person can start a document or slide presentation, and then share it with the other collaborators in their group who can edit it and/or add to it. I have used this method of collaboration in many of my classes this semester. A few other features of GAFE that I have not yet used are Gmail (for email purposes), Calendar, Drive (for storage), and Sites (for creating websites that can be edited by various collaborators).

A personal learning network is a set of connections a person forms to interact with and learn from others. As a future educator, I have realized the great importance of developing a personal learning network and I have begun to do so this semester in many ways. For example, when working on my inquiry project for my seminar class at Vic High, I focused on connecting with experts in the field that I was studying. My inquiry question was as follows: “What defines inquiry-based learning in the Grade 9 math classroom?” I spoke with multiple people who had hands-on experience teaching in an inquiry-based way, including Trevor MacKenzie (from Oak Bay High School), Math teachers at Vic High, and an instructor at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. I also spoke to students to develop an understanding of how they viewed inquiry and what benefits they saw in this style of learning. Becoming a successful educator is greatly benefited by developing connections along the way that can help provide insight and depth into your learning and practice. This is what a personal learning network is all about.

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Virtual Reality

In class today, we had the opportunity to check out a virtual reality lab and it was fascinating. I have never experienced virtual reality and I got to make art with virtual objects and brushes, as well as view artifacts in a 3D space in my time in the lab.

There are a few health concerns with virtual reality. First of all, it can affect the growth of the eye, leading to the potential development of myopia or nearsightedness. Secondly, there is a danger of getting hurt by obstacles in the real world that are not visible in the virtual reality world (for this reason, it is always recommended that someone is watching over a person using virtual reality). Finally, motion sickness is very common within virtual reality, as the movements within the 3D space can be abrupt and/or large, throwing off a person’s balance. For these reasons, children below the age of 12 should not use it, and people above the age of 13 should be conscious of their time spent on it.

I can see many benefits of adding virtual reality into an educational setting. As two main examples based on my experience, I can see the benefits of virtual reality being implemented into art and history classes. In the virtual reality space, a person can create art in three dimensions, using objects, lines, a 360 degree space, colours, and more. Additionally, in this space, a person can view artifacts up close, far away, from above, from below, etc. This could be a really cool addition to history classes in which students are studying archaeology and artifacts are not obtainable in the real world.

Reference:

The very real health dangers of virtual reality

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Skype as a Social Media Tech Tool for Video Conferencing, etc.

Skype is a tech program that I have used in my personal life for video conversations with someone from afar; however, I have never used it as a business tool and it has many benefits in this area as well. Skype is a software that enables free video and voice one-on-one or group calls, as well as file-sharing and messaging options. There are many great features of Skype for business – a couple that stand out are:

1) Skype will connect to your Outlook calendar, read your calendar, and will display the message “In a Meeting” to anyone trying to connect during your booked time.
2) It is possible to take control of someone else’s computer/laptop/etc. through Skype in order to help them perform something on their device.
However, there are a couple of downfalls to Skype as well, including:

1) The program can crash if many chats are open at the same time.
2) There is no ability to group appointed calendar meeting conversations with other conversations.

Skype is a form of social media, as there are the options of writing a status, sending a personal message, group chatting, sharing files, sharing photos, and sharing a computer screen within the program. These qualities all fall under the concept of a social network, and display similarities between Skype and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc. Skype is also considered a tech tool. It is a tool, as it helps people to carry out plans, get tasks done, and collaborate. And it is a tech tool since it a technology-based program. Using one of its main functions, Skype users can have video conferences with each other. So, instead of in-person conferences in the typical business world, conferences can be had via online group chats in business Skype models.

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Multimedia Learning Theory, Augmented Reality, & QR Codes

The multimedia learning theory (or dual coding theory) focuses on the power of the combination of verbal and visual media to help process information and transfer that information more easily into long-term memory. It has been seen in studies and observations that people remember information better if they receive both visual and verbal information than if they receive only one or the other form. This is thought to be due to the fact that there are two key separate channels for processing information: an auditory channel and a visual channel. Activating both of these channels at once and integrating the information received by both channels helps to solidify information in the moment, and remember this information more accurately in the future. In addition, if people are presented with material that can relate to information that they already know, it is easier for them to get that information into their long-term memory. If you can relate information to what students already know, it will be easier for students to get that information into their long-term memory.

QR codes, or “quick response” codes, are arrays of black and white squares that can link to a URL or other information through the camera of a smartphone. These can be very useful for business cards, printed advertisements, flyers, posters, or other forms of advertisement. QR codes can store much more data than barcodes, and thus serve as a useful tool for storing videos, text, images, URL links, or geo coordinates to name a few. I think it would be useful for me if I made a professional business card for teaching, and linked a QR code to my blog or an introductory video about myself.

Augmented reality is the superimposition of a virtual image on top of a real world image. It is a way in which people can interact with a hypothetical world that does not exist, a world that existed in the past, or a potential future for the world in years from now. It seems to be that it could be added into certain educational settings. One that stands out in particular is history class. As a class activity at Kitsilano High School, students looked at real-life events that occurred in the past to put themselves in the shoes of 1944 graduating students who had to make a decision on whether or not to join the Canadian Forces. They used the app ARIS and the “Dilemma 1944” section within the app. They were then guided to different locations by ARIS, and guided to watch videos, look at period photographs, and more from the American Dilemma period. Below is a video summarizing this experience. This could serve as a neat interactive hands-on learning approach in high school social studies or history classes.

References:

Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

What is a QR Code and Why do you Need One?

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Collaboration & Leadership

Over the course of the semester, I have had many opportunities to collaborate with my colleagues as well as witness collaboration between high school students during school observations. I have typically avoided collaborations in my school experiences whenever possible, as I have found them to be difficult to coordinate and schedule with my busy life. However, I can see that there are many positive aspects to collaboration, as well as useful skills that can be learned that apply to real life settings. For one, collaboration can lead to more diverse and creative approaches to a project; having multiple minds working together, ideas can be increasingly interesting and complex. In addition, collaboration can allow for shortened time lengths spent on projects. Finally, collaboration has been known to increase morale, develop bonds between group members, and improve teamwork skills.

However, there are a few setbacks to collaboration that I can remark on as well. For example, it is important to assign leadership and roles to members of a collaborative group. Without these things, there can be a lack of anyone taking charge of a project, or too many people taking charge. In addition, there can be conflicts in working styles, personalities, or free time. These are issues that are important to work through and discuss within a collaborative group in order to succeed.

Leadership is a crucial part of collaborations. In my opinion through observations at Vic High school on Wednesdays, there tends to be students who enjoy taking on a leadership role and students who enjoy taking a backseat. As a future educator, I think it is really important to encourage trying varying levels of leadership roles within collaborative groups; this style mirrors real-life settings more accurately. So, for example, if students have 3 big projects in a year and 3 people per group, have them rotate through 1) project manager and editor, 2) presentation coordinator, and 3) written-up summary coordinator, for example. Allow students the time and opportunities to work through the challenges of collaborations and learn how to succeed in a highly collaborative environment in the real world.

A reference I used for this blog post is:

Advantages & Disadvantages of Collaboration in the Workplace

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Blogging, Trello, and Twitter

Three key technological elements to my learning this semester have been: blogging, using trello, and using twitter. Two of these are completely new to me (blogging and trello) and one is familiar (twitter). As a future teacher in this age of technology, it has been great to get some hands-on experience with different elements of technology I can potentially bring to the classroom.

In my personal experience of blogging so far this semester, I have found it to be very helpful in solidifying my ideas and tracking my progress in my different courses. Because my blog can be read by anyone, I feel pressure to write down my ideas clearly and concisely. This pressure helps to solidify my thoughts and experiences; I am sharing with the world what I have learned, and by doing so, I am learning it better. I have found that blogging also helps to curate information about certain topics. Through the “categories” feature, I can search for a specific topic and see the things that I have learned on that topic all curated onto one page.

In my use of trello this semester, I have found it to be a game-changer for organization and time management, especially when working on inquiry projects. Since I will be trying to incorporate inquiry projects into my own teaching, I am looking forward to introducing trello to my students. Trello allows a person to create online “post-it” notes, listing all of the steps they would like to take in figuring something out or answering a question. They can set a due-date for each note, and drag each note into one of the three categories: “to do,” “doing,” or “done.” Trello has been so helpful for me to stay on track with my inquiry projects this semester.

Finally, twitter has proven to be a very effective way to get class-related information from both the teacher and classmates. By using a class-specific hashtag, twitter curates the information that is relevant to my tech class into one stream. This is a useful tool to share videos, articles, or anything else relevant to a specific class.

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Visit to PSII

In class last week, we had the opportunity to visit the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII), a high school where students get to learn in a mainly inquiry-based manner. It was really interesting to witness this type of open pedagogy, as it was different from when I went to high school and learned in a more lecture-style, note-driven manner. I found that the inquiry-based teaching method at PSII allowed teachers to take into account the student’s pace of learning, style of learning, and interests. Some of PSII’s core values are shown in the image attached, including: open inquiry, consilience, co-construction, emergent curriculum, learning versus learning about, learning happens everywhere, and competency-based assessment.

For one of my own inquiry projects this semester, I am trying to answer the following: how can teachers incorporate inquiry-based learning into a math classroom? At PSII, I learned multiple methods in which inquiry led to mathematical learning, such as students making a movable robotic arm, students creating video games with coordinates, and students working with statistical significance in other subject areas.

A method of teaching math that I found particularly interesting was to ask really open questions, such as “how does one find the diagonal of a cube?” It incorporates so many elements of the curriculum into one question, and causes students to really think about math versus being given the information upfront.

The classroom observations and conversations that occurred at PSII were fascinating and gave me a whole new level of comfort with incorporating inquiry into my future teaching.

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Privacy & Safety in Schools

We had Jesse Miller speak to us in class regarding extremely valuable topics for getting prepared to be a High School teacher, including social media, consent, privacy, and safety. As a future teacher, it is highly important for me to assess my social media usage and what is made available to the public eye. In this day and age, students, parents, administrators, and others can google a teacher’s name and find out a lot of information. Whether that information is desired to be personal and private should be considered by the teacher.

To respect the privacy and safety of students, it is required to obtain consent for sharing information about them online. A teacher is not allowed to take video or photos of students on school grounds without parental, student, and school consent.

Jesse also talked about the pros and cons of having student’s cell phone numbers as a means of contact. He suggested that it may be useful for a teacher to have a student’s number if they are in charge of an extracurricular activity that the student participates in. However, Jesse recommended putting student contacts in the “notes” section of one’s phone, rather than in contacts, so as to not mistakenly send them an accidental or inappropriate message.

As a final note, there was discussion on the effect of cell phone popularity on safety in emergencies, such as school shootings. When police are involved in an emergency like a school shooting, they enter classrooms with their guns up until they can see everybody’s hands up and empty. However, a lot of students do not necessarily want to let go of their cell phones in these instances, as they can serve as a sense of security.

The school dynamic is constantly changing in this age of technology, and it is so important for teachers to be aware of the privacy and safety risks that come with these changes. It was invaluable to be educated by Jesse Miller on some key privacy/safety topics.

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