Social Studies Methods Webquest Assignment

The Olympics by Hawaii Red

DAY 15 - Crossing the Finish Line...

Quick Notes: 

- OER Commons 

- The value and comfort of distance/remote learning

- VPNs: Kaspersky, Nord VPN

- Password Vaults

- Interactive Feedback on Google Quiz: When someone gets a question wrong, have a link direct them to where they can learn 

- To password-protect videos (for my online business), just adjust settings from YouTube before collecting the embed code. 

Today's Reflection: 

To add to your comments about sessional instructors, this is something I've brought up many times with our Frontier School Division PENT Coordinator, Debra Perih, and the PENT Director, John Minshull. The question initially came up when I took a Limited Teacher Permit to teach Nursery-Grade 8 Music last year. I wanted to know why PENT had such limited options for courses, particularly in Music considering BU's incredible Faculty of Music programming. It was explained to me that due to the timing and nature of the PENT program, courses are basically offered based on the sessional instructors BU is able to find. In other words, we as students are at the mercy of whoever they can find to fill those spots. This is not to say that the issue is the quality of our sessional instructors (although there have been a couple questionable choices over the years), the issue is with the consistency. As a result, we are not able to take classes in Sciences, Arts, Music, and so many others. If the nature of the program is to develop well-rounded Middle Years educators who are competent in all subject areas, focusing only on Literacy and Numeracy courses, quite frankly, is not going to get the job done. It's very frustrating and I hope to see some changes happen over the next few years since John is still new to the program and seems to be open to suggestions. The pandemic has also forced PENT to reconsider their options and with the help of Dr. Skinner, they have finally started offering PENT classes in the Fall/Winter term. As a result, I can definitely achieve my goal of finishing my degree in 4 years which means I will be graduating next summer if all goes to plan. So I guess there's the silver lining in all of this, hopefully with more progress coming soon. 

On a personal note, though I would've chosen a Major in Science and Minor in Music, from my understanding, my degree will end up being a Major in Liberal Arts and a Minor in Native Studies. While I am eternally grateful for the sponsorship and education I have received, I feel like I still have a lot of learning still left to do once I complete my degree. My goal before I graduate is to continue working closely with the FSD PENT Coordinator and BU PENT Director to try and improve the consistency and quality of Science-based courses for future PENT students. My first step is to request that my school division's Science coach, who is now a sessional instructor for PENT teaching Astronomy, be given the opportunity to join the PENT faculty on a more permanent basis to continue teaching while also developing long-term planning for Science courses for 1st-5th year PENT students. Ideally, I would like to work alongside her to not only provide my perspective as a PENT student, but to further my own learning and observe the process that goes into designing university-level programming. 

END RANT. 

Thank you for such a great class, I've learned a lot!! 

DAY 14 - Feeling confident!

 Quick Notes:

- Blog posts/designs should have light background and dark text. ***I've lost marks on an assignment for this before haha

- Google Maps --> Your Places to access Map designs. 

Today's Reflection:

- As we're moving into the last couple days of classes, it's crazy to think how confident I feel using programs I didn't even know existed four weeks ago. This got me thinking about how students would feel as they begin to build these new skills. By reusing the same 3-5 main programs over a 4-week program, learning about each platform becomes cyclical and cumulative. As you go back into your projects every time, you naturally begin to explore more options within the same platform. Eventually the shortcuts, menus, and actions begin to repeat themselves and, without really thinking about it, you're developing critical thinking and computational skills. 

- For emerging readers and writers, computer icons and symbols also offer alternative forms of reading. One of the best tidbits of knowledge I gained from my last practicum was when my cooperating teacher explained that even for kids who "can't read," if you show them a bottle of Pepsi or a Nike shoe, they know what those letters say. In other words, technology can potentially create an avenue or area of interest where students can take their existing knowledge of the logos, icons, and symbols they see on a computer, and transfer those strategies to learning printing, cursive, punctuation, numbers, etc. 

DAY 13 - 72 Hours and Counting

 Quick Notes:

- KML files - Search Google ex: 'Manitoba Fire KML' and it will automatically capture the KML file

- To change default slide changes for Google Slides, you can adjust the microseconds delay in HTML.

- Google Forms provides instant feedback to students and teachers, can link additional resources to find answers to any questions that were answered incorrectly. 

- How do teachers go about covering the costs of online subscriptions, resources, supplies, technology, etc. 

***I've completed my Lesson Plan Map, Podcast Lesson and Online Test Demo, the updated links are listed on my blog page. 

Today's Reflection: 

- Prescriptive Assessment

I know you mentioned this term earlier on in the course but I was not very familiar with it when you brought it up again today. I did some research and I think I have a better understanding of it now. I used to always think of this as a pre-assessment activity or quiz before entering a unit or new topic but I see it more as a form of diagnosing specific needs and adaptations in order to plan ahead and ensure every student is able to find success. I'm not sure if this is correct, but I would assume this would be in a team setting with Resource, Classroom Teacher, EA, Psychologists, Physicians, and the student's parents. 

- Teacher Reimbursements

I've always wondered how budgets work when it comes to purchasing online subscriptions, resources, classroom supplies, small tech...do schools often have budgets available for teachers for these types of purchases? If not, are these items claimable on our tax returns? If teachers are expected to pay out of pocket for these things, are there any other pro tips you may have about how to keep costs down?  

DAY 12 - Technical Difficulties Today...

Quick Notes:

- ICT Educator links on PENT ICT Blog

- Cool Cat Teacher Blog: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/

- Microsoft or Google fellowship/specializations

- GeoGuessr activity (great for clues, critical thinking, visual observations, sense-making)

- What3Words 

- MapChart

- Google Maps - use layers to create pins, video, image, file attachments, etc.  

Today's Reflection: What do I want to specialize in?

Though this is only my 3rd year in the PENT program, I am on track to graduate next year so I have spent a lot of time considering what subject areas I want to specialize in. Music and Science are at the top of my list, but I also know the importance of being tech savvy. Though I am fairly proficient with computers, I have heard of many teachers or professors pursuing fellowships with Google or Microsoft. In fact, I first heard of this through our Teacher Identity professor, Devon Caldwell. As part of her Microsoft fellowship, she has been able to travel all around the world giving presentations on the advantages of using Microsoft programs in the classroom. She showed us many examples of what she used in her classes, and even for a Kindergarten setting she had a wide variety of applications for tech in the classroom. The one that stood out to me most was an Inquiry Project about horses that eventually snowballed into her Kinder class creating and selling their artwork to raise funds for a small island filled with wild horses. Even at such a young age there can be so many new connections made through the use of technology and as teachers, we need to feel competent using computers in order to feel confident teaching our students. 

DAY 11 - Earth Day!

 Quick Notes: 

- Options for Podcast recordings: Vocaroo, Audacity, SoundCloud, Internet Archive and Anchor

Today's Reflection: How can I use podcasts in my personal and professional life?

- When I'm working out I usually listen to music, but I've started compiling a list of podcasts about topics that I'm interested in. Tomorrow for my workout I'm going to try listening to a podcast instead and see if I like it better. I would also definitely switch music for podcasts during my walks and while I'm running errands or doing housework. 

- Thinking back to earlier in our class about our professional networks and communities, I think podcasts would be a really easy way for me to contribute to my professional community. As teachers we are master multi-taskers and I feel like podcasts are a quick, easy, accessible, hands-free way to communicate with other educators. 

- Podcasts would also be excellent tools for teaching a variety of subjects such as speech, language, music, online tutoring, and distance education. Since the technology to create a podcast is so simple and accessible, it also opens up a ton of possibilities for collaboration with educators or classrooms anywhere around the world. 

- Lastly, podcasts or recorded audio makes for really easy, low-prep sub plans that can be easily followed by anyone filling in. 

- For my first podcast I created a quick sound clip that could be used for early years classes learning about different animal sounds. When I was teaching music, I would have used this with my Nursery and Kindergarten students as an activating activity. 

DAY TEN - Happy Wednesday :)

Quick Notes:

- University-educated people were/are considered to be knowledge keepers, and a university's main goal is to develop manage, discover, collect, and encourage knowledge. 

- Data ---> Info ---> Knowledge ---> Wisdom

- Building off of yesterday's video, school has now evolved slightly towards preparing people mostly for work and for being contributors to society. As for High School, the focus has been to prepare people for university.

- Audacity didn't work for the download on my work laptop, I had to request access so it should be cleared within the next 24 hours. 

Today's Reflection: 

I've already started using some of the new applications we've learned in some of my assignments for other courses and it's definitely been a huge help! I've also used Screencast-o-matic for my online business for giveaway draws and the quality is so much better than when I have to hold or mount a 2nd device to record the prize wheel spinning. Plus, I don't have to transfer files between accounts or upload off my phone anymore since it's already on my laptop. 

I think Screencast-o-matic and Vocaroo are the two tools that I am most excited to use for my work and with my students. Often times in my ELA and Science classes, I ask students to create tutorials, write lab reports, and record summaries of their research. Giving students an alternative to writing or typing up their assignments can be a great adaptation for struggling writers. It is also an easy, comfortable introduction for students to improve their public speaking skills without the fear of standing and speaking in front of a class. For my work, I love your suggestion of using audio clips for giving feedback on assignments. This would have been a great tool to use when communicating with students when we were doing remote learning.