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. 

DAY NINE - Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE)

 Quick Notes:

- In ICT, anything older than 5 years is out of date. 

- Firefox lets me bypass all the network permissions for extensions, yay! Now I might finally be able to use my Chromecast to display Zoom classes on my TV. 

- Vocaroo for creating podcasts or leaving audio feedback for assignments which personalizes content for students. 

Today's Reflection: Notes on Pedadogy based on TEDTalk by Sugata Mitra

- 300 yrs ago, the British Empire ran the planet with a handwritten data travelling by ships which created a global computer made up of people aka the Bureaucratic Administrative Machine. 

- The British Empire made another machine to produce those people - the education system where students must know three things, handwriting, reading, mental math. Now we are producing people for an empire that no longer exists. 

- STUDENTS MUST BE SO IDENTICAL THAT THEY CAN BE PLUCKED AND REPLACED 

- TODAY: We don't need people who have beautiful handwriting who can do mental math, don't need to just read, but read discerningly. 

- USE THE GRANDMOTHER METHOD "Stand behind them and just sound excited about everything you did. Say things like "When I was your age..."

- Speech to text helps people improve pronunciation. 

- Out of all the different research experiments, ENCOURAGEMENT IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS. 

- Set the stage for learning and then step back and let it happen.

- What motivates people to learn? Being just annoyed enough that they don't know the answer. In other words, setting up conditions where a small amount of frustration/irritation has to be resolved (Theory = Cognitive Load). Thankfully, ICT has lots of irritations :D 

- OUR JOBS AT EDUCATORS IS TO MAKE PEOPLE THIRSTY

- "Salt in the oats"

View on Vocaroo >>

DAY EIGHT - Happy Monday :)

 Quick Notes

- By keeping a digital archive, you are creating your own textbook for the course. 

- As we continue moving away from teaching through rote memorization, the emphasis shifts to learning from making connections and building networks of information. 

- Creating online content is a legitimate interest, passion, hobby, and career option. 

- The education system was originally designed was to create workers that could be plucked from anywhere around the Commonwealth and be placed in a new role, country, etc. and be able to be functional within minutes. That's not relevant anymore, that's not what we need anymore. 

- Screencast-o-matic has the option to use the Blur tool to blur out faces in videos (as does Google, YouTube, etc.) ***Have to upgrade to Pro for blur tools.

- Clipchamp - Another video editing site. 

- Zotero - Resource collecting tool. 

Today's Reflection

Lots of new tools and resources covered today! I usually use Owl Purdue to create my reference lists, but if I'm working on multiple papers simultaneously the reference lists can sometimes get mixed up. I'm very excited to start using Zotero on a regular basis and have a new way of collecting and organizing my resources that won't overload my bookmarks tabs. 

I've been working on my Mind Meister maps and I'm really enjoying the customizable options (colors, shapes, images, attachments, notes, etc.) and the way it can be used as a lesson planning tool. I often find that I over-plan for lessons and end up running out of time or try to cover too much information in one class. Having this visual tool is a great way to create a template for a lesson planning schedule. It also makes it really easy to access all the necessary resources in one place. Usually when I'm teaching, I have to make sure that I have all my bookmarks open in the tabs and there have definitely been times where my browser has closed and I have to go and re-open each individual resource again. It's a big waste of time, especially when it happens during a lesson, so I really like having an option where I can link all the sites I need in one place instead of having to re-open each tab over and over. 

DAY SEVEN - Halfway there!!

 Today's Reflection:

Unfortunately I'm having some issues with my internet connectivity so I missed a couple parts of the presentation, but I will definitely watch the video after to fill in any gaps. 

It's hard to believe that we're already halfway through the course! I feel so much more confident and capable with the new tools you've shown us. Thank you for the article you sent me yesterday, I had never heard of Transformative Learning before so it's definitely something I'm going to keep in mind and continue learning about. 

Though today's reflection isn't necessarily related to the course content, I have to be honest that this week I have been having some serious doubts about getting into the teaching profession. Seeing the gaps in the province's expectations for teachers versus what they're actually providing for resources is extremely discouraging. Coupling that with Pallister's completely tone deaf remarks about teachers showing initiative by paying for school supplies out of our own pockets is another stark reminder that teachers are often left at the mercy of government officials who are mostly concerned with the bottom line. In addition to that, the upcoming reforms to our province's education system do not give me a lot of confidence that these issues will be resolved anytime soon. 

In my first year of university, one of our professors shared that 50% of teachers quit within the first 5 years. This is a horrifying statistic that continues to stick in my mind. It's also troubling to think that since the introduction of blended and remote learning throughout the pandemic, it's very possible that in-person education will slowly be phased out and replaced with more and more virtual learning platforms. While I'm sure many teacher-candidates experience these doubts, I also know that it's important to share these concerns with senior educators to hopefully gain additional perspectives. If you have any words of wisdom to share, I'm all ears!!! 

DAY SIX - Social-Emotional Learning

Quick Notes: 

- Google Scholar 

- What is your teaching pedagogy? What's your philosophy of teaching? 

- PechaKucha: 20 slides, 20 secs narration, total time 6:40, judging after for who's the best BS'er. 

Today's Reflection:

- What can we do to build up our students affectively to help prepare them for learning?

I think this is one of the greatest questions teachers can ask themselves when planning for lessons, units, differentiation, adaptations, assessments, etc. A huge part of my teaching philosophy begins with the foundation of creating a welcoming and supportive classroom environment that not only provides a safe place for students to not only learn curriculum, but learn social-emotional strategies that they can use in "the real world". Often times when students are learning new content, particularly in the middle years streams, there is a lot of frustration, anxiety, and anger. Students at that age are not comfortable being vulnerable and are going through immense physical and mental changes as they enter into puberty. Concepts like trauma-informed teaching, growth mindset, and grit have become common trends in education and are complemented nicely by other models such as Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is no secret that students are not able to learn effectively if they are in a heightened state of anxiety, fear, or hunger. As teachers, we need to ensure that we come prepared with a wide variety of tools that we can share with our students that will help them reduce their anxieties, increase their confidence, and better understand their own learning habits. In doing so, we help them develop their independence as learners and hopefully assist them in their social-emotional development. 

DAY FIVE - Collaboration > Competition

  Quick Notes: 

- Itty Bitty can create private websites that don't need a host server. 

- Lorem Ipsum is a fake language that can be used as a place-holder when designing web pages. 

- Bit shorteners (ex: TinyURL) can take an extremely long URLs and condense them. 

- 8 or less digits of binary = 'Bit'

- 8+ digits of binary = 'Bite'

Today's Reflection:

 - How can we teach kids to collaborate instead of always competing?

I've noticed many times during my practicums that students get extremely competitive with one another, sometimes to the point where an activity can get completely derailed. For example, for one of the summative assessments for my unit about Ancient Greece, I asked students to create Jeopardy clues that would eventually be built into a game. For our practice round, I did not tell the students that the clues they would be creating would be used for a game with their classmates in the opposing cohort. When the students thought they would be the ones answering their own questions, they wrote the questions in about 10 minutes and made them as easy as possible. After the first round of gameplay, I told students that the 2nd round of questions they would be creating would be used in a game for their classmates. Once they found this out, students spent 40 minutes writing their questions and made them as difficult as possible. After the 2nd game, the overall scores were much lower and students began arguing about points, missed questions, timer errors, dead questions, and the legitimacy of the clues. It got so heated that I had to eventually stop the game because a couple students were getting so frustrated. This was an extremely important learning opportunity for me because I realized that competition in the classroom can sometimes lead to a very negative experience for students and teachers. It also does not allow room for cooperation and collaboration, two extremely important life skills. 

Since this was right at the end of my last Field Experience, I did not have a chance to reflect and pivot my approach to the Jeopardy game, but it is definitely something that I will keep in mind going forward. Thinking about it now, what I should have done instead is have the students create the questions and have them work in pairs or small groups to answer the questions together. Though COVID has made social interaction and collaboration very challenging this year, it is definitely something that I want to keep learning about and improving over my career. 

DAY FOUR - Mapping the Mind

 Quick Notes: 

- Feedly is a tool that allows you to track various updates and feeds for a variety of resources. 

- Google Alerts can alert you to any use of your name online. 

- MindMeister is a fully customizable online resource for creating org charts or mind maps. Great for students, research, presentations, lesson/unit planning, etc. 

Today's Reflection:

 - What do you expect from/contribute to your community of practice? 

One of the definite advantages of teaching in the age of technology is that there are a ton of resources available online. Not only can we access virtual museums, galleries, and guest speakers, we can also use video communication technology to connect with classrooms and educators all around the world. Because there is such an overwhelming amount of information online, it is important that I take the time to ensure that I am learning from reputable sites and organizations. As part of the teaching community, it is just as important to ensure that I am not sharing links or resources that are not credible. Since I am still learning, I have not yet been a major contributor to online education resources but I hope that eventually this will change. As teachers, it is so important to share ideas and collaborate with fellow educators and online communication can be a very effective way to do this. Since I have received so much support from others, I feel it is my responsibility to ensure that I also give back when I am able to. Like I've mentioned previously, I have already begun compiling a wide variety of digital resources, websites, templates, and ideas for lesson and unit planning. I also create a lot of my own worksheets using online design platforms such as Canva. While I had originally thought I was going to upload my designs on Teachers Pay Teachers, I also want to work on creating a digital archives site where teachers and teacher-candidates can access those same files for free. Though it can be a bit intimidating to post your work online, I feel like it also opens up important opportunities for collaboration and constructive feedback. 

DAY THREE - Computational Thinking

 Quick Notes: 

- Feedly is a good Chrome extension for managing updates from several different sites.

- Awesome Screenshot is another Chrome extension that works great for screen/audio recordings.

- Computational Thinking is an upcoming focus in the MB Curriculum. 

- You don't need to learn how to write code, you just need to know where to find the code you need. 

- You can't just teach content anymore, you need to teach kids how to learn. 

Today's Reflection:

If I started my first year of teaching to a Kindergarten class in 2023, they wouldn't graduate high school until 2035. This was a really great reminder that we need to be forward-thinking and purposeful in our instruction. Often times I find it difficult to find the relevance of some of the information in the current curriculums, but if I can deliver that information through technology, they can also be learning computer literacy at the same time. However, it is also difficult to imagine what the world will look like in 2035, so it is also difficult to imagine what we need to prepare our students for. 

Throughout my time in the PENT program, I have often thought about the subject or grades I would prefer working with, and teaching Computer classes for middle years or high school has always been in my top 3. After today's class, particularly the collaborative Google Doc activity, I realize that you can incorporate these types of activities in early years settings as well. While it is difficult to imagine where technology will bring us in the coming decades, there is no doubt that computers, smartphones, and the internet will be a huge component of our daily lives. 

DAY TWO - Grave Digger Is King

Quick Notes: 

- If Google can understand your English, anyone can.

- Duck Duck Go is a web browser that doesn't track your searches.

- Students (and teachers) should develop their computational thinking skills.

- Dark text on light background is best for reading long texts.

Today's Reflection:

Though today was mostly a review for me of Google's different features, I liked going through the different features of Blogger and learning how to include videos in the posts. There is so much that I don't know about coding so it was great to get a chance to practice how to edit code in order to change details on a post. 

When thinking of how I could apply this to teaching, the first thing that comes to mind is creating a blog or website for my classes that can be accessed by parents. A lot of parents struggled with home schooling this year and often asked where they could go online to find resources and supports to refresh their learning about topics they haven't thought about since their time as a student decades ago. While our school usually relies on Facebook groups or Microsoft TEAMS channels to organize information, it was not always as user-friendly as we had hoped, and many people struggled to find the information once it was posted. By creating a website or blog for the classes I'm teaching, it creates a better flow of communication between parents and teachers. It also allows me to have complete control over what information is being shared instead of having to submit information to admin and wait for it to be posted. It can also be a very proactive tool to communicate about upcoming events, field trips, unit plans, class portfolio, images or videos of student work, etc. It also looks great for resumes or job interviews when the inevitable questions come up about managing teacher-family-student relationships. 

Like you said earlier....why didn't we learn this stuff in our first year of classes?! My life would have been 1000 times easier if I had been able to create an online platform like this, especially during Covid.

DAY ONE - To Blog Or Not To Blog

Quick Notes: 

- Simpler site layout is better for users with lower bandwidths.

- Digital literacy comes first, fluency comes second. 

- "Security through obscurity"

Today's Reflection:

I really enjoyed learning how to create my own blog. I have a small business that relies heavily on online content and I think using this type of platform will make it much easier for my clients to access what they need in one place. Though I've thought about creating a website many times, I always thought it was too hard or expensive so I'm grateful to know now that Blogger is a free, user-friendly option for creating online content. 

I also think it will be a great tool for compiling all the online or digital resources that I have been collecting over the course of my studies and teaching placements. Up until this point I have been relying heavily on saving digital content using Chrome bookmarks, but my bookmarks tabs are becoming too long. When you mentioned that blogs are a great way of creating e-portfolios, it was a huge lightbulb moment for me. 

In terms of how I would use this as a teacher, this would be a great asset to blended, remote and in-class learning. Students are often working on their writing and printing in class, but being able to navigate editing, proofreading, publishing skills online is another extremely useful skill to develop. It also opens the doorway for teaching about internet security and professional communication, something we worked on a lot with students this year considering they were often communicating with teachers or submitting assignments from home. For our school specifically, the middle years classes struggle with using technology since we only have access to outdated Google Chromebooks. Our division has recently purchased Microsoft TEAMS as the new official remote learning platform, but the program is not compatible for use with the Chromebooks. Since we often run into issues trying to find software that is easily accessed and user-friendly for students at all levels, I can definitely see the benefits of this platform since it can be accessed from any type of device, and allows for students to comment and interact with each other. This allows for social constructivism in those times when students may feel too shy to speak up in class, or for those instances where learning is happening remotely or asynchronously. Like you said, creating digital artifacts is a great way for students to take ownership of their learning, track their progress throughout the school year, develop computer literacy, access their work anytime from anywhere, and provides additional opportunities for social interaction with their peers.