Category: Weekly Reflections

This week in class we had the chance to watch everyone’s group inquiry project presentations. I really enjoyed seeing all the different ways people played out their projects and findings including podcasts, videos, slideshows or infographics. The way these presentations worked was a little different that the typical school presentations. Usually, groups would present the actual final product, whatever it my be. Instead of doing this, we all got to speak about the process and how we completed our projects. My group used a group-chat on the app WhatsApp to communicate. We planned dates to meet either in person or virtually, share documents and send resources and ideas. This group chat worked quite well as it only requires a phone number which made things easy. Our topic was movement break videos and how implementing them in a classroom would work. We found a lot of resources on YouTube and concluded with a few main points:

• Benefits: Some benefits of movement break videos are getting heart rates up, realizing bottled up energy, increasing mood in the class and implementing physical activity in a classroom routine.
• When to use it: Videos like this can be used in different scenarios. Either when a class is feeling squirmy, energetic and unfocused or when a class is feeling tired, low energy or grumpy. As the teacher, get a feel for the energy the room and decide what would best suit the group at that time.
• Limitations: Some limitations include YouTube ads/suggested videos, student mobility challenges or lack of space. Some ways to combat this would be going full screen on YouTube, setting up the video before hand to avoid ads, moving chairs/desks out of the way and using seated moving break videos to keep it inclusive.
• Genres: Some genres are dance, cardio, video game, meditation, yoga and dynamic exercise. Try different ones and see which is the best fit!

Here are some examples:

This week our class had the pleasure of having Tracy come into our class and Kaori join digitally. Hearing about their work with BCEdAccess was truly inspiring but what opened my eyes the most was hearing their personal stories about their own children’s journey through the public education system. They spoke of challenges that had never crossed my mind such Kaori speaking about the wheelchair accessibility issues with her daughter both at the playground and attending field trips. If the school couldn’t find an accessible school bus and Kaori couldn’t take time off work, her daughter was left out of that experience which is something a lot of students with accessibility needs go through.

It was interesting to hear about how designations and what the process looks like. I didn’t know each one had a letter associated with it which was interesting to learn. I can tell how close to their hearts this topic is which made it that much more impactful. This class lead me to reflect on my own biases and assumptions I make about students abilities and I hope to keep holding myself accountable to treating each student with respect and giving them space to succeed in school. Finding a child’s “superpower” in school whether it be reading, drawing, playing a sport or numeracy is a powerful moment and will give the child confidence to keep trying in school.

The integration of AI and chatbots in the elementary classroom presents transformative opportunities for innovation and personalized learning experiences. By leveraging Adrian technologies, educators can enhance student engagement, foster critical thinking and provide tailored support to diverse learning styles. Chatbots can serve as virtual assistants, delivering real-time feedback, answering queries, and facilitating integrating chatbots to conduct formative assessments, provide additional earning resources and offer personalized remedial support. AI enabled platforms can also facilitate collaborative learning environments, enabling students to engage in interactive discussions and peer to peer knowledge sharing. Moreover Ai can assist educators in analyzing student performance data, identifying learning gaps and customizing instructional strategies to cater to individual student needs. This symbiotic relationship between AI and educators has the potential to revolutionize elementary education, fostering a more inclusive and effective learning environment for all students.

Did you like that paragraph? Was it insightful and full of good ideas? Well I will pass on the compliments to chat GBT who wrote it! Busted.

This week we looked at the role of AI in the classroom. With this being such a relevant topic, it opened my eyes to the rapid evolution happening to schools at this moment. AI can have a big part in assisting teachers with lesson planning, summarizing articles and creating marking rubrics. These are all time consuming tasks that are typically done by teachers during after school hours on their own time. Having a digital assistant to help get these done could relieve the work load from educators. Here is a lesson plan ChatGBT made with this prompt:

Give me a short lesson plan on place value for a grade 1 elementary class:

It certainly gave some valuable ideas on how to structure a lesson but it is missing some elements that only a human teacher can provide. The engaging and fun aspects are missing from this very bland lesson plan. This doesn’t mean ChatGBT can’t be a helpful tool in education but we can’t forget the most valuable part of teaching: connection and relationships. Using such a powerful tool like AI requires caution and teachers need to educate themselves on how AI works and its limitations. As AI gets more mainstream in the workplace the roles and jobs we know today will see a shift. It is an exciting time in education as the opportunities with AI seem limitless, but we must educate ourselves on the risks.

This week left us with newfound skills with powerpoint, confidence in creating resources and a class powerpoint with some pretty funny graphics. Michael dove into using images and graphics in effective ways to support and engage learners in different settings. Connecting to what we learned from Rich the previous week, slides with different graphics were presented to us in class and we had to compare them and how effective they were. The example was how to use a bike pump. The first image was simply a packaged bike pump, which really doesn’t provide much context especially if you’ve never seen one used. The next one was more like a diagram of multiple steps and they each had a photo next to it. This was much more helpful was the viewer can read the written instructions and connect it to the image next to it showing exactly how it works. Connecting this to education, teachers often will throw images onto a slideshow that are either irrelevant, distracting or plain confusing. When you take time to find a visual that helps students visualize and understand material growth can happen.

After we saw some different examples of graphic creation with different softwares such a powerpoint or photoshop we were given the freedom to create something using the skills we just learned about. People took many different routes as some created some really interesting math worksheets while others went on a more silly path and made some funny images. I decided to use canvas as I’ve used this website before to create other graphics. To erase backgrounds, I used a website I have previously used that I found on google. Here is my creation:

I had lots of fun putting my teachers into a car with some interesting characters! I can only imagine how much fun students would have doing this in class, I know our class had a great time.

In the past, I’ve used canvas to create social media graphics to support a local political campaign. My high school teacher Mark Nuefeld ran for Saanich Council last fall and I helped him with his social media by creating instagram posts. I used canna for this and it was a very user friendly site to use and play around with. Here’s some of the graphics I created:

This week we had the pleasure of meeting Kirsten Pierce who is a teacher at Lansdowne Middle School. She came in and talked about the importance and possibilities of connecting nature with technology and using technology to grow students understanding of the world around them. Kirsten described it as technology enabled place based learning. We learned about some really valuable tools, resources and perspectives that involve technology supporting the classroom.

There are so many valuable websites surrounding indigenous education which can take learning to the next level. Kirsten showed us a list of resources that can help identify territories and land, word lists, language databases and YouTube for local historical videos. Using these resources, educators can introduce the concept of a two eyed lens. From my understanding, a two eyed lens is a way of seeing the natural world around us with multiple perspectives and acknowledging it’s past, present and future roles. When going on a nature walk or field trip with a classroom in the community, it could look like identifying native plants and talking about its importance to indigenous communities. Creating this connection between exploring these places in the present and understanding its historical importance can help foster an awareness for respecting nature.

Another great tool Kirsten showed us was a variety of plant identification apps. We got to experiment with these outside as we went for a walk in Finnerty Gardens here on campus. My group used the app “seek” and it was very engaging. It was exciting to explore the garden and find new plants to identify as the app gives you different level badges as you find new species. This created a goal for us to actively look at what was around us instead of just going for a walk and not noticing things around you. Apps like this could be downloaded on iPads and children could take turns going for nature walks and identifying plants to then relate it back to a classroom project.

This class provided me with a new lens on the relationship between technology and nature which I will carry with me into the classroom. I look forward to exploring different projects and possible lessons involving the tools we learned about this week with Kirsten.

This week our cohort had the pleasure of virtually meeting Jessie Miller, a professional in the field of media literacy, social media education, digital trends and keeping a professional online presence. Our time with him was extremely informative as social media and the internet is such a fast paced part of our world. The presence of technology in the classroom is a big one as children are surrounded by phones, television, iPads and video games. The role of technology ranges with different ages which leads to difficulty with creating boundaries and rules for children. Teachers have a difficult task as they are the authority figure at school and creating expectations with technology may differ from their home life. Jessie shared some valuable lessons and perspectives on balancing technology in the world of teaching which I am grateful to have heard.

One topic that stood out to me was keeping a professional presence online as a teacher. Jessie showed us various examples of educators that made some poor choices online that led to some very serious consequences. While he talked about the extreme end of things, we also heard about some strategies and ideas to make sure our social media remains separate from our work life. Jessie talked about making personal accounts private, watching what you post and keeping boundaries with parents and students regarding social media and connecting outside of school. Sometimes parents want to connect outside of school when they find a teacher on instagram, Facebook or wherever that may be but this can cross the line between a professional relationship quickly. Jessie suggested setting boundaries at the start of the year and sticking to them to keep a professional standard. This was an important conversation to have as it is easy to to post photos without thinking about long term effects.

Jessie also talked to us about classroom management surrounding technology and phones in the classroom. This is something that varies from grade to grade as this would look very different in a grade 1 class compared to a grade 8 class. This got me thinking about how to manage rules with different classrooms. In grades where students may have their won cellular device, I feel that the devices should b kept away in a bag/locker during class time. It should be communicated with parents that if they need to reach their child it should be done by contacting the school or waiting till school is over to speak to the child. This does get complex as some family situations may need to contact their child concerning transportation or other important issues so these circumstances need to get taken into consideration.

Overall this presentation from Jessie was very informative, eye opening and thought provoking. I hope to continue learning about the online world and how it plays into a school and the role of a teacher.