Category: Reflections (Page 1 of 3)

Thank you Michael for a teaching us all about technology!  So sad today is the last class!

Check out the video our class made here:

https://alicia.opened.ca/2019/11/29/thank-you-michael-from-edci-336-a03/

Technology keeps surprising me all the time!  Who knew that it was so easy to incorporate augmented reality into the classroom to expand on learning.  I love the idea of connecting children’s artwork to a video of the student talking about what the artwork is about for parents to view during an open house or parent teacher conference.  I can’t believe you can scan a toy and put it into a program that makes it look like it is walking!

https://www.hpreveal.com/

https://www.livescience.com/34843-augmented-reality.html

I was also blown away by the virtual Reality room in the library.  I got to watch Alicia explore google earth,  Sam go on a roller coaster and to Mitra paint and create clay 3D objects.  By the time it was my turn I was already feeling nausea from watching the screen so  I took a pass today, but I can’t wait to go back another day!   The options are endless!

Josh and the Penguin

Josh was freezing cold as he looked out at the horizon with the sunset glimmering off the hard frozen snow. His breath made icicles that hung off his scarf and jacket.  He could hardly feel his fingers through his thick gloves.  His walk was stiff and awkward with the many layers of clothes he had to wear to prevent frostbite.  His stomach was rumbling and his mind began to dream about warming up the corn chowder he had brought to school to eat.  His assignment was to research and document how many emperor penguins were left in Antarctica.   There used to be almost 600,000 emperor penguins in 2020.  Now in 2040, Josh could only find 1,245.   As the sun went down below the horizon Josh clicked the red button on the back of his glove and immediately he was back in the classroom.

A loud sound of gushing wind was interrupted by the click of a glass door as it opened into a warm sunny room in Victoria in British Columbia.  Josh tumbled out of the glass cylinder and into the classroom peeling off his winter gear as fast as he could.

“Oh boy, am I ever hungry!” Josh exclaimed as he hung up his gear.  He went through his backpack and found his chowder to warm up for his lunch.  Josh was only thirteen. He was the youngest of his classmates.  He had been interested in penguins ever since he could remember.   His inquiry had begun when he was three years old, watching a video on how male emperor penguins look after their eggs while the females leave to get food.

“How many did you find today Josh?” asked his friend Jack.

“Well, numbers have finally gone up about 100 from last year,” replied Josh with a tone of hopefulness. Josh’s goal was to help the penguins reach a population of 3000 by 2051.

Up to 2035, global warming had had devastating effects on the earth and scientists have been recruiting schools to help document the dwindling populations of the world.  Now that teleporting was possible, global warming was at a standstill as there was a major decrease in the amount of carbon being produced as transportation had changed so drastically.  In the last year, Josh and his school mates were just starting to see a slight improvement in the animal populations.

Josh turned to Jack and said, “You know my Dad was telling me the other day how excited he was as a kid at my age, where you could view photos and satellite imagery from in the world with Google earth. Now, we can actually go anywhere we want and we are not limited by that old technology!  I can’t imagine being stuck behind a computer to view the world, when you can actually go anywhere you want through the new teleporting systems developed by Cindercat.”

“Yeh, Cindercat transporting has changed the world for the better for sure,” said Jack, “I love being able to go to Africa to count the giraffes.  It is way better than in the olden days when you just learned about giraffes in a book or on the computer!”

Josh flipped open his tablet and starting writing down a few notes about his morning adventures in Antarctica.  Quietly, he put his hand into his pocket to see if the baby penguin was still there.  He knew he wasn’t allowed to take any penguins home, but he also knew that this one would die without his help.

By Jessica Milne

Today we had fun trying out several different coding applications and programs to engage students in coding.  Hannah and I tried out Glitch which was super interesting, but I am really glad Hannah already know a little bit about coding which made it much easier to understand.  The options are endless, but important to know about as we enter the world of teaching.

Why is coding useful in education? Coding gets students engaged and promotes critical thinking while building computational skills.  Ways to incorporate coding can include: codebc.ca which links coding applications to the BC curriculum; cartooning; Minecraft, Scratch, CodeMonkey, and Glitch.

Here are the slides from Michael today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fodrvtJIwYYJ2Oipmp2hP712GKvjSeG50e1dotZzNzk/edit#slide=id.p

Links to check out:

https://hourofcode.com/

http://codebc.ca/

https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/why-kids-should-learn-to-code-and-how-to-get-them-started

Simple story
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/344047068/

Flappy bird game
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/17341536/

Choose your Own Adventure
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2007269/ 

Piano
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10012676/ 

Code Monkey

Glitch

https://glitch.com/

Twine

https://twinery.org/

Collection of free teaching material to teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around https://csunplugged.org/en/

I loved seeing how this presentation incorporated their own video into their demonstration!  Way to go John for showing your video on the running man!  Digital literacy is definitely improved by using video.

Here is an interesting link of videos teachers use in education: https://www.youtube.com/user/teachers/playlists  

Just make sure to watch the videos first to make sure that they are appropriate and that there isn’t anything freaky in the video somewhere.

Good tip to remember: Use “start at time”

Here are some key points from today:

How can videos be used?

• Can replace written text to keep subjects diverse and exciting
• Show a video and then ask students to think critically about it
• Students can make videos (video journaling, creative films, how to videos)

Some ideas to use digital literacy for teaching:

• Big questions
• Multiple viewings
• Keep it short
• Break it up
• Use a 3^rd party tools like edpuzzle,  https://edpuzzle.com/Flipgrid https://info.flipgrid.com/

Video as a tool for Assessment

• Pedagogical Narration
• How-to Videos (could use Flipgrid)
• Digital Portfolios – using google sites for self-assessment like Sheri Gurney uses

Cautions

• Watch the whole video first before you show the video to make sure it’s what you are looking for and that it doesn’t have something freaky in it in the end
• Have purpose
• Equipment dependant
• Don’t just play whole video
• Make sure they are engaged
• Tip: Use “start at time”

Wow, this presentation makes me want to make my own digital story!  Thanks Fran for your beautiful inspiring video on her dog, not to mention your beautiful piano playing!

Here are my notes from the presentation…

• Supports personal discovery and emotional self-examination
• Telling a story with technology, with photos, pictures or video, text
  • write the text, highlight sections
  • recording voices
• Multimodal literacy that enables students to create a deeper understanding and emotional connection with their audience through narration, music and images
• 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling

1. Point of view
2. Dramatic Question
3. Emotional Content
4. Voice – recording the voice narration to help meaning of visual content – students need practice with this
5. Soundtrack
6. Economy – picture tells a thousand words
7. Pacing

• Pros
  • Extremely multimodal
  • Student voice and engagement
  • Digital literacy
  • Gives time to reviewed
• Consider
  • Time consuming
  • Demoralizing if students don’t have the same access
  • Classroom must by psychologically safe
• Risks
  • Technology could fail you and be frustrating

Examples: Google Slides, Imovie, Comic Life, Imagine Forest, Speech Journal

Tips:

• Use storyboards
• Set clear criteria
• Scaffold
• Allow personal creativity and inquiry

How can digital storytelling be used for students: All subjects!!

• English language arts; book trailer, personal narrative…

How can digital storytelling be used to help teachers?

• Flipped lessons
• Reinforce subject matter
• Present new information in a fun, accessible way
• Promote increased participation from sick and absent students
• Multimodal, comprehensive, way to assess students’ takeaways

Resources:

• Michael’s blog
• SetBC – module#3

• Communication tools for language learners
• Language Technologies
  • BC has a very high level of immigrants who speak different languages other than English
  • Ideas:
    • Google Translate
      • App has more features that just using it online
      • When you download the app, you can set what language you generally use
      • Talk into it and you can draw into it
      • You can have a conversation, has a message in the other persons language to explain what you are doing
      • You can view the conversation later to see what was said
      • Once you tell the app what languages you need, you don’t need data
      • Text – aim camera at the text.. and it will translate, worksheets etc!!
      • Considerations… it’s not perfect
        • Data is always being updated as it is not perfect
        • Ton of noise, it won’t pick up the conversation as well
        • If student speaks quietly it won’t pick up the sound
        • Puts a slight pause in conversation
        • Using a pencil designed for IPAD works better than using your finger
        • Be careful what you are consenting to
    • Power Point Office 367
      • You can choose a subtitle language but you have to speak really slowly and your class must be literate to be able to understanding
      • You can also record your slide – you can talk into it and draw onto the slide
        • If will play your voice and the clip later – but no subtitles for this feature
        • Good if students would like to listen to your lesson later
        • Good for those with hearing impairment too
• WT2 Translator: Redefine Translation

• Wireless headphones that offer instant translation in real time
• 36 languages
• 84 accents – 13 different British accents
• 3 translation modes
• Manual mode, auto mode hands free conversation
• Help with a sense of belonging, reduce frustration
• Emotional well being
• $239.00 USA
• Considerations
  • Wouldn’t want to rely on this all the time as it might slow the process of learning a new language

Assistive Technologies

• Been around for a while
• Free Apps, but they can be harder to use than ones that cost money
• Augmentative and alternative communication (Aac); Touch Chat
  • images on screen and can press it to hear the words, can personalize for each individual
  • EA will often help students with this App
  • May stimulate some students too much with the screen

Rewordify

• Copy and paste a sentence they don’t understand – can’t take a picture of text
• encourages students to problem solve themselves

Teacher to Student Communication

• Video modelling
• Daily schedule
  • Visual schedule of the students daily routines

Makes learning accessible for everyone! Helps increase a sense of belonging, especially if you promote students to engage with each other instead of just the EA with the student off in the corner.

Cons

• Expensive to have technology
• Increases screen time

Pros

• Increasing access to information
• Opportunities for students to make contributions as citizen scientists
• Encourages digital literacy
• Increases student engagementRisks
• Technology could detract from time outdoors if used inappropriately

iNaturalist

• Primary goal – connect people to nature
• You can upload photos and get scientists to help identify what you see
• Adds to observations and scientific data
• Great platfom for carrying out BioBlitzes!

Seek by iNaturalist

• Application created by a naturalist
• User friendly
• Hold it up with your camera, and it will tell you what it is
• Not contributing to data
• Great for kids to identify stuff

iTrack Eildlife

• Easy to use
• All the animal tracks in one place
• Costs a little bit – $8 to install
• Great tool for education

Merlin

• Free bird Identification App
• Can answer a few questions to get suggested birds or upload a photo to the app for identification
• The cornell Lab also has learning games!

Marine Debris Tracer

• Platform for tracking marine debris
• Contributes to a database of debris in ocean

Seaweed Sorter

• Created by researcher, Patrick Martone (UBC) a seaweed expert

PeakFinder

• Hold up to any mountain and it identifies the names of peaks around you
• Can help you get your sense of place when you are out hiking
• Does cost around $4.00
• Peak Visor – free
• Version, but doesn’t have as many options
  • Built in compass

Glove Observer

NASA app

• Beautiful photos from space
• Simple but full of content

Skype A Scientist

• Skype a scientist in your classroom – free service
• Resources on website to prep students beforehand
• Not just a lecture, but they do have prerecorded sessions too
• Totally free!!

Thanks to this class is “Technology Innovation in Education” I was able to use technology to create a self-reflection for my “Field Experience Seminar.”  I have learned a lot about many aspects of the competencies for teacher education, but the one I am going to focus on for this self-reflection is “Practice respect for all learners from all cultures, including specifically, Indigenous learners” in the category of “Collaboration and Community Engagement.”  I was so proud of myself for taking a risk and trying something new in technology, that I had to post it here in my class reflections.

https://youtu.be/gVkCzeaJFaY

This is my very first YouTube video that I have ever made!