Category: Weekly Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

This is the category to apply to your Weekly Reflection posts from the course.

Week 11 Reflection

April 1, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

This week’s topic was gamification and coding. This topic is very important for teachers to recognize and integrate into their classrooms. Games are very strong motivators for many students. Roblox and Minecraft are two games that could be linked to the curriculum and motivate students to learn. Similar to integrating social media into the classroom, the pros of bringing in games that students are already likely using helps to get students excited about learning. Even when creating assignments, a teacher could integrate in some Roblox or Minecraft themes and ideas to excite students. A teacher could also gamify an activity by incorporating rewards, visually appealing aspects, progression of difficulty, feedback, and limitations (all aspects of gamification). Games like Roblox and Minecraft are also a great way to help students make friends and connect with others, as students are given something they can connect with others about. The downside to gamification is that students might get used to playing games to learn (which is highly engaging), and so learning in a different way may become boring to them. This might be an issue if a lot of classroom activities are gamified, but not all.

Coding is also something that students can explore. Coding not only helps students develop computational thinking skill and problem solving, but it is also fun. It also helps students to understand technology, which is basically everywhere around them! CS Unplugged and CodeBC are two great resources to get teachers started with using coding in the classroom.

Although this week focused more on the idea of gamifying curriculum and learning standards, games are also a great way to strengthen the classroom culture of a class. This is important because in order for students to participate in curriculum-linked games, students need to feel supported and safe in their classroom community (especially if those games are to be played with other students). Below is a video that explains a few great community building games to use throughout the year with students.

What other games would be good to bring into the classroom? Let me know in the comments!

Final Reflection

March 31, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

My favourite topic I learned about in EDCI 336 was inquiry projects. Because it was one of our assignments, we were able to deeply engage with the topic. I feel like I learned a lot from exploring my own inquiry, and that knowledge will help me to guide and aid students in their inquiry projects.

I also really enjoyed learning about AI, as it is something that I was not very familiar with prior to the course. In EDCI 336, we were introduced to some AI websites and apps, and I found it fun to use those. I had the most fun exploring Craiyon and Notion, which each allow users to use AI in different ways. Below is a video that shows you how to use Craiyon, if anyone is interested in checking it out!

I found practicing some of the tech skills like screen casting and video editing to be the most challenging part of this course. Despite that it was my least favourite aspect of the course, I know it is very important to practice and have those skills to use for when I am a teacher.

I plan to bring a few aspects from this course into my teaching. Firstly, I plan to start using AI to help me in the lesson planning process to explore ideas. Secondly, I plan to bring more technology into the classroom than I had planned before. There were so many ways to use technology in the classroom, and it became apparent that it was something that would likely affect many students positively. Lastly, I want to introduce the idea of learning pods to my future students. I found that the learning pods were a good way to stay accountable for our assignments, and I enjoyed the collaboration aspect of it.

Overall, EDCI 336 was a very informative, explorative, and fun course, and that is how I want my classes to feel for my future students! What were y’alls favourite parts of the course?

Week 10 Reflection

March 22, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

Image created using DALL·E 3 model found on Easy-peasy.ai

EdCamp was super fun and helpful. I most enjoyed my conversation about managing disruptive behaviours. It was great to have a conversation with my peers about such an important topic. We have all learnt so much over the length of our program, and it was nice to have everyone contribute what they remember and know about the topic. It was a very collaborative space and everyone had a unique perspective to share.

Some key ideas regarding managing disruptive behaviors that my group talked about were:

-Making sure to get to know students-ask what they need, how to help, what’s truly going on?

-Have good communication with parents. Parents and teachers need to be on the same page for student behaviour to really improve.

-Work out a plan. This should be in collaboration with the student, their parents, and any support people involved.

-Have clear and reasonable expectations

-Provide supports, motivators, and materials that can help the student use healthier behaviours.

-As teachers, we need to lean on others for support and make sure to ask for help when we do not know what to do.

I found this video, which focuses on preventing disruptive behaviours, which is also very important when it comes to managing disruptive behaviours.

The video below is also a very informative video!

What else has been missed? There are tons of ways to manage disruptive behaviour, so comment any other ideas you have!

Week 9 Reflection

March 15, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

Learning definitions of online learning terms was interesting. I have heard of all of these terms but have not seen the definitions pointed out before. I didn’t know that blended and hybrid online learning were different. I have always just used those terms interchangeably. Blended means a mix of face-to-face and online instruction, whereas hybrid means replacing some face-to-face with online online instruction. In an addition, I liked the 5 R’s (Decolonizing and Indigenizing online learning). The 5 R’s are respect, reciprocity, relevance, responsibility, relationships.

This video focuses on flexible classrooms and is an interesting but quick watch!

I think there are many pros to building flexibility into classroom instruction. There are pros and cons to both in-person and online learning, and so flexible teaching is great for teachers to incorporate. This idea of flexible learning brings it all back to inclusion and helping all students to have access to ways that help them learn best. Students come from different backgrounds, meaning their accessibility to technology and to getting to the school are all different. Some students often travel with their families, which means they miss a lot of in-person classes. That is why having resources online can be very helpful for students. Record your lessons, post resources online, and encourage online platforms where students can collaborate and share what has happened in class. In contrast, some students do not have access to technology, and thus rely on in-person classes to receive their education. In addition, giving students choice and using engaging and creative ways to teach is so important when incorporating flexible teaching!

How do y’all plan to be flexible teachers? Did y’all find the video above helpful? Are there any other ways to apply flexible teaching that you can think of? Let me know in the comments!

Week 8 Reflection

March 8, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

Photo by Oui Si from Flickr.com

Inclusive education is very important to me. I want to create a classroom environment where everyone is welcomed and has opportunities to succeed. To do this, I plan to not only use UDL, but to also do a lot of community building in the classroom at the beginning of the year and throughout the year to make sure students value and encourage inclusion. It is my priority to have students aware of why inclusion is important and how to create an inclusive environment for everyone. I am a proponent of encouraging students to make many different friends and to include all of their peers in their play.

In addition to encouraging kindness and making friends with many different types of people, I want to engage students in the making of a classroom contract. A classroom contract helps students to become involved in the making of their own classroom rules and expectations. The making of a classroom contract often sparks conversations about inclusivity and kindness, and I think these conversations are extremely valuable to have with and between students.

I also plan to use some of Rick Hanssen’s lesson plans to empower students to become difference makers and to engage students in disability awareness. There are many resources for different subject areas, but his resources on difference making and disability awareness are really great to use in the classroom.

Lastly, one of my classmates and I recently talked about how we both really want to use classroom contracts in our future classes. I think many people in the cohort are planning to use classroom contracts and to incorporate different ways to create an inclusive environment. Another classmate mentioned having a “cozy corner” for students to have a calm area to self regulate. I think this is a great way to help create an environment where students feel supported and are given opportunities to do what they need to do for their emotional and physical wellbeing.

What kinds of practices do y’all plan to integrate into your classrooms to encourage inclusion?! Let me know in the comments!

Week 6 Reflection

February 26, 2024 / chloeritchey / 1 Comment

Photo created by Craiyon by inputting artificial intelligence in the classroom

AI is a topic that I am a little wary of, but am also interested in. There are so many pros and cons, but I think that at the end of the day, it is a valuable tool when used properly. In the context of teaching, I think AI is better used as an aid to help teachers edit and extend their resources, rather than as a replacement for teachers’ ideas and plans. In other words, I think that teachers should use AI after they’ve already made at least a draft of a lesson plan, and then use AI to enhance/perfect it. I don’t think it is a tool that can/should make lesson plans all by itself without much teacher input. Teachers need to be content curators, and part of being a content curator is being very deliberate in the resources and information that is chosen and used. When a teacher has AI come up with a lesson plan for them, the teacher is no longer being a good content curator!

One other point that was especially memorable to me in class was that AI has an inherent bias. It is trained off of specific data, and we need to think about this when asking it to produce things. On a more positive note, I loved using craiyon. It was easy, free, and very fun to use! I’m not sure exactly when it would be useful, but I am sure I will use it in the future.

I signed up and tried ChatGPT for the first time this week. I wanted to see what it would have to say about itself. I told ChatGPT to “write a short paragraph on why AI is helpful”. This is what it came up with…
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is immensely helpful because it has the potential to transform industries, streamline processes, and improve decision-making. Through machine learning algorithms, AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends that humans might overlook. This capability is particularly valuable in healthcare, where AI can assist in diagnosing diseases, predicting patient outcomes, and personalizing treatment plans. In business, AI can optimize supply chains, enhance customer service, and automate repetitive tasks, freeing up human workers to focus on more complex and creative endeavors. Additionally, AI-powered technologies like natural language processing and computer vision are revolutionizing how we interact with computers and devices, making them more intuitive and accessible. Overall, AI has the power to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more productive.”

The response is pretty good! It is crazy what AI can do.

I am curious to know what you all think about artificial intelligence in classrooms! Are you as teachers planning on integrating AI into your classrooms? If so, how? When do you think it is appropriate to use AI as teachers, and when do you think it is not? Please let me know in the comments!

Week 5 Reflection

February 15, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

I really enjoyed learning about why it is important for students and teachers to learn how to be good content curators. For teachers, it helps them build their personal learning network (PLN). For students and teachers, curating content makes them interact with the materials they choose and add their point of view to the presentation of knowledge. They learn what is the most important knowledge to know, and think critically about what they are learning. I also loved that the two sides to curation are celebration and critique!

Content Curation Process by Beth KanterAttribution (CC BY 2.0)

Notion was super easy to sign up for, and was pretty simple to figure out! I explored around and it seems like a cool resource! I think I would use Notion for when I need to organize my research and use some more complex things that Microsoft Word doesn’t create easily (like to-do lists, tables, embedding videos, etc.). I appreciate how straight forward it is, and how organized the whole layout is. It also helped push me into the world of AI, since it has an AI function. I have never used AI before, but I have been wanting to try it out. I tested it of course, and I was pleasantly surprised! I put in “write a paragraph about the pros and cons of the bc curriculum” and it did a pretty good job of completing that task. I definitely won’t be using it all the time just yet, but it was a good way to try it out for the first time.

Lastly, this week our learning pod tried out Padlet. Honestly, I find it a tad confusing but I am still exploring it. I’ll talk to the group next week and ask for their thoughts on it. Maybe they’ll have some tips on how to make it work better for me!

Week 4 Reflection

February 8, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

_{By Free Nature Stock in Nature}

I really enjoyed the discussion with the guest speaker this week, Jesse Miller. I did not realize how harsh some of the regulations are revolving teachers’ social media outside of the classroom. I have a picture of me and my family out for dinner as my Facebook cover photo. We happen to all have wine in our hands, and this talk really made me reflect on that and think about if that is something I would want professional contacts and/or students to be able to see.

I also found it incredibly interesting to find out that schools can see what goes through their networks, so sending things on social media are basically public (at least to the school). Obviously this means teachers need to be very careful with what they post or send when at school.

During our learning pod meeting this week, we talked about how we are enjoying the course, and our posts are going well so far! We also noted that being a teacher comes with many responsibilities and so it is important to know what is expected of teachers inside the schools they work at, but also outside of the schools they work at. The school act, on the bclaws.gov website goes over some of the responsibilities that teachers need to know and upkeep.

Week 3 Reflection

February 1, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

Image showing person walking in pre-marked footprints

I liked the fact that we went over ideas on what to do when we have no idea what to do in a classroom. There are a few good resources one could use, such as teacher pay teacher, google, AI. Unfortunately, AI takes a lot of information and resources from the Internet that people do not want to share for use to the public, which is very interesting to me.

I liked learning about creative commons licensed images, because I had learned about them in a first year computer science and they talked about it, but I didn’t remember much about it now. I liked getting a refresher about what I can and can’t use when creating my own content for students. Something that was completely new for me was the topic of fair use/dealing. Fair use/dealing allows educators to use material for purposes that benefit society then it is okay. Open education resources “are reusable, adaptable, and useful educational content is available if you know where and how to look.”

My screencast went well! It took me a pretty good chunk of time to figure everything out, but once I did, it wasn’t too difficult! I will definitely be using this in my future classrooms for sure. Of my learning pod group members, only one other person has finished their screencast so far, (Emma) and she said it took her a long time to do as well. We warned our other group members that it may take longer than they think it will. We also mentioned some key tips on how we made ours!

Week 2 Reflection

January 21, 2024 / chloeritchey / 0 Comments

_{Creative Commons Image}

I found the conversation about inquiry based learning to be especially interesting this week. There are pros and cons when it comes to inquiry projects in classrooms, but I personally like the idea of inquiry projects because they can foster creativity and create the opportunity for authentic student learning. A con to inquiry projects is that when given full autonomy, some students will not work as hard or feel as motivated to create a quality inquiry project. This might be because there is usually less of a strict structure on what needs to be done in an inquiry project. Regardless, I think that with the right support, any student is capable of feeling motivated to produce a quality inquiry project surrounding their interest(s).

I feel nervous but also excited about my inquiry project. I am especially excited about my inquiry project because I’ve picked a topic that will hopefully help with my mental health and the feeling of balance in my life. As stated in my inquiry post, I will be doing my inquiry project on seeing if doing 15 minutes of yoga per day will help improve my mental health.

I also wanted to mention that I think the Terms of Service Didn’t Read website (https://tosdr.org) sounds incredibly helpful and I will be using this from now on! I didn’t realize anything like that existed and I think it will be very useful for me to use as a teacher and to also share with students (with permission).