Tag: 336blog

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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).

Getting my blog setup was more challenging than I thought it would be. Something went wrong with my setup, and so I was sent an email saying that an error occurred when setting up my account. I then filled out a form and conversed for a couple days with a tech leader from opened, and they got it all setup for me. Regardless of the struggle I experienced with this, I am excited to explore the world of blogging. Reflections are always helpful for learning, and doing it via a blog is an interesting and new way for me to do it!

I was quite nervous about this course (because I am not very experienced with using tech), but now that we’ve had our first class, I have realized that I am looking forward to and am excited about EDCI 336. Despite the fact that I am not a big fan of technology, I know it is extremely important in this day and age, and so I am looking forward to learning more about the different platforms and technologies that one could use as a teacher. I am most excited to learn about the specific types of platforms and tech that I will likely be using as a teacher!

The reason I am not a huge fan of tech in classrooms is because most students are already getting a ton of screen time in their daily lives, so I do not want to add much more. In addition, tech has been unpredictable for me in the past. I also do not feel confident in my tech skills, so I have always preferred to use other ways of teaching/presenting. I do see value in using tech in classrooms though. Most students are using tech for fun outside of their classrooms, and so using tech (something they find fun) inside the classroom to teach students different topics is valuable. I think there is also a lot of creativity that can be fostered when technology is used, whether that is the teacher using tech to teach or the students using it to learn.