Category: Weekly Responses

I am a little late posting this, but last week we had a presentation by one Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt.

In this she talked about adpoting inquiry into the classroom at an elementary level. I was very happy to hear about this as I think inquiry is a wonderful way for young students to learn and enjoy themselves at the same time, as they learn best when they are enjoying the content. Additionally she covered a bit about play based learning, as for Kindergarten, most of what they do is play based learning and if it works for them, why not for older kids? Of course there is a limit to how much you can let them play, as many will choose to just do 100% playing and no learning, so there needs to be a moderation of play and study time.

As for the imquiry, she said one of the best things you can do is start off learning with a question. For example, if you are learning about the ocean, ask them what they want to know about the ocean, or what are they curious about, or what they like most about it. This will allow them to shape their learning and take an active roll in how and what the lessons are about, hopefully making them more excited to learn.

This week we had a wonderful Zoom class with Chantelle from BCEd Access.

What stuck with me the most from her talk, is that as a parent, she believes that one of the most important things for a teacher to do at the beginning of the year is to reach out to the parents of thir students to see if there is anything they parents would like them to know about the kid. Additionally, the first email home to the parents should be about something good that happened, for example, “Your son _______ was so helpful today in our ______ lesson.” This will hopefully start you, the teacher, on the right foot with your parents. Good communication with the parents is important as it shows that the teacher truly cares about the student and the family. The final point that stuck with me was that we should confer with our students about their IEP’s, so long as the parent is consenting to their child knowing about their IEP and its contents.

This week I attended a talk done by author and high school teacher Trevor Mackenzie. In his hour talk he shared his experiences with inquiry-based learning, though what stuck out most to me was his words on being a Constructivist Educator. The main thought behind this is that “the learner is an active member and contributing member of creating the learning and environment,” meaning that they should be just as much a part of the creation of their education as the teacher. I like the fact that this style of education allows the student to know better how they are being assessed and have a greater say in what they do to meat the curriculum goals set out in front of them and allows for the student to have valuable conversations with their teacher about their own education. This style of teaching just overall seems to be beneficial for students and can allow for more flexibility in how they do their work and how they are assessed.

This week we looked at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry with Jeff Hopkins. PSII is an alternative school in which students focus their time on projects and inquiry based on what they are interested in, rather than sitting for 4-5 periods a day being lectured in a regular high school. The students here, despite not learning in the traditional way, do better on average in mathematics, science, humanities, etc. Though despite the success over the past years, I do not believe their style of teaching will become wholly adopted, rather, some parts of what and how they do things will be taken and weaved into the public school system. This may include things like their focus on inquiry-based learning for certain subjects or classes, with other traditionally taught classes. I do also believe, however, that for certain students, PSII’s style of education may work better.

Another school like PSII is The Victoria School for Ideal Education. VSIE is a k-8 independent school with small class sized to maximize the amount of time the teacher can spend with each student. Additionally, they incorporate meditation into their daily schedule to help the students with their mental health, memory, academics, etc. Finally, VSIE ensures that they nurture their students understanding of the world and environment around them.

I quite liked the sketchnoting and the chapter on “Applying Multi Media Principles,” as pictures always help me connect information to something more than just words, or to real world examples. Now, I personally don’t doodle, and I am terrible at drawing, though if necessary I try my best. Though since I am not a person that likes to doodle, doing sketchnotes for everything would take away from my note taking. However, for certain things I do believe that I will try to doodle a picture if I think it will help me remember some information. Though along with this, I do hope in future to work this into my teaching and encourage my students to draw a small doodle about things they think is important or concepts they need or wish to remember.

In regards to the article on using words and graphs, I wholeheartedly agree that so many people, when doing a presentation, have pictures that in no way work with the words that are on screen, or only partially relate.Though the article says to inset pictures at the same time as writing your points, so not only can you find a picture that fits what you are saying, but you can also slighty alter what you are saying on the fly! For example, let’s say I have a point I want to talk about, and a picture I want to use, well if I’m inserting the picture while writing out my point, I can then change what I write to better match with the picutre.

Photo by airfocus on Unsplash

In this week’s class we covered various multimedia platforms, of which, the ones I enjoyed the most were openshot video editor and screencastify. For openshot, it was nice to see another free video editing program that works, even if it’s a tad clunky and hard to learn. Though it may be easier for younger students to learn how to use it compared to myself, since new programs like openshot can take me a while to learn. One thing about the program that I liked, was the fact that once your videos were uploaded to the program, it was easy to begin editing them, though it was very easy to try accidentally drag a clip vertically to a whole new line, rather than horizontally on the same line. Apart from that, it is a decent program that I think I may use in my class one day.

Screencastify is an extension to google chrome that allows you to record your screen, whatever happens and records your voice, if you give it access to a microphone. I like this program because it is an attachment to your browser, rather than having to run another program in the background to capture your screen. I also like the fact that when you end a recording, it automatically opens a small window where you can watch it back and choose to either save it or delete it. If I need to do any screen capture, I will consider using screencastify because of it’s ease of use.

In this week’s class, what stood out most to me was the conversation about appropriate use of technology in the classroom, rules about taking photos of students and proper online presence for teachers outside school.

For tech use in the classroom, it was a bit of a surprise to me that for a teacher to use an online education program, they must first get consent from the students’ parents before using it to instruct their kids. Also, that the servers used to host the program, needs to be located inside Canada. While this surprised me at first, with later thought it made more sense, as if I were a parent, I’m not sure I’d want my child’s schoolwork and grades be located on a server in the US.

Regarding photos of students, all photos should be taken on a school owned camera/device, not on a personal device, as a teacher could easily upload those photos to the internet without anyone knowing. This wasn’t as much of a surprise to me as elementary students are considered vulnerable individuals by law, and a person that is not a parent or guardian should not be uploading photos of them to the internet without consent and proof of where the photo is going and why.

The last point that stood out to me was about teacher presence on the internet. Teachers must keep a professional life on the internet as they are role models for young and impressionable people and if they do or say inappropriate things on the internet and a student sees it, said student may think such behaviour is okay. Teachers always need to be conscious of what they say, do or post online.

During this past week’s class, we talked a lot about the “Most Likely to Succeed” movie. What stuck most with me is when we talked about the teaching of many of the teachers at High Tech High and how it differed from traditional school. I loved the fact that they had a very unstructured approach to the students learning and letting them be responsible for their own learning and work is a wonderful way to prepare them for later schooling in college and university. Personally, I wish we had more of that in my high school as coming here to UVic and having so many independent projects is a little overwhelming for me. Though I am beginning to get a handle on it all. The movie also showed me that when I become a full-time teacher, I need to make sure I have faith in my students, faith that they will do their best, and learn from their mistakes to do better the next time around.