This class has opened my eyes to the different responsibilities we have as teachers to use tech in appropriate and accessible ways. I included designs that stood our to me from different topics. We discussed some of the pros and cons of AI, our digital foot prints, what role (if any) phones should play in a class room, tried 3D printing, and more. We also had daily check-ins, which a wanted to include as it will be something I will take with me into my own classrooms.
Thank you Rich for such a great class through out this semester!
This week Brittany Johnson came back to our class to share some classroom management strategies with us. I really enjoyed the advice, tools and strategies she told us about. We talked about SEL check ins, Modelling, soft starts and other helpful strategies.
Routines and SEL
Setting routines is a great way to manage a class and set expectations with students. Setting routines is also a great practice in UDL, since it helps set many types of students up for success. A specific routine Brittany shared with us is her SEL check in at the start and end of the day. SEL stands for social and emotional learning, and introducing something like the check ins we do every class, or the Inside Out one we did today. This is an easy way to understand what your students are bringing to school with them each day, rather than assuming all students are starting the day on a strong note.
Soft Starts
Soft starts and transitions are a way of easing students into class activities and learning. There are many different ways to do soft starts with students, the activities can be stand-alone or a way to transition into the lesson or activity planned. Incorporating soft starts into classroom routines is a way to get students on the same page and ready to learn. I have seen soft starts/transitions used in my link to practice classroom and they are super useful to both the teacher and students.
In this weeks class we discussed how incorporating games into education can come with pros and cons, coding and computational thinking. We watched a few videos and looked at some examples of ChatGTP making directions to better understand how literally computers take direction. During hands-on time we worked on some simple coding games.
Gaming in Education
Before class, my only experience with coding was in middle school. Coding class was apart of our M.A.T.H (Music, art, trades and home eco) class rotation so I only had it for 2 months a year in grade 7 and 8. We used similar websites to what we used in class today and I remember really disliking it. I think adding coding/games into lessons is very polarizing for students. while it may seem like a no brainer that a child would obviously enjoy/become more engaged though the gamification of a subject, this isn’t always the case. In my case I enjoyed the first few classes of coding but after I realized we would be doing very similar things every class I took it way less seriously and almost fully disengaged. I think it is important to include games/coding games in class from time to time but, I also think it’s important to do so with a purpose opposed to just allowing students to have 45 minutes of free time on a coding website. Much like any other subject including UDL and understanding students can show what they know in different ways is supper important to successfully incorporating coding and games into our classes.
Computational Thinking
Computational thinking is a problem solving skill that involves breaking the problem into 4 aspects and systematically finding a solution that both humans and computers can come to. The 4 aspects of computational thinking are: Decomposition, which breaks the problem down into smaller parts. Pattern recognition, which is using your prior and contextual knowledge to approach the problem. Abstraction, which is focusing on the important parts/order of operations to efficiently solve the problem. Algorithmic thinking, which is the final step and your creation of the steps that will solve the problem.
I never knew it was called computational thinking but I’ve been breaking problems down like this for years. I find I can become overwhelmed when I start something new and computational thinking makes things less daunting, both with academic and personal problems. Computational thinking can help learners in so many ways. It can help them learn how to break down school work and learn how to show thier process for subjects that require that such as math or science. It can also help them learn how to break down personal problems that come up in life such as how to share spaces/materials with classmates. Providing students with many problem solving strategies will set them up for long term academic and interpersonal success.
This week we discussed the negatives and positives of sketch-noting and infographics. Sketchnotes are a way to take personal notes that in theory should help with recall and retention. It can help with memory/recall since you are “Dual coding” the information by writing and drawing a simple sketch.
Above are my sketches from the libraries sketchnoting workshop “skill building” activity. I will definitely be implementing sketchnotes into my notes moving forward since I do tend to doodle anyways so it may as well be helpful and connected to the material.
In Class Work
I decided to make a sketchnote page geared towards english speakers interested in Spanish. I included greetings, food from Spain, common phrases, a resource to easily access Spanish movies/subtitles, where Spanish is spoke in the world and a very brief bit of info on the origins of the language.
How could sketchnotes be used among different grades?
I think with very young students sketchnotes would be helpful to aid in learning the “basics” in any subject. Adding drawing to spelling lessons would be a great way to add multimedia and dual coding to the lesson, aiding learners and giving them different ways to try and recall the information.
I think incorporating sketch notes into lessons for older students would be extremely helpful for a few reasons. First of all it shows them a way to take notes that might actually work for them. When I started university I felt so lost on how to take good notes, my teachers never taught me any note taking strategies beyond highlighting. Through teaching students different note taking strategies and styles we are setting them up for success in their futures, weather they choose to go to post-secondary, take on the work force, travel, invent, etc. as taking notes is not limited to a school setting. Sketchnoting is also a great way to practice UDL and provide learners with a different way to engage and participate.
In this week’s class we discussed accessibility. Why it’s important, who may need/benefit from accessible tech/spaces, and how we can make small adjustments to our websites to make them more accessible and user friendly.
Example 1: Accessible Photos
Pictures are an amazing tool in education. We have already discussed in class the benefits of including images in our lessons, opposed to only speaking/text. While images are great it is important to keep in mind that people struggle with a wide range of vision impairment. We should be doing everything we can to provide accessible resources so everyone can benefit from the lesson material. One way we can do this is by including alternative/descriptive text boxes.
If I was teaching someone how to make different kinds or coffee/ran a barista blog it would be super helpful to include photo descriptions for a few reasons. It would make me website more accessible and user friendly for those who cannot see the photos. It would also be helpful because all coffee looks pretty similar and you can’t rely on visuals to know what something is. By including alternative text someone can figure out exactly what they are looking at without having to read though the entire blog.
My Own photo
Example 2: Accessible Videos
Much like Rich mentioned in class, accessible videos are a great tool for both folks with and without hearing loss/issues. I have found closed captioning to be super helpful in many different scenarios from school settings, to public places and at home. I also think playback speed it a great accessibility tool. Both captions and adjustable playback speed are available through Youtube. Below I’ve included a Youtube video I made, showing a website I love to check leading up to concerts called Setlist.FM .
My own video made through screencastify
Digital Accessibility Practices Often Skipped?
A digital accessibility practice I see missed commonly, even among UVic professors, is providing documents that can be put through text to speech software. This most commonly occurs when a professor/website provides a scan/picture of a physical page(s) in a book or when a resource doesn’t allow users the copy function if they have highlighted text. I understand it chan be an annoying extra task but I think it’s only reasonable to either exclude readings which cannot be properly formatted or put in the work to fix the formatting/type everything up into a suitable format if it is a class required reading.
I definitely didn’t consider how my websites colours could cause some issues for those with visual impairments until I put my website through WAVE this week. I’m glad I know now and have changed it to be easier to see. It’s definitely something I’ll keep in mind moving forward.
This week we learned about and tried 3D design and printing. This week’s class felt more like a lab than our traditional classes, which was a nice change of pace. We met in the digital scholarship commons for a short lesson on some of the practical uses for 3D printing/design in the classroom from two guests, Brittany and Cam. After the short lesson we spent about an hour designing an item on tinkerCAD to be 3D printed, I made a keychain. (Image below, it says “Kenndawg”)
I think 3D printing/design could be a great classroom resource for many subject, especially indigenous language revitalization. If I were to create an indigenous language revitalization tool with 3D printing I would start by getting the proper education I need around the topic to help in a meaningful and indigenous led way. My current idea for this tech would be sourcing buttons that speak when you press down and can be customized. Then I’d use a resource like First Voices to download words and phrases being spoken in my school’s local indigenous language(s) and put those downloads on the buttons. Then I would 3D print the words/phrases and put them on the buttons or if that didn’t work I would try to colour coordinate in some way so students could match up the 3D prints to the correct buttons. I feel like that would be an easy and accessible way for all students to spend time hearing/learning the local indigenous language. My hope with this would mainly be to introduce students to the language and help them start recognizing common words/phrases local school elders/indigenous speakers may use when speaking to a class or assembly. I went to school on the T’Sou-ke First Nation from grade 1 to 12 and was given a lot of great opportunities throughout all stages of my education to learn about our local indigenous history, culture, practices and language. I had many presentations, assemblies, classes, etc. taught by indigenous knowledge holders, elders and teachers who would speak in our local language such as SENĆOŦEN. While I only remember a few words, it’s still more then many students ever get to learn, and me remember a few words years after I have graduated shows the impact that speaking/repeating these languages can have on the efforts to revitalize them.
I think the current negatives of using 3D printers in schools are the cost and safety which are both things that can change over time. I think the possible benefits far outweigh the cons since having access to a 3D printer in the classroom opens the door of lesson opportunities and the ability to create seemingly anything in some way, shape or form. If you are teaching kindies you can 3D print different fine motor skill activities, or teach advanced shapes and angles to middle schoolers. You could help a grade 12 students with their capstone project on 3D printing, the opportunities are endless. I’m not sure if 3D printers have become a common resource in public schools or education system as a whole yet but I hope to see them gain popularity/become more accessible during my career.
This week we focused on learning about generative AI, how to optimized generative AI use and had some discussion about the potential risks/benefits to using AI in education. I explored Perplexity during out in class practice time.
I think the largest limitation with generative AI is accuracy and the spread of misinformation. I also think the bias within AI can be potentially very dangerous and extremely limiting. While bias exists in all of us and can create many issues in day to day human interactions I think it could be generally worse in AI since AI lacks any emotional intelligence or ability to critically think. For example you may hold an internal bias against the colour blue, you absolutely despise the colour. In this scenario you are teaching someone who’s favourite colour is blue and wears a blue shirt everyday. As a reasonable adult with the ability to critically think, you wouldn’t mistreat or unfairly mark that students work because of their shirt but if an AI model was trained on your bias it may do those things or worse. Generative AI also currently uses a lot of valuable resources and energy which is expensive and possibly unsustainable.
Youtube video from Google which explains types of bias in AI
At this point in time I’m not sure what grades I want to teach but I’m leaning towards younger ages and my Link2 Practice classroom is a grade 1/2 split. I don’t think that age of students would benefit much from using AI in class but as their teacher I might. I could use AI to help develop lesson plans, create lessons for TOCs, help find behavioural/classroom management strategies for students, and find formatting for different assignments/newsletter/etc. I also think AI could come in handy when explaining brainstorming to students, however you run the risk of under developing a student’s learned ability to brainstorm without the use of AI.
Personally I haven’t found generative AI to be very helpful throughout my education. I don’t remember hearing about it or using it in high school and once I started university it was still pretty new and all my professors scared me out of even exploring it. Last year (my second year of uni) I tried it a couple times but I couldn’t figure out how to use it well, and it never gave me the answers I was looking for so I stopped using it. This seemed to be the common experience shared by the members of my learning pod, none of us had had much experience or luck in using generative AI. Until today ChatGPT was the only generative AI model any of us had tried. I hope to develop my skills around using generative AI but I also feel very uncertain about AI and it makes me a bit uneasy. I fear what the future of AI is and how it will affect the world and humanity generally. I think it’s a pretty average feeling to be a bit uneasy in the face of big tech advancements but it’s also important to stay informed. Today’s class developed my skill and comfortability with generative AI and how to use different models.
This week we learned about multimedia design principles and how we can use them to create more effective learning resources. When learning new information our short term memory can only hold a maximum amount of information before we stop absorbing the content being taught, which is referred to as cognitive overload. Multimedia design was created with the intention of reducing student’s cognitive overload and improve the ways we can deliver information. Using the multimedia principles we can create more engaging, useful and informative lessons and teaching resources. It is important to understand the principles of multimedia design as it can also contribute to cognitive overload if used incorrectly. Ways multimedia design can increase overload is by putting too much text on a slide for the class, including the narrators face/webcam in educational resources, etc. Multimedia can also be very helpful via signalling which is highlighting important concepts on the slides/presentation, spatial contiguity which refers to keeping relevant information together when being presented.
We also explored the multimedia tool H5P which is a tool that can help us to create engaging/interactive videos to add to our blogs, lessons, slides, etc. I think it would be a bit of a challenge to use with younger students and even create unnecessary distraction in class but it could be a great add-on for weekly newsletters or blog posts that keep parents/guardians informed.
Here is the video I created this week.
Multimedia theory can help us create more engaging lessons/resources since it breaks down the most effective way to keep students engaged without overwhelming them. It can also help as it provides us with simple guidelines to build slides/videos/tutorials around instead of starting with nothing, which can be a bit daunting at times.
Prior to watching “most likely to succeed” I had some idea that the school system could benefit from some reimagining but I wouldn’t have assumed the curriculum at High Tech High was the solution. The dramatic change from how a traditional classroom VS inquiry based classrooms function seems a bit intense but it also seems to have a lot of valuable aspects. It was super cool to watch the growth many students made over the year and to see them so passionate about their projects. Educators face many difficulties when trying to change pedagogy since we haven’t made significant changes in a long time, according to the documentary. Since the current system is so familiar it is comfortable to use and stepping outside of it is uncomfortable and awkward. Moving away from current pedagogy creates more room for failure and no one wants to fail. I imagine it would be very challenging for educators to manage everyone’s learning and keep track of students’ progress. It may also be challenging to determine the amount of structure a class requires for success as I’m sure it would change often depending on desired outcomes, age of students, ect. I think there are many benefits to High Tech High’s pedagogy, mainly the focus of the “soft skills” such as collaboration, confidence, critical thinking, ect. since our current pedagogy doesn’t reflect how important these skills are once you start post-secondary or join the workforce. I thought it was amazing to see the students so passionate about their work, they had a level of pride and excitement most students don’t get out of completing a worksheet. I’d be really excited to observe this kind of pedagogy in practice, however, I’d be really nervous to teach this way. It seems really nerve racking to leave so much in the students hands, I think I would end up questioning if I was doing enough.
