I made a worksheet, complete with pictures that I took and uploaded to iNaturalist, that I can give my future students! Of course, I will need to adapt this based on the plants that are actually on the property of whatever school I am teaching at.
Lastly, some of my colleagues introduced me to the iNaturalist-affiliated app “Seek” last week.
This app is an extension of iNaturalist that makes quick plant identification easily accessible (though is not always correct). Basically, you point the app’s camera at something in your environment and the app will identify the species you are looking at.
The app also game-ifies plant identification, providing different levels and badges for people who identify more plants. This seems like a great option for my elementary school classroom! To test the app, I pointed my phone’s camera at some of the plants in my backyard.
Right away, the app gives you a “view species” option that shows you a map of its range, its taxonomy, number of iNaturalist observations in your area and globally, and its seasonality. The information is presented in a way that children in my future elementary school classroom could understand and analyze as part of a school project. I’m glad I discovered Seek (shoutout to my classmates!) because it will no doubt be an integral part of my career as an educator.
However, I do think it is important that these apps are not presented as the be-all-end-all for plant identification. Sometimes these cameras can provide inaccurate information, and it is important for us to also teach students to use their intuition and question what AI or other information sources are telling them.
I was not sure what to expect from EDCI 336. I pictured myself struggling to get technology to work for hours and falling behind as my classmates got to learn new things. Whatever my interpretation of the course was did not include me doing well or actually managing to learn new things. Back in January, I had very little confidence engaging with new technologies. Despite seeing my classmates make beautiful Canva projects, I preferred to stick to the familiar Microsoft applications I had grown up with. I had very little knowledge of how I could use technology in a positive way to foster equity in my classroom. Yesterday, however, I took a ten-minute iMovie video for another class I was in, edited it, and was extremely proud of my final submission. I also loved doing these reflection and inquiry posts so much that I am now considering making a real blog for myself once this course is over.
For our second-last class, we listened to some group presentations. It was awesome to reflect on how much we have grown as a cohort and hear everything that my classmates have been researching. I also did some additional Google searches on some things they mentioned that intrigued me:
Padlet is one way that teachers can integrate technology in the classroom. Teachers can use it to pose a question to their students, who can then answer digitally and all the answers pop up on the screen. This would be a really good exit slip activity to assess the proportion of students who seemed to understand a lesson or exercise. Since students’ answers to the questions can be made anonymous, people should hopefully feel more comfortable to be authentic with their content.
I should try and read “The Anxious Generation”, or listen to the podcast on Spotify. I spent the last five years studying psychology, and have seen an abundance of data on the increasing mental illness prevalence among teens. I have also witnessed first-hand how much constant social media use can cause spikes in my own anxiety levels. As a teacher, I want to have some ideas of how I can be a protective factor in my students’ lives against anxiety, and some strategies about how to promote limited phone use among children. In my grade 12 history class, my teacher showed us a video about how much more creative humans could be if we were not glued to our phones. This video made a real impact on me, and I could see in the expressions of my classmates’ faces that it had the same effect on them – even, I remember, the popular students who were constantly on Snapchat during class. Most people know phone addictions are a problem – they just do not know how to deal with it themselves.
Seek by iNaturalist: The Seek camera uses image recognition software to identify living things when you point the camera at them. I’ve been using iNaturalist extensively for my inquiry project, but did not know anything about Seek! This would be a great app for me to download onto school iPads (with permission). I could create science projects for my students where they go outside and find a plant that speaks to them, aim the camera at them, and then get to follow up with some research.
Measure App on iPhone: I genuinely don’t know how I had never heard of this before. There’s a very good chance I have been living under a rock, or just have not taken a math course since 2019. One assignment I want to give my students is to try and guess the measurement of different objects around their home and classroom. Once they have guessed, I will teach students about the app and get them to see how accurate their guesses were! While rulers are a useful educational tool, I have never carried a ruler with me outside of my elementary school classroom. However, I have my phone with me nearly all the time! Enjoy the photos below of me trying out the app for the first time 🙂
In Friday’s class we also talked about the convenience of QR codes and Michael showed us how to generate one using Google Chrome. I did some research and tried to find out how to make a QR code from Safari, but was unsuccessful. To be honest, QR codes freak me out because I have heard multiple news stories about people getting scammed by them. I really have not enjoyed how much more reliant people and businesses have gotten on QR codes over the years; however, it is important that I continue to educate myself on this issue because QR code use is only going to become more prominent. They are super convenient, so I need to seek out more information about how to use them safely.
What will school look like in 2055?
If I like being a teacher, there is a good chance I will still be in the classroom thirty years from now. Thirty years ago today, I was not alive. The first smartphone had just been released, social media had yet to become a thing, and nobody had ever talked about “artificial intelligence” (to my knowledge- I was not there). The way people live has fundamentally changed in the last thirty years, and I expect this trend to continue. I hate to say it, but I expect much of what we have learned in this class to be unnecessary by 2055. Many of the ideas we hold close to our heart currently may be considered derogatory and racist by then.
I do not want to be the kind of person that grows old and holds onto her ideas from 2025. I hope that I can evolve with the technology of my time and consider every opinion and viewpoint that I come into contact with. As a teacher, I will need to be hyper-aware of new trends and softwares that could change the world, and consult with my coworkers about how best to discuss these technologies with our schoolchildren. It is important that we act early to prevent students getting addicted to potentially dangerous technologies, but we do not want to do this at the cost of excessively limiting student freedom. I know my “answer” is raising more questions or answers, but I think it is impossible for me to be able to anticipate at all what to expect. My mom, back when she gave birth to me, would never have been able to predict anything about what my university studies would look like. Thinking about 2055 is scary – but one day thirty years from now I will look back and remember the day that I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how my life would be.
Thank you for such an amazing course and please consider continuing it as an in-person class in future years… though who knows whether UVic’s physical campus will even be a thing in 2055!
I hope you noticed my bad pun and realized this post would in some way involve tomatoes. My mom and I often joke that we are the last people that could be relied upon to keep a garden alive. Yet, during the latter half of this inquiry project, I’ve been going on about creating a community garden as if I know exactly what I’m doing.
Right now I don’t have the resources to build a full garden because I am about to move out of my student house and then live in Sweden for two months during my practicum. But I was gifted some tomato seeds this week, and decided to start super small. I found some soil in my backyard, put it in a plant pot, and sprinkled the seeds on top. Currently the jar is sitting on my windowsill, which will hopefully give the seeds enough sunlight to grow. The best part is that since my mom is going to be looking after the plant while I am abroad, I can blame it on her if it dies! (Just kidding… of course).
I checked out this website for information that can help my new seeds get the best chance of attaining life. It informed me that tomatoes are the most popular plant in home and community gardens, and are a great place to start for beginner gardeners. For future gardening projects with my students, it seems like a good place to start is with seedlings rather than seeds. This way somebody else does the work of keeping seeds alive for the first few weeks. However, buying seedlings can be quite expensive, making this a more financially inaccessible option. Tomatoes require rich soil in a full-sun location (meaning at least 6 hours of direct sun every day). It will be difficult for me to grow tomatoes from inside my student house, but I am worried of the risk of deer if I plant them outside. Plus, since I am moving soon, I don’t want to plant my tomatoes in the backyard and let future tenants steal the fruits of my labour! (Pun might have been intended).
Unlike the plants I currently have – cacti and succulents – tomatoes need A LOT of water. I will need to constantly monitor the soil to make sure it is moist! Once (if) the tomato plant starts growing, I will need to buy feed for it. I also found it interesting to read about how the foliage of tomatoes turns yellow-green when it is time to be fed. As this will be the first vegetable I attempt to grow, I was relieved to hear that it will be giving me visual feedback about some of its needs.
Thinking ahead to my future, here are some tips for my future vegetable garden! All of the information below can be found on this website.
Location
Needs a lot of sun – ideally over 6 hours of direct sun per day!
Does not get a lot of wind: want pollinators to work effectively, and young plants to avoid getting blown over!
Easy Vegetables To Grow
Lettuce
Radishes
Tomatoes
Beets
Chard
Spinach
Kale
Peas
I need to also make sure to leave some space for paths around the garden so that I can weed the area without stepping on other plants.
Snorkelling Update
Looking back, it was ambitious of me to choose snorkelling for my inquiry project. One of the times that we went it was very snowy and cold, and to be totally honest it very much killed my joy for the activity. My wetsuit is meant for kayaking and is not very thick, and I think this will be much more suited for summer snorkelling. However, I learned a lot from starting my inquiry project out with snorkelling, and I am really excited to be a student of the sport(?) for years to come.
Looking forward on some goals for myself, I found a book featuring places to snorkel around Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. These will be good bucket-list items for when I return home from Sweden!
Some highlights:
Iron Mine Bay in East Sooke Park! My roommates are actually going there tomorrow, so I will get some insider tips from them 🙂
Clover Point – just off Dallas Road! This goal will be easier to take off the list since it is much closer to where I will be living.
Tribune Bay on Hornby Island. This bucket-list item kills two birds with one stone as I have also never been to Hornby and have been meaning to go.
(Not part of the book) I want to go snorkelling in Whytecliff Park, which is in my hometown! Whytecliff was the ultimate summer spot for me as a teenager, and I would love to explore it in a new way once I enter adulthood.
For our final presentation, I was in a group with Charlotte B, Tess, Aubrie, and Brooklyn. Our driving question was “What are the best technological platforms for students struggling with reading?”.
We all had our own reasons for why we wanted to pursue this topic. For me, it was due to my growing awareness of my past with hyperlexia and what this could mean for my future as an educator. I learned to read very effortlessly, yet struggled with spoken language acquisition and actually attended a preschool for nonverbal children. As such, my relationship with reading is not normal, and I have very little understanding of how to support students who struggle with literacy.
I wanted to learn about some technologies I can lean on to help me scaffold developing reading abilities – particularly for people with learning disabilities or English language learners. Technology is not a perfect teacher, but neither am I, and this is why I think we will make a great team.
Please consider watching our educational podcast!
Here is the transcript for our podcast:
Script:
Hello, I’m Charlotte, I’m Erica, I’m Tess, I’m Brooklyn, and I’m Aubrie.Today we will be explaining our tech project where we focused on the most accessible and best resources for students with learning disabilities or ELL students. Our inquiry question is: What are the best technological platforms for students struggling with reading?
Erica: Every elementary school classroom will be filled with English language learners or students with IEP’s. While some students will have diagnosed IEP’s, many others could probably qualify for one but have not had a psychological assessment done for various reasons or are on waitlists, which can be years long. There is a mismatch in the amount of students needing extra help and the number of teachers or support staff available in the classroom to provide this specialized assistance. With recent surges in technology use, attention has been turned to which technologies can be used in the classroom to provide help for students at times where teachers are not available.
Reading and numeracy are widely considered the two fundamental skills that children are expected to gain when they are in elementary school. Students are expected to come out of elementary school with basic literacy and numeracy skills, as this will set them up for success in high school and beyond. For this project we decided to focus on technologies we can use to support our students’ literacy abilities in the classroom. Reading is an important skill for children to learn because it can improve critical thinking skills, build vocabulary, enhance conversational skills, role-plays empathy and perspective taking, strengthens writing, language, and communication abilities, and can even reduce stress, build memory, and help with sleeping. While some people light up when you ask them to read a book, reading can be a very daunting skill for some – especially if they have a learning disability or are not fluent in English. In an elementary school classroom, where so much of a person’s academic and life success is influenced by reading ability, how can teachers feasibly help struggling students alongside meeting the demands of the curriculum and the rest of the class?
Charlotte: Text-to speech software is a good way to engage struggling readers in the classroom. Many students’ reading difficulties come from having trouble staying focused or processing large chunks of text, as well as not understanding how to decode a word. Text-to speech software will be useful for students with dyslexia and/or ADHD, in addition to English language learners.
Now I will explain some other recommended apps and software. To start, we looked at some extensions and apps such as Ghotit, Learning Ally, Speechify, and Focus at will. Speechify is an app and Chrome extension that reads any text. It has over 200 voices, can clone your own voice, has 60 language choices, can increase the speed of what is read, can provide summaries using AI, and is able to scan texts using a phone and convert to a PDF that is read aloud. Ghotit performs grammar and punctuation corrections. Learning ally produces a library of educational audiobooks. Focus at will provides playlists for people with ADHD to listen to while trying to focus, has a timer function and tracks productivity.
Google Read and Write helps read things out loud, can form a vocabulary list of unknown words, provides photos of unknown words and descriptions, proofreads work, can translate words, and can be used to highlight documents. Some other resources are Otter AI, which is a recording and transcription service. To use, you open your web browser and press record and then otter automatically transcribes what is being said. You can then organize and edit the transcriptions and recordings. Google docs also has a dictation mode as well as microsoft word to allow for speech to text if students have difficulty writing. Microsoft Edge’s Read Aloud allows you to change the pace and sound of the reader’s voice, enlarge text, or increase space between text.
There are also features in apple products that are unknown to many people which can help as well. For example, on apple devices, there is spoken content for macs and ipads accessible which has your device speak text on the screen whenever a keyboard shortcut is used. You can also customize the keyboard shortcut, have the text highlighted as it is read aloud, and change the speaking rate. Additionally, most web browser support some type of reader mode which simplifies the web page by removing unnecessary images, makes the text uniform, and changes the background and foreground colours. Microsoft edge has immersive reader, apple safari has reader, mozilla firefox has reader view, and google chrome has reading mode. All of these provide text to speech, text reformatting and colour controls. Turning on reader mode may help simplify what needs to be read and helps with distractibility too.
Brooklyn: Accessibility tools, like speech to text, can help empower students and give them confidence when engaging with written texts, allowing them to better connect with the content. Text-to-speech software removes the barriers students with learning disabilities may have when it comes to reading, ensuring that students are not barred from learning at the front door. Keeping tools like text-to-speech easily accessible to all students in the classroom ensures that students with reading learning disabilities do not feel singled out in reading tasks and are equal participants in any class learning. When all students are able to easily comprehend text material it becomes easier to facilitate inclusive class discussions, which are key to enhancing student understanding.
However, a potential con to these reading accessibility resources is that if students become too reliant on using them, they might not ever develop full reading abilities. Technological aids for reading should be used as a tool to supplement reading abilities, rather than a replacement for reading skills. It is also important to note that while students can use this to help them engage with content, they should still be given the time and support to grow their reading and comprehension skills without the use of text-to-speech. Teachers should pick when the use of text-to-speech is appropriate in classrooms based on the current learning objectives. If the focus of the reading is the content within it, say it’s a science or social studies text, then students can use text-to-speech to help them better understand the content, however, if the focus of the lesson is to work on reading and comprehension skills, then the use of text-to-speech will only impede students from practicing.
Tess: In my placement in a 3/4 split classroom, students would use speech-to-text software (Google Read & Write) to help write their creative writing stories. While this made the recording of their work faster, as many had just learned how to type, there were challenges with the tools presented. The dictation would sometimes record homophones, it could not pick up made-up names (for fantasy stories), and it would add or remove punctuation when not wanted. While these softwares were designed to make writing accessible, the students weren’t seeing their stories on the page. And for those who couldn’t yet read fluently, they weren’t able to see the errors. Additionally, students would get frustrated when the dictation would not pick up their voice—often leading to them speaking loudly or yelling into the microphone to get the tools to register their voice. For students who have accents or speech impediments, the dictation tools pose more of a barrier.
These made it difficult as a teacher to see where the students’ progress was: were errors in the students’ work or did they come from the technology? In order to finalize the proofreading of the stories before they were printed, we found it necessary to sit with the students and have them dictate the story they had hand-written, so that we could live-edit the dictated document. This additionally frustrated students, as they felt that all the work they had put into typing and dictation was completely overwritten. When speaking to the teacher about the use of dictation tools like Read & Write, she spoke about how it was intended for accessibility (and was accessible in some situations), in many cases it made the tasks more inaccessible. This does not mean that these tools should be removed, but instead opens the conversation for how these tools can be improved for accessibility.
Moving from writing, a reading accessibility tool I observed was the Epic Books website. This was a combined eBook and audiobook resource bank, where students could both read the eBook and listen along to the audiobook. I mainly observed this tool being a supplement to silent reading—allowing students who were not yet able to read independently to still engage in solo silent reading. Providing the combination of the eBook and audiobook meant that the reading was not completely overwritten. Instead, the tools acted as a supplement and made the activities more accessible to students of all reading levels. Combined, this experience showed how accessible reading and writing tools can be implemented in the classroom—as well as what questions we should ask of the tools in order to improve them to support all students in the best way possible.
Aubrie: An area that I am passionate about but feel has received very little attention throughout our program is the inclusion tools we have access to for our English as an Additional Language Learner students. Although the first translator that often comes to mind for people is Google Translate, this service does not use proper grammar, idioms, or tense.
Instead, the best free service I recommend to other educators to use with EAL students is DeepL, which is a highly accurate translation and dictionary platform that helps students understand new vocabulary and grammar structures. There are many reasons why I recommend DeepL as a suggested resource for teachers. For starters, DeepL provides more contextually accurate and natural-sounding translations, making it more reliable for academic use. It captures nuances in language, helping students understand not just the words, but the meaning behind them. DeepL allows students to click on a word within a translation to see multiple possible meanings and examples in context. This helps students Learn how a word is used in different situations, choose the most appropriate translation, and develop a stronger understanding of English vocabulary. DeepL also edits grammar and sentence structure, which helps sentence construction over time.
In regards to implementation in the classroom, DeepL helps students translate classroom text into their native language, check their English writing, and rephrase sentences. Deep L can also be combined with speech-to-text tools, and teachers can pre-translate difficult vocab.
Conclusion: To sum up, technology has made reading more accessible for all students, regardless of their challenges. For students with dyslexia, Text-to-Speech tools like NaturalReader, Microsoft Edge Read Aloud, and Speechify provide much-needed support. For ADHD, tools like Reader Mode and transcription services like Otter.ai help with focus and organization. For EAL students, Speech-to-Text tools like Google Docs Dictation and translation tools like DeepL help improve both writing and comprehension skills. With so many tools available, students can find support that meets their needs. We encourage you to explore these options and see how technology can make reading easier for everyone!
Last weekend was BIG for advancing my inquiry topic. On Friday in class we talked about different apps you can use to help students engage with nature. I’ve been so focused on discovering iNaturalist and its multiple capabilities that I totally overlooked different programs that can help students identify various elements of their surroundings. Not all students will be interested in plants – I know I never was until moving in with my current roommates. Our guest speaker helped me to realize that I cannot just be encouraging iNaturalist as a way to engage with nature – there are so many other ways to get children enthusiastic about the great outdoors, and I should be attentive to each of my students’ interests so that I can find different technologies that appeal to them. For instance, there are websites out there that can help students learn the constellations above them. Those more interested in geography or history can benefit from looking at Google Earth to learn more about different places around the world. I won’t go on too much about this as you can scroll down to see the list of nature-based apps I made for my reflection post. Technology and nature do not need to be in separate spheres – they are intertwined.
After Friday’s class I had fun using ChatterPix to make some of my wildlife pictures talk!
On Friday I took so many pictures during our class trip to the Finnerty Gardens. I was pretty hopeless at identifying plants so I took lots of photos to upload to iNaturalist. Then I continued to immerse myself in Victoria’s plant life by supporting my friend Christina, who was hosting a plant identification scavenger hunt at nearby Swan Lake. It has been a while since I have been forced to actively examine my surroundings to see if I can identify any of the plants or animals, and it was cool to use multiple different resources (yes, including technology and the Internet!) to try and figure out what was what.
Here is a picture of our scavenger hunt checklist!
My friends and I found almost all of them. See the worksheet I made depicting our findings below.
A highlight of my weekend was learning that the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary exists. After talking to Christina and taking a look at their website, I discovered that they frequently host school groups of all ages for education sessions. Their website for school groups even links which science curricular competencies are targeted in each education session, making it easy for teachers to see which option is most relevant for them! I am still learning so much about wildlife myself, and if I end up teaching in SD61 I will be looking into bringing my students to Swan Lake for one of these sessions. Since I did not grow up in Victoria, hearing about various local options for class field trips is important!
Update on iNaturalist:
After uploading 23 photos of wildlife to the app last night, I went on today to find out that for the first time, many of my identifications were approved rather than corrected by other community members. I finally feel like I am actually learning and progressing. One person commented on one of my findings to give me tips for future uploads, which I appreciated.
Here is a screen recording of all my uploads from the weekend.
I had some fun with the Book Creator website that our guest speaker told us about last class. On Friday, we talked about different ways that technology can be integrated with outdoor education. I’ve always thought about technology as being an indoor activity, but finding ways to integrate phones and computers into the outdoor environment may be the key in this day and age for helping students fall in love with nature.
Please enjoy my masterpiece! As you can see, I had way too much fun with some of the stickers I have created on my phone. I just discovered how to make stickers from photos so I will be using and abusing this capability for a very long time 🙂 I was not allowed to import the file as a book, so I have chosen to screenshot each page instead.
This image, and additional information about gardening with native plants, can be found here
One way that students (and teachers!) can apply their plant literacy is by creating a classroom or school garden. I was thinking of creating a class project where students need to choose one of the ten plants in the above picture, which are all indigenous to Victoria. Students would need to research the plant’s origin, range, predators what its leaves and flowers look like, and whether it grows best in sun or in shade. This project could be interdisciplinary:
Science: Learning about the plant in context of its ecosystem provides an opportunity to talk about food chains, energy transfer, and biomes.
English: Students can write sentences or paragraphs (depending on age or writing ability) about their plant. To add a creative twist to the project, I want to encourage students to write a short story from the perspective of their plant!
Social Studies: Students can look into the history of the plant in context of Indigenous Canadians: how did the different First Nations groups of Victoria/Saanich interact with the plant in the past, and how have these relationships continued into the present?
Art: Students can draw a picture of their plant, either stand-alone or as part of their short story assignment for English.
This project aims to reinforce the following First Nations Principles of Learning:
Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors. By connecting with plants that are indigenous to the Victoria area and researching Indigenous Canadians’ relationships to these plants, students are becoming more in tune with their local landscape and with the Indigenous community.
Learning recognizes the role of Indigenous knowledge. Much of what we know about the care and well-being of these ten plants has come from Indigenous knowledge-bearers, and it is important that both teacher and students keep this in mind.
Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place). As I am learning more about the plants in my new city, I feel closer to Victoria. I hope that students will also feel more connected with their school and outdoor landscape after researching their plant and helping with the garden.
Learning involves patience and time. It will take a while for students to see the fruits of their labour in the garden – maybe even a few years!
Once students have researched their chosen plant, I will introduce the idea of creating a classroom garden with these plants in it. I hope that the students will be very invested in this project, firstly because gardening is fun but also because they are experts about one of these plants and will likely have more of an interest in caring it and protecting it from predators or weather. Following completion of the project, I will try my best to establish a gardening club at my school because it would be a lot of work for just me to maintain this garden. If I can get the students involved and excited about plants, they will feel more connected with their environment and school community.
Because I have never had a green thumb myself, I researched some gardening tips for me to discuss with my students:
The three essentials are food, water, and shelter. (This isn’t too different from ourselves, another example of how interconnected we are with nature!)
If there are deer in the area, keep in mind which plants the deer do not like and make sure these are spread around the garden. Deer will avoid salal, Oregon grape, sword fern, wooly sunflower, and kinnikinnick.
Don’t take things out of the garden just because they are rotting! Rotting foliage provides a habitat for many organisms including squirrels, woodpeckers, and salamanders.
Mulch coming from decomposed leaves can make a great fertilizer for native plants!
Plants that are appropriate for a shady moist site: false lily, sword ferns, bleeding heart, Columbine, camas.
Plants that are appropriate for a sunny dry site: fescue grass, Oregon grape, nodding onion, shore pine, coastal strawberry, kinnickinnick
From my research, I compiled a list of further resources for learning about native plants:
To completely change the topic and make this already long blog post even longer, I wanted to recap this week’s iNaturalist journey. Two people have commented on my observations from last week disagreeing with my identification, and saying they think it is something else. I found this interesting because since I don’t know much about how to identify plants, I usually just take iNaturalist’s AI-generated recommendation. This is yet another example of how AI is not perfect, and in many ways the experience of human experts is much more reliable and valuable than relying on AI-based tools. Next week when I upload my observations, I will try to spend more time and care when identifying the plant.
My roommate’s photo of a crab she saw snorkelling also got featured on iNaturalist’s Instagram page! It was such a cool moment for all of us, and definitely got me thinking about how iNaturalist could inspire my students to look more into photography or wildlife-based occupations.
Here is my reflection post, in video format, from Friday’s lecture. I really enjoyed hearing from the two guest speakers from the BCEd access society and clearly have much to consider about this topic in my teaching career moving forward!
I had planned on asking ChatGPT to generate an image of an inclusive classroom and analyzing what the image looked like. Knowing what AI considered this to look like would have been an interesting exercise. However, I do not have an account with ChatGPT and to generate images it is asking me to log in. Oh well!
(The above PowerPoint collage is a sneak peak of all the nature I saw today, in my daily life)
Perhaps you noticed it has been a while since my last inquiry post. Or maybe nobody has noticed, and I just actively drew attention to how much I have been slacking on my inquiry project. The truth is that the last few weeks have been really hard. So much is up in the air for my practicum (which is across the world in Sweden), we have so much to do in all five of our classes, and I had to complete over 60 report cards for my swim coaching job by tonight. I felt like I had no time for a snorkelling trip or cool hike where I could see pretty plants and upload them to iNaturalist.
Recently we completed a nature literacy lesson for our PE class, and I had to observe Taryn, Jade, Makayla and Charlotte S teach a lesson. They explained to the students how immersing oneself in nature can help people of all ages deal with their stress. I realized that just because I do not have the time to do a grand trip to somewhere super amazing does not mean I cannot experience the benefits of nature right in my backyard. A lot of value lies in being able to identify different aspects of nature that I walk past on a daily basis. So, I decided to spend a day taking pictures of all the nature I observed. The effects of this activity on my mental health were surprising – even the simple act of stopping for a minute on my walk to school to observe a plant I liked felt calming. While I still haven’t figured out my backpacking trip to Norway and I have an essay due in 23 hours, I feel so much lighter after taking just twenty-ish minutes out of my day to look at plants and reflect on them.
I uploaded all my pictures to iNaturalist just now, and tried to identify as many of them by myself as I could. Now I am waiting for experts to either confirm my identifications or suggest something new. As stressful as last week was, it was also a critical point in my iNaturalist journey because my roommates told me to use the computer rather than phone version of the app. Using the webpage rather than the iPhone app is WAY more fun – you can follow friends, see your profile, and get a grid display of all the observations you have seen. I followed my three roommates, so now I will get notifications whenever they post something – a great opportunity for me to improve my plant and wildlife literacy! I also hope to encourage my future students to follow each other on iNaturalist.
Whenever I upload a photo, it asks me to suggest an identification for the species. I really enjoy this part of the process because I need to look long and hard at my photo to compare it to the species they are suggesting. Something I just thought of today is that plants are often most well-known for what they look like when they are flowering – but at this time of year there are not many flowers yet, and I want to be able to identify plants based on their leaves rather than just what they look like over spring and summer. Despite working on species identification for 9 weeks now, I am slightly discouraged to feel like I’m still at the beginning of my plant identification journey. I think that using the webpage version of iNaturalist and having followers that hold me accountable to posting will be good for me.
Here is a screen recording of the iNaturalist website:
Identifiers page: shows the people who have suggested potential identifications for my photos. @gracewells and @emlim are the top contributors to my page right now!
Species page: shows the different species I have identified
Observations page: shows all the observations I have published to iNaturalist. There is some overlap with the species page, meaning that some of the pictures I have published belong to the same species.
Here are the 16 observations that I just uploaded today – so pretty! All these plants were spotted either in Victoria or Vancouver, since I took the ferry home on Friday. Next up is to try documenting a nature day that is only in Victoria!
I was trying really hard to think of a possible identification for a plant with pink flowers that I had seen, and came across this picture on iNaturalist – it was exciting to find a plant with my name in it! It apparently grows around here so I will definitely be looking out for Erica carnea.
I was intrigued by the lecture we had today, and really enjoyed being there, because we discussed the implications of something I feel very uncomfortable by: AI. It took me two years after ChatGPT came out for me to make my first search, and even now I use the technology very sparingly. When I think about AI, my instinct is to run away – but from what? AI is all around us now, and I can choose to opt out of certain softwares but can never fully escape the tentacles it holds society by.
Shortly after starting the PDPP program, I participated in a debate in one of my classes about the role of AI in elementary schools. I was forced to stop running away from AI and face the fact that as a future teacher, I need to take responsibility to learn about AI and its associated benefits and weaknesses. The more that I expose myself to AI, the more equipped I will be to teach my students how to be critical consumers of the software. I hate to admit it, but I was very impressed by the first ChatGPT search I made. It generated so many ideas – instantaneously – for games I could play with Grade 6 students. I can totally see why so many people resort to AI. We are all so busy, and turning to ChatGPT or other AI technologies can be so tempting as a method of getting through all of life’s demands.
Some Reasons I (Very Much) Dislike and Boycott AI:
Environmental Implications. I get the sense that most people I meet have never realized just how much AI is destroying the environment. In class we talked about how in just 24 hours, ChatGPT uses a comparable amount of water to if the entire Belgian population (almost 12,000 people) flushed the toilet at the same time. And that statistic only includes one form of AI! I understand that just about everything we do has an environmental implication, but what frustrates me is that humans have created AI right when the global climate crisis is coming to a head. The only way we can combat this crisis is by making difficult life choices to reduce our environmental impacts, rather than becoming reliant on new technologies that wreak havoc on the environment. I really hope that in the next few years, people become more aware of AI’s environmental impact and put certain safeguards in place (since AI is never going to go away at this point, the best we can hope for is that it is more closely monitored). However, I am not hopeful that these essential changes will happen due to the new American administration’s priorities.
2. AI promotes laziness among students, and makes it difficult for teachers to assess whether a person’s work is actually their own. I got through my undergraduate degree by staying up late into the night writing and proofreading essays, assisted by my friends who would order pizzas to Stauffer Library at 12 in the morning. My five years of undergrad helped me form a positive work ethic that I hope will benefit me for years to come. Long hours studying taught me patience, disappointing grades on assignments I really invested in taught me grit and resilience, and positive academic feedback gave me confidence and self-efficacy. I do not think I would be able to thrive in the real world if my degree had been earned by ChatGPT, yet so many more people are turning to AI to get out of doing their schoolwork. As a teacher, this trend is scary because it means we can never be sure who is putting in the work. I want to trust my students, but it is hard when using AI to complete an assignment is slowly becoming normalized. It is especially important that elementary school teachers educate their students about the benefits and burdens of using AI so that young children grow up understanding how to appropriately use the software to help them.
3. AI has scary negative implications. AI has the potential to drastically escalate the amount of fake news already flying around the Internet. It is easier said than done to look at the media we consume with a critical lens – many people neglect to take these steps in our go-go-go world. As an example, somebody told me in a passing comment once that the singular for ‘rice’ is ‘rouse’. Looking back this statement is quite obviously fake, but I was not really paying attention when I heard this comment and my brain took it as fact rather than stopping to analyze what I had heard. For years, I had this incorrect assumption in my mind just because I was preoccupied when I first heard the information. The same phenomenon can happen when people look at AI-generated sources. While it might be quite apparent that images or text have been artificially fabricated, not everybody will notice – and it is scary to think about what the potential implications could be. I often think about the story one of our guest speakers told us where fake images of a teacher were fabricated to falsely frame them for inappropriate conduct. AI puts everybody in an extremely vulnerable position, and it is sometimes impossible to prove that something is or is not real.
I really liked the way that Michael ran the lecture about AI, talking about both the benefits and costs of using the software. He answered all our questions very well, and I agree with many of the personal opinions he has about different types of AI. My favourite part of the lecture was when we discussed recommendations for teachers living in this AI-driven society. Here are some things that I was thinking about for my future practice:
As I mentioned in class, students always want to understand WHY there are rules in place. I will not tell my students ‘don’t use AI’ without explaining a clear rationale behind why an assignment is important for them to do without technology. If all the work I assign students has a clear benefit for their learning, my hope is that most students will be motivated away from getting somebody (something?) else to do their work.
I also will try and make sure that my assignments are as engaging and fun as possible. If my students are really excited about what they are learning and working on, the chances of them using AI are much lower.
I also want to make sure that my students feel self-efficacy to do the assignment. Many of the times my friends have turned to AI for academic purposes is because they are confused or do not know where to begin. By preparing my students in advance, making myself available for support, and giving clear instructions, I hope that students will feel equipped to do the assignment themselves rather than lean on AI.
To encourage critical consumption of AI, I want to give my students the chance to interact with the technology and see where it can sometimes be incorrect. For instance, if they ask certain questions to AI and the answers don’t seem well thought out or fully true, students will realize that getting AI to do homework for them does not always lead to academic success.
Many of my assignments will be done during class time so that I can monitor my students, make sure they are understanding the material, and answer questions they may have. By doing all their work while they are at school, my students will have fewer opportunities to avoid doing their work by using ChatGPT.
Out of pure curiosity, I pasted my notes from our lecture today into the AI software Notebook.lm. The website generated a 20 minute podcast about the implications of the rise of AI, all from the 2-3 pages of notes I took this morning. I don’t expect anybody to listen to this fully (even I didn’t, to be honest), but I was pretty freaked out to hear AI talking about its own negative implications.
(Update: I can’t seem to attach the podcast, but I’m sure you get the idea!)
