Category: Weekly Reflections

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 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.

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!

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:

1. 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.

• In fact, ChatGPT probably deserves a spot at some graduation classes…

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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!)

Michael opened our class this morning by telling us not to worry if we forgot our tents… good thing I didn’t bring mine to school for this camping trip! Today we participated in an EdCamp activity where we each wrote down some burning questions/concerns we have about our future careers, and then voted on some specific topics to focus on. I wrote “How do I manage the classroom when I have a ratio of 1:25?”. My peers also brought forward great questions, including:

• How do I teach on a budget?
• How much screen time should I be allowing in my classroom/how much technology is too much?
• How do I deal with problematic parents?
• Is it worth gaining additional qualifications to get a 5+ pay grade?
• How do I implement a successful gardening program at my school?
• What are different mindfulness strategies to incorporate into my classroom?

My topic, along with three others, ended up being selected for the EdCamp activity. At first I felt pretty awkward because only two people decided to join my group; however, having a more intimate group led to some very productive and personal discussion! Today was a great introduction to EdCamp, but I hope that the next time I participate in one I will have more time to talk and that it will be easier to switch groups. While I was happy to be able to discuss my question more closely, I really wanted time to also delve deeper into the other issues that my classmates brought up. 

Out of everything we talked about in our small group discussion, Jayme, Jessie, and I decided to highlight the three most important points. 

1. Establish Clear Expectations and Routines
   1. A great way to do this is through co-creation of a classroom agreement. At the beginning of the year, I can ask my students to brainstorm a class code of conduct and sign their names on it. They will be more motivated to follow the rules since they played a part in making them, as they feel greater personal responsibility and understand why they are important. 
   2. I want to create routines for different transition activities I have with my students, like Simon Says (I already use this with many of my swim groups), music dance breaks, and choral responses (ex. I say ‘Who lives in a pineapple under the sea’ and they say ‘Spongebob Squarepants’). As often as possible, I want to incorporate movement into my transitions as this is a great way to help students refresh their brains and bodies before the next activity. 
2. Maximize Student Engagement
   1. Something I really liked during my Link2Practice was the students’ use of whiteboards. Using whiteboards rather than pen and paper lowers the stakes of the activity, as it is so easy to erase things and make changes! Whiteboard use is also an excellent use of formative assessment; teachers can ask questions and then assess understanding based on what students write on their whiteboards.
   2. As much as possible, I want to incorporate student choice into my activity planning. For example, I can give students a selection of possible short stories and get a classroom vote for which one I read aloud to the class. Rather than providing open choices, I want to let my students choose from a selection of predetermined options – this will allow me control over what I am choosing to teach students, while letting them choose a choice that will be the most engaging to them.
3. Build Strong Relationships and Community
   1. It is really important to me that I get to know all my students as human beings, and learn what makes them special. In the first week of school, I will assign my students a get to know you project so that I understand more about who they are as people. Students will respect me more and be more motivated in school if they see that I am interested in their lives outside of the classroom. My grade 5 teacher also got us to write in a weekly journal, where I often discussed my weekend plans – I loved getting to tell my teacher about my life, and will definitely be implementing this technique.
   2. My classroom’s mental health is also extremely important to me. Every morning, I hope to offer a daily check-in where my students tell me (most likely using technology) how they are feeling. The beluga check-in we did in class this morning is a very good way of accomplishing this! Understanding my students’ mental health is a great way of fostering community in my classroom because it will help me meet them where they are at and perhaps make changes to my plans based on energy levels if necessary. I also want all my students to know that my classroom is a supportive, open space where they can always come to me for help if needed. 

In other news, for my science class with Erika I used my knowledge from this class to design some worksheets. Our experiment was about reaction time, and we asked students to complete it 5 times before filling out the discussion questions on the back side. I really loved designing these 🙂

Over the last few days, my mind travelled back in time as I tried to answer your question: Was there a specific video or multimedia source that stood out to you the most as a child?

When you asked us this over Zoom, my mind went to all the obvious answers: Bill Nye, John and Hank Green, various grammar videos, etc. These resources are useful and I want to use them all in my future classroom, but almost every student my age knows what I’m talking about when I bring up these names. I wanted to think of some unique things that teachers from my past did with multimedia.

When I saw an eagle in the sky while I was camping, I remembered a super memorable webcam I watched 15 years ago… and hence this video was born.

I cannot imagine going through my ~18 years in school without the support of my trusty assistants, Word and PowerPoint. My sister and I learned how to type by working together to write pages of Word Documents that ended up being a mix of random letters blurred together. In grade 7, I – like many others – discovered the art of adding transitions to my PowerPoint slides. I felt deeply offended when my teacher told me it was unprofessional to use twelve different transitions in the same presentation. For those wondering, my original go-to was “Page Curl”.

As somebody who sometimes struggles to get used to new software, I was worried that I would have to learn a lot of technologies to be a successful teacher. Yesterday’s lecture showed me that I could not have been more wrong! Despite all the flashy technologies targeted at teachers, most lessons can be accomplished by sticking with the basics. I was really excited to see Michael demonstrate all the different ways to utilize PowerPoint and Word within an elementary school classroom. Both are also usually easily convertible into Google Slides presentations, making it easier than ever to share resources with other teachers.

I got inspired by yesterday’s class and decided to play around with PowerPoint to make some of my own worksheets. Each one was designed with a specific curricular goal in mind – who knows, maybe I will use these in a real classroom one day! I also welcome feedback from anyone who comes across this blog post about how to make these better.

Grade 3 Mathematics

• Big Idea: Development of computational fluency in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers
• Curricular Competency: Develop mental math strategies and abilities to make sense of quantities
• Content: Multiplication and Division Concepts, Number Concepts up to 1000

Grade 3 is the first year that students get introduced to their times tables. While worksheets like this one seem to be getting phased out within elementary school classrooms, I believe that repetition of skills is sometimes key to mastery. I intend to use this worksheet to cement knowledge into students’ brains after doing several fun multiplication-related activities.

Grade 3 English/Language Arts

• Big Idea: Using language in creative and playful ways helps us understand how language works
• Curricular Competencies: Use sources of information and prior knowledge to make meaning, develop and apply expanding word knowledge
• Content: Writing processes, word patterns/families, sentence structure

I designed this worksheet for students who have spent the last few days exploring the “ough” grapheme. Looking at the list of words below, you can tell this is a hard one for students to master because of how many different sounds the grapheme can make. Either before or after the worksheet, teachers can compare the different words within the bubble and discuss which ones sound the same and which sound different.

Grade 5 Science

• Big Idea: Multicellular organisms have organ systems that enable them to survive and interact with their environment
• Curricular Competencies: Make observations in familiar or unfamiliar contexts, transfer or apply learning to new situations
• Content: Students are expected to know basic structures and functions of body systems – digestive, musculo-skeletal, respiratory, circulatory

I was inspired by the diagram of the water cycle that Michael covered up with text boxes, so I replicated that here with the digestive system. There’s no reason why I should have to spend time drawing my own diagram or looking for one with pre-made text boxes when it took me less than five minutes to design this (of course, remember to give images credit when necessary and use with permission). I intend for this worksheet to be a review for students who are familiar with the digestive system, or an activity to complete with a partner in the morning to get ready for the school day ahead.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my reflection and worksheets!

To my great embarrassment as a 14 year old trying to fit in with my friends, my family was resistant to letting me download Instagram. When I eventually became active on the platform, my first username was ‘kitkat234’ because my family did not want me to post anything that could potentially trace back to me or my identity. I was reminded almost daily that putting content online meant it was there forever- even on apps like Snapchat that claimed to delete photos after 10 seconds. Any time I posted a photo with people in it, I texted them individually to get their consent.

Ten years later and I feel much more desensitized to the potentially dangerous side of social media. My Instagram handle is my first and last name, I have a LinkedIn account to update my connections about major life milestones, and I have a friends only Instagram page where I post my life updates – the good, bad, and ugly. Jesse’s presentation brought me back to when I was 13 years old and had virtually no digital footprint. It terrifies me that there is so much information about me online for people I do not know to potentially see. Though I firmly believe I have never posted anything that others could view as offensive and problematic, any future educator needs to be aware that social climates change. A post that seems hilarious now could turn into a huge problem ten years down the road.

An extreme example of this is a girl from my Queen’s University graduating class. In 2023, I attended a debate for the Arts and Sciences Commission’s presidential election. Partway through the debate, most audience members including myself received an anonymous AirDrop – a picture, screenshotted from Snapchat in 2016, of one of the candidates with black paint on her face holding a watermelon. The text she had included on the photo is considered highly offensive and I do not want to write it down, but I have attached a news article for anyone wanting more context. She was forced to withdraw from the election, and watch her aspirations as a politician go up in smoke. I Googled her name while writing this post, and the top five articles all relate to this scandal.

I’m not saying I agree with my classmate’s actions nine years ago – I was horrified to see this image pop up on my phone – but I can’t help but feel bad for her. Something she posted without fully understanding what she was saying will now haunt her for life.

Racist image of AMS executive candidate made public

I’ve always understood that I need to be careful of what I post – but as an aspiring educator, some responsibility falls on me to educate children about how to be appropriate citizens in a digital society. This task is daunting because the online world is constantly changing. For instance, Jesse talked about the rise of AI and the new risks we are all faced with because of this software. When Jesse told our class the story of a student who used AI to create fake nudes of their teacher, I realized that I do not know nearly enough about how to promote the safe use of AI in my classroom. During my time as a teacher, I anticipate having to educate my students about technologies and websites that have yet to be created.

These last few years I have been trying to pretend that AI does not exist. Most of my friends used Chat GPT to help them at some point in undergrad, but I did not want to acknowledge that it was real. My first semester at UVic made me realize that my future profession carries a responsibility to educate myself about any type of technology my students may be using, and Jesse’s lecture on Friday reinforced the importance of doing so. AI and internet safety scare me, but what scares me more is the thought of one of my students ruining their life over something that I could have prevented through high-quality education. Jesse made a good point that AI today was Google in 2003 – many people were scared of Google when it first came out, much like we are wary of AI today. However, Google has become embedded in almost everything we do as a society and has become a very productive force within education. I believe that AI has potential to achieve very positive things within an elementary school classroom, if educators are given the guidance to equip students on how to effectively use the technology.

Some things I wish everybody knew that I learned in Jesse’s presentation:

• Snapchat saves everything- including the drafts you never end up sending. 
• If you ever need a student’s contact information for something school-related, put it into the Notes app: don’t make them a contact on your phone, because then it will start suggesting you follow each other on various social media. 
• Digital media literacy is not just a parent’s domain: it should be reinforced in all areas of a young person’s life. 
• Screenshotting information as a way of leveraging it over somebody could be illegal, depending on the context.

Thank you for bringing Jesse in to our classroom- I learned so much from his presentation and I am so much more motivated now to take time to go over digital literacy and safety with my future students. 

Although I was unable to attend class on Friday, I read through your slides and watched Most Likely to Succeed independently.

I found it really interesting to see the differences between my own (perhaps more typical) high school experience, and the experience of the students at High Tech High. What really resonated with me was the statistic that if students had to take a test a few months after they had studied for it, they would remember very little of the content. I can relate to this as I recently completed a psychology degree and ever since have been feeling like I should remember more of the content I learned.

High Tech High’s innovative model allows students to fully engage with material they learn at school, in a way that works with them and their interests. School is more about completing a task that students are really passionate about, and less than rote memorization. To be honest, I would have liked high school much more if I had gone to High Tech High. However, I share the concerns of many of my classmates that these students may not be ready for the academic structure of most universities. Times may be changing, but getting into higher education (ex. medical school or law school) requires a very high GPA. Students at High Tech High will not come into university with exam experience, and I am curious how they would handle this extreme shift in their schooling. Personally, I had never taken a three-hour long exam when I attended university and I found this to be a huge jump – it would have been way harder if I had never done a written examination before!

Looking forward to hearing your feedback!