Month: December 2024

My braiding journey has come to an end

- Angela Fahlman Leave a comment

I started off this semester with a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to learn online, I was gonna learn to double Dutch braid so that I could do my daughters hair for competitive dance.  I did wonder if it was going to be a task that I would learn quick and then I would be left to figure something else out to get me through the semester.  I was also concerned that it might be a boring subject for people to want to check out every week and how could I make it interesting.

Not only was I trying to learn something new online-I had to learn to blog which was something new to me as well.  I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and unsure if I could get it all figured out.  My first step was to order a mannequin head from amazon that I could use as my braiding model.

Week 1: Let’s Learn to Braid

Objectives: share with everyone that I was going to learn to braid so I could do my daughters hair for her competitive dance.

Week 2: Where to start

To be honest I found this project really tricky to start.  I was feeling super overwhelmed to carve the time out to dedicate to learning something new.  I understand the importance of this project-it just felt like one more thing I had to try and fit in.  I started off this journey showcasing where I was at in my braiding skills.  This week I had to figure out how to get pictures uploaded into my blog-little did I know that they would all be too large and I would have to learn how to use the snipping tool-I didn’t even know that was a thing.  Good thing I had a teenage techy daughter, lol.

Week 3: First step to learning something new

I took to YouTube to find a video for Dutch Braiding for beginners.  The guy in this video was awesome, he talked slowly and I felt like I could somewhat keep up with him.  It was a really big struggle for me to learn to braid backwards from what I previously lost.  My fingers were jumbled together and I struggled.  After restarting a few times I decided to do one straight braid from a ponytail because I figured this would be easier for me.  It seemed to work and I successfully pulled off this braid.  This week my “extra learning” included figuring out how to get my YouTube video posted onto my blog and how to link websites also.

Week 4:  Learning everything new, some a success, some a fail

This week was double whammy! Not only did I have to continue on my braiding journey I had to video my progress and learn how to get it uploaded onto my blog.  To be honest I had to got to my 17 year old for help.  I needed someone to take the pictures of me braiding so I could make the video, plus I had no idea how to get my video uploaded.  I decided to try out iMovie as it is an app that I haven’t really used before, my son likes to make stop motion videos on there, so I figured if we could make it work so could I.  Getting my video made was a breeze, but how in the heck was I getting it to upload onto my blog?? In comes my daughter…she showed me how to upload it to YouTube and then from there I could copy the link into my blog.  Worked like a charm!

Week 5: Can I make my braid look pretty?

This week I left things to the last minute, I went to YouTube and found a new how to video.  I was able to link the video onto my post,  but not the way I wanted it to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it so I left it.  I didn’t post any extra pictures of my success, so my post was pretty lame this week.

Week 6: Let’s try something new

I decided that trying to keep up with videos was tricky when I was still struggling to make things work perfectly, so I decided to switch it up.  I took to google to try and find another way to learn and I came across a new website https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Dutch-Braid, that showed pictures and broke steps down that way.  I found this to be an easier thing to learn from.  I forgot to take pictures of my progress again this week.  It was interesting to see that I wasn’t the only person that sometimes finds it easier to learn from words and pictures rather than videos.

Week 7: SUCCESS

I was feeling like I was getting no where and that I was failing each week so I decided I need to shake things up.  I switched a couple things up this week, I decided to give my mannequin a break and I tried to braid my daughters hair.  I also found a blog that I used to learn from too-this was a really awesome tool for me as I was finding that the video’s weren’t working the best for me.  This week I successfully braided the best braid yet!!! I was so excited that it finally worked.  I was surprised how excited I was that I had finally made my braid look presentable.

My classmates helped pump my tires and make me feel like I could keep going on this journey.

 

Week 8: Back to the usual

I was still feeling pretty pumped from last week so I decided to go back to YouTube and see if I could find another video on there.  The video was good, but my skills were not.  My braids ended up looking like a hot mess again and I was left wondering if I was going to actually be successful by the end of this journey

Week 9: Will I actually conquer this goal by the end

I was feeling pretty deflated and pretty sure that I was not going to be able to be a great braider by the end of the semester.  I went on to use a YouTube video again this week and I decided to showcase my learning a different way this week.  I took pictures and went to Canva this time to make a video.  I hadn’t made a video on Canva before so this was a new learning experience for me.  I found that it was pretty user friendly and it was much easier to share to my blog post than iMovie.  I think I could really get used to using Canva as it is quite user friendly.

Week 10: A little bit of success goes a long way

I continued on my YouTube video journey and using my daughter hair to braid rather than my mannequin.  I found that using real hair was much easier to work with so my poor mannequin has been just hanging out by herself these days.  This week I had a bit of success, I was able to get the top of the braid tighter and closer to the top of her forehead, but the back was still a disaster.  I gave into the fact that I never conquered that during this journey.

I have had a few take aways from this journey.

  1.  Don’t leave it to the last minute-I would feel rushed and then everything always seemed to go wrong on these days.
  2. It’s good to switch up the way you are doing things-when I realized videos weren’t the easiest for me to follow I found a new way.  The internet is an amazing thing and you have tons of information at your fingertips
  3. Even if you have multiple failures, keep going, it may be a rocky road.  Enjoy the little success moments instead of focusing on the rough ones.
  4. There are sooo many apps to use, this was a great opportunity to learn the ropes on some new apps that I have never used before
  5. Blogging isn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be-once everything was set up, it was easy to keep it going.  Something I need to work on is finding new ways to engage readers.

Even though I struggled to jump on the train and start something new, I am happy that I did buy a ticket.  I have learned some awesome new things on this journey.  My braids may not be the best out there and I’m probably gonna beg and pay people to help us get through my daughters last dance competition season, but I am proud of the success I did make- I can do more now than I could before I started.

With a little help from my friends

- Angela Fahlman Leave a comment

When I look back on how I contributed to others learning in this course there is a few ways I rocked it and some that I missed the mark a bit.  I was not a frequent flyer on Discord…I struggled to get it to work for the first little bit and to be honest I was struggling to keep up with everything and checking in on there didn’t happen as much as it should have.  I did try to check in a few times and I posted when I did pop on.

I attended class regularly and I took part in breakout sessions with my peers as well.  When it came to commenting on my classmates blogs, I did keep up with this task.  Not often did I comment on more than 3 a week, but I often tried to do more if they were posted when I was on there.  I also made sure to respond to people on my own blog.  I appreciate everyone that took the time to read and comment on my blogs-it’s great to know that these posts aren’t just sitting there unread.

I decided to make a short video of the comments that I shared with my classmates.

A little bit of success goes a long way

- Angela Fahlman 2 Comments

As they say a little bit of success goes a long way and I had a little success this week that made me feel like I got this!  This week I went back to using a video to learn by, so  I took to YouTube and this is the one I decided to go with.

My daughter let me braid her hair again this week, thank goodness as my mannequin head looks like it has seen better days.  I took a tip from a video I used before to put the unbraiding side of hair into a ponytail, I thought this might help me when I get to the bottom as that seems to be my trouble area.  Unfortunately it didn’t help a ton with that.  I was super successful at getting the braid tight at the top and to start at the top of her forehead on both sides which has been a goal since the beginning of this journey.  I was able to keep most of it together as I moved down her head this week.  It wasn’t super tight on the sides, but I was able to gather and add it to the braid.  Once again it got to be a big mess at the bottom, again I think that I leave too much and then I can’t get it add properly.

This week I also managed to do the left side of her head better than I have ever got it, which is success too! It got to be a hot mess at the bottom too, that seems to be the main issue now.  I told her this the best one yet and she could almost leave the house with the way it looks. Hopefully next week I will be able to figure that out, as it’s the last week and I haven’t successfully nailed this yet!  Check back next week and see if I can get this figured out on the last kick at the can.

Do you use and encyclopedia or google? No it’s AI

- Angela Fahlman 1 Comment

AI is another part of the new technology world that I have been hesitant to jump into.  Honestly, I’m usually quite hesitant of any new app or “thing”, but once I get into it, I’m all in, lol.  This week I was excited to be challenged to try some of these sites and see what they are all about.

I thought it would be fun to first check out ChatGPT as this is a site that I have heard about in the education world.  This is the definition it spit out.

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to the field of computer science that focuses on creating machines or software systems capable of performing tasks that would typically require human intelligence. These tasks include learning from experience (machine learning), understanding language (natural language processing), recognizing patterns (computer vision), and making decisions or predictions.

AI can be classified into two types:

  1. Narrow AI (Weak AI): This type of AI is designed to perform a specific task, such as speech recognition, image classification, or playing chess. It’s highly specialized and doesn’t possess general intelligence.
  2. General AI (Strong AI): This is the hypothetical AI that would have the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge in a way that is indistinguishable from human cognition. General AI can reason, solve complex problems, and make decisions across different contexts.

In practice today, most AI applications fall under Narrow AI, and they are used in various industries like healthcare, finance, entertainment, transportation, and more. Examples include virtual assistants (like Siri and Alexa), autonomous vehicles, recommendation systems, and medical diagnostic tools.

I do think that ChatGPT can be a useful tool when writing papers.  It helps to generate ideas or get started on a writing project.  I don’t agree with using the whole paper that it spits out and handing it in as your own, but I do think you could use it as a stepping stone.  I often struggle with knowing how to start a paper and I think if I could put my ideas in and it would give me an example, I could create my own opening without copying it.  I think if we teach kids how to use this as another learning tool vs a “cheating” tool it could be a great feature to bring into our classrooms.

The next one that sparked my attention was Microsoft Copilot.  We have been talking about Microsoft Lens to use with students that have reading struggles, so I wanted to check out copilot to see what it has to offer.  I started off by asking the provinces in Canada, which it listed and then it asked if there was a province I wanted to learn more about so I put in Saskatchewan, which it gave me information about, then I asked it about elementary schools in Regina and it gave me another list of schools.  I think this could be a super useful tool in classrooms also, its not much different than asking google questions.  One of the concerns that I thought about was how true is the information and if there is a way to trace it back to something.  But when asking google, not everything is legit there either and last week in class we discussed how to realize if information is fake or not.  So maybe asking AI would be better, if we think that all the information they give is accurate.

I took a look at the video Math Problems GPT-40, I think this could also be an awesome tool for math strugglers.  Again not to cheat, but to see another way that it could be done.  Math seems to be a subject that success can be dependent on how it is taught and not everyone’s teaching style is compatible with students.  This would give students another way to see it that might work better for them.

(1) Math problems with GPT-4o – YouTube

 

Next I thought it would be fun to try Animated Drawings with my son.  I got him to draw a character and then uploaded it and let him play around with it.  He loves reading graphic novels so this was right up his alley.  I think this would be a super cool tool to use in Art.  Each student could create their own character and animate them.  I have posted his character that he drew and how we animated him. (I couldn’t get our video to upload)

                       

 

Overall I think that AI can be taught as a useful tool to use in our classrooms for projects, and reality is I believe that’s the way our techy world is headed.  Like everything else I think if we embrace this new thing and take the time and educate students the proper ways to use these tools they will be a welcome addition.