Introducing Brooke!

Hello all! My name is Brooke Sali, and I am a first-year education student at the University of Regina. I am in the secondary education program with a major in English! I love to read and write, a passion that started when I was young. I also have a passion for music and can play the guitar, ukulele, flute, and piano. I competed in the Last Mountain District Music Festival for 7 years mostly singing, but one year I also competed in piano. I have a younger sister, Bailey, who continues to motivate me to make education better for kids like her!

I graduated from Robert Southey School last year. Being in a small school, we had many opportunities for neat projects. Often we would have assignments to create videos on various topics. When doing a project about what Saskatchewan has to offer, my friend and I went to her grandparents’ farm to show rather than tell. We had the opportunity to be creative, and we had fun doing it. Our school had a SMART Board in every classroom. SMART Board technology allowed our math teacher to use a SMART Document Camera while doing examples on the board. She could show the entire class things easily. The graphing calculator option on the SMART Board also made teaching us new skills easy, as we could follow along with a visual. I remember the transition from Projectors and TVs to SMART Boards through my elementary years and the ease that came with SMART Boards.

Most of our teachers had their notes on a word document or PowerPoint, which they would put on the SMART Board every day. This technology was great for students to see what we were learning visually. We would also use laptops and the computer lab almost daily to do work for classes. Webquests were a staple of science classes and powerpoints a vital part of any presentation. Remind 101 was one of the best things I had signed up for during high school. Beyond usual class reminders, our office would send out reminders of deadlines for forms and spirit day announcements. I did my first field placement last semester in the elementary end of Robert Southey. I watched as the elementary students use technology in ways we could not when we were younger. iPads were used in the elementary grades to read on RazKids or Epic. I made a mini-lesson for the Grade 8 class I was placed in. It included a PowerPoint with the relevant information and many visuals for those who learn that way. After the PowerPoint, I made a Kahoot for the class. Kahoot was my favourite thing to play in the classroom, and I knew I had to incorporate it into my lesson.

I quite like blogging, mostly because I want to share my ideas and the things I am passionate about. I thought of creating a blog not related to education before. I have notes in my phone of topics I would like to write on. I already have a twitter account and enjoy the way it is set up and how it allows me to share ideas and thoughts. As a reader, I find it be overwhelming. I wish I could see only one tweet at a time, sort of how Instagram and Facebook are set up. Sometimes my phone screen shows 2-4 posts about different things at one time, and I find it really hard to read and to digest visually.