As the EDTC 300 journey comes to a close I would like to reflect on the learning contributions I had on my classmates. Throughout the semester, we were asked to comment on our classmates blog posts, and answer our classmates questions in the class discord server. I had some troubles with discord, because I could not get my notifications to work. So, I found myself constantly opening up the discord app on my phone to see if there was anything I could help with. But, without the reminder of notifications, there was a long stretch were I did not go on the app. Another way I think I contributed to the learning of others was by using and reviewing many different technologies and websites that I had found or that were recommended by Katia and reviewed it for my classmates to read.
I have linked a google slide below, that has all of my comments, discord posts, and resources I reviewed in the EDTC 300 portion of this class.
This week I tried learning from a new website called Booster Uke. This is definitely not a website to try if it your first time learning the instrument, you need to have some basic knowledge of the ukulele before you begin. This is a premium program that offers 10 lessons with access to a video and interactive sheet music for each lesson. I tried the free trial, which gave me access to one of their lessons at random. The lesson I was able to try was lesson 5, so that may be why I thought that you need prior knowledge of how to play the instrument before using this website.
The person instructing the video did not do a very good job, just basically explained the cords and started playing a song at a fast pace that was extremely hard to keep up to. He didn’t teach me how to do the weird strumming pattern he was doing. So, I think the instructional video did not help me at all. The interactive sheet music on the other hand was better. I thought it was better then 8notes sheet music. It had the guy playing the song with lyrics instead of just a beat to play to. The only thing was that, sometimes the music did not match the sheet music, which threw me for a loop.
BoosterUke Lesson (youtube.com)
I would not recommend this website, especially for a beginner. This website would be good if you already knew how to play the ukulele and were looking for new challenging songs and strumming patterns.
In this weeks class we were asked to dive into an AI tool and review it. In class we learnt about an awesome tool called Magic School. This AI tool has so many useful resources as a teacher including lesson plan generator, rubric generator, Text rewriter, Unit plan generator, multi-step assessment, and many more.
This tool could definitely help enhance teaching. In a world today where many teachers borrow or pay for already existing lesson plans, worksheets, and unit plans. The Magic School gives you the tools to do that by inputting what you expect the lesson plan to look like, and allows you to add your own personality into the work you give your students. Also, if you have a student who is not as intellectually developed as your other students, you can change the reading level on your work for a particular student so it easier for that student to understand.
This tool is also very helpful for the student. As the teacher, you are able to allow the students access to whatever tools you are using. You can add them into a classroom where students have access to whatever tools you believe they are allowed to have. This can teach students how to properly use AI, as this is going to be a growing theme throughout there lives as technology continues to advance. Also, if you believe your students are taking advantage of the tools you allowing them, you can pause access, or lock access for your students so that they are no longer allowed to use it.
With all of these tool at the hands of the student and teacher, I think it will increase the students creativity, there are so many tools on Magic School that would have helped me be more creative in my assignments, and have fun doing so when I was in elementary and high school.
Some of the ethical and practical challenges of using this tool is making sure the students are putting effort into their work and not copying everything from AI. Maybe that is why Magic School gave the teachers a tool to help them create AI-resistant assignments. There are always ethical and practical challenges when it comes to AI, as it has shown that some AI, take chatGPT for example, is not 100% ethical as it does involve some copyright. But, in a world where AI is becoming a thing that is always ready to be used on so many different devices, it is better to adapt with the times and teach students how to effectively use AI to their advantage and enhance their learning.
This week we talked about our digital footprint. We are asked to search up our name and see what comes up. For mey name, there was a lot of news articles about my football career and my sports family. It was interesting to search up your own name and see what comes up. Also, my Facebook, Instagram showed up as well as where I work. I found it super interesting to see what a stranger can find out about me just by searching up my name on google. Thankfully, I didn’t find anything that was alarming. I am usually very careful with what I share on social media. I try not to post anything political, and share highlights of my life whether that is my friends, family, school, or football.
For this week we were given the option to do a deep digital sleuth on one of our classmates. So I chose to look into one of my high school friends Sarah. She shares a very common name, making it very hard to find anything specific to her. When I tried to narrow down to where she lived, it was also hard, because there is another Sarah from Saskatoon who is a doctor, so she flooded my google feed instead of the Sarah I was looking for. Most of the information I got on Sarah came from Facebook. I found out who her parents are, what city she lives in, where she went to school, and her birthday. I also found out that she is a sports fan, with multiple posts wearing Saskatchewan Roughriders gear and I saw she posted a picture at an Edmonton Oilers hockey game. I think Sarah has a very good digital footprint.
To help aid my digital sleuthing we were giving a digital sleuthing worksheet. I think this would be important for students to do with their classmates, especially while they are in high school and starting to have a more prominent image on social media. Having someone else look into your life through social media definitely opens your eyes to how easy it is to find out a lot about a person. And that people need to think about what they put on social media before they post it, as it is out there for everyone to view, and that can have a massive impact on how people see you as a person.
I had to take a week off playing the ukulele because I hurt my strumming finger playing football. But it was nice to pick up right were I left off this week. Last week I said that this was going to be my last week learning from the 8notes website. I played the song “Ukulele Blues“. This song had a lot of quick shifts between cords, and involved some cords I have never tried before. This song had the same timing throughout the song so it made it relatively easy to get into the rhythm after a couple practice rounds.
Here is a picture of what the sheet music looked like. and the link below is me attempting to play this song
I know I am wrapping up to the end of my learning experience. So for next week, I want to try one new source of online learning before I make my final post. I am unsure of what I am going to do, but my goal is to find a brand new useful resource to help me with my last ukulele lesson.
In today’s world and overreliance on technology for all of our new information, it is hard to identify what is true and what is false. Digital literacy is extremely important to teach and an aspect of it has been added into the Saskatchewan curriculum. It is not as thorough as the NCTE framework but it lays down a foundation for teachers have some creativity with how they teach there students.
Since digital literacy is such a growing concern for students as technology begins to advance, and trolls on the internet become harder to recognize, there has been many lesson plans, worksheets, and information to help spread information on how to identify fake news.
The article Teaching Digital Literacy Now by the School Learning Journal talked about different ways of evaluating an article. They go into depth about:
-
- Rethinking how we teach evaluation
- Read laterally
- Keep it non-political
- Talk about social media more
In my field placement, the teacher would always do an activity related to the subject we were about to. For example, doing a Wordle before English. You can start off a class with an activity such as spot the troll. We did this activity in class and I think it would be a fun and educating tool to help students determine who is real and who is fake on social media.
My major is Physical Education, and currently I see a lot of videos on my social media about “getting abs in a week”, or the “take this supplement and lose 30 pounds in a month”. I really liked this worksheet bias in the news to be able to educate students on identifying information that is valid. I may have to tweek it so that is related to physical education, but I think that it would be an awesome tool for teaching digital literacy.
This week I practiced by reading sheet music on 8notes. It is still taking me some time to get used to reading sheet music, so I chose a song that used extremely easy cords to switch between involving only one finger. I really do like this website, it moves the sheet music along for you so you do not have to stop and scroll which is very nice. Although, I did try this one song, and the sheet music looked like it was scanned and added on, and that one song did not follow along so I decided I would choose a song where the technology of 8notes actually worked.
I chose to play the song Skip to My Lou. I was unable to play it at 100% speed right away, so I started at 50%, then 70%, then finally I was able to play 100%. This is what the sheet music of the song looked like
One thing I wish was different about 8notes is, I wish it gave me a countdown before the song begins. As soon as you press the play button it starts right away. So, I did not really have time to get ready for the first riff. You can see in my video, as soon as I press play I quickly try to play the first couple of notes to catch up.
Another thing I found out this week, as that there is a daily limit for using the app on the free version. It only allowed me to practice for about a half hour a day. I do not know if its a timed thing, whether it counts the minutes, or whether it counts how many times you play a song, but the daily limit did not seem like a very long time to practice.
Next week, I am going to practice on 8notes again, trying more different and difficult songs before I move on to the next source of technological learning.
This week was my first ever experience actually coding myself. I have witnessed it one time last year while I was an EA, as EYES came into the classroom and helped the students make their own little video game. I tried Pirate Plunder on Hour of Code. I thought it was super cool and a fun little brain teaser. It took me a while to figure out what the “If pirate in front of captain” code, but once I figured it out there was no stopping me from getting that sweet certificate at the end. Here are some screenshots from Pirate Plunder.
I had a blast with this coding game. I think coding is super important and is super fun for the kids. When I saw EYES come into the classroom last year in the grade 3/4 classroom I was in, all of the kids loved it. They didn’t want to put the computers away at the end of it. I honestly am not the best with technology, so I am unsure on when I would use these coding skills from this game into real life, but I think this is an awesome way to teach kids how to problem solve and solve puzzles. I am excited to learn more about coding as it is such a growing thing for youth and learn more ways that I can put it into the classroom. I also really like how the Hour of Code website has lesson plans. I am definitely looking forward to take a browse through those.
Recent Comments