Month: April 2024

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.

Contributing to the Learning of Others

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.