Author: Chantelle Turner (Page 2 of 3)

I have to be honest with you all – I was nervous for this class. And then when I read the course outline and it stated that we were going to be online until 9:45pm each Tuesday, I seriously considered dropping it.

Thankfully, it was Dr. Hildebrand to the rescue in that very first Zoom Meeting to quell the dread of having to sit in an online class for almost three hours! Tuesday evenings are a little nuts-o at my
house since my daughter and I have a paper route that we deliver on Tuesdays plus both my youngest son and my daughter have volleyball practice on Tuesday evenings.

Did I talk too much about volleyball this semester? My spring “break” included two trips, totalling five days spent in Regina, for volleyball tournaments! My son’s team did take home a gold medal in Div 1 at Sask Cup #2 so that was pretty exciting to watch!

But, back to the subject of networked learning!

FUN FACT: I don’t like group work or discussions any more now as a grown-up than I did back in elementary, middle or high school! Honestly though, I didn’t dread the breakout room discussions and feel like I participated and contributed as much as I could…. Except for maybe that one time where I was actually in the high school gym watching my son play a fiercely competitive game of basketball, the last of its kind as a senior in high school, and I literally sprinted out of the gym and into the hallway when I saw we were joining breakout rooms so I could share a raspy (have you ever cheered at a basketball game?? IYKYK) overview of the new-to-me tool I had tried when sharing my learning project progress …. Don’t tell our professor!! 😉
I was lucky to have engaging humans in the breakout room discussions. No screenshots or screencasts because that might be a little weird, but shoutouts to Chayse, Zach, Megan, Kyle, Cody and Karley.

With so many engaged learners in this class, I found that it was easier to keep up with a few classmates’ weekly blog posts which I regularly commented on. I did peruse many blog posts, with the undeniable proof in the form of a second place finish in our class Blooket! Thanks for that suggestion, Emma! I really did enjoy reading many perspectives on the topics we covered, but I really, really enjoyed seeing everyone’s progress on their learning projects.

My ability to support others mainly came in the form of commenting on blog posts and responding to those who had posted comments on my own blog posts. For some, I posted once and done.

Some others I followed along almost weekly to add a comment to see the progression of their learning projects or their thoughts on our weekly topic for our blog post.

I did regularly check Discord to read what others were sharing, but others came to the rescue with answers to the questions that were posted. I appreciated reading the answers to others’ questions because sometimes I was wondering the same thing!

I actively responded to others’ comments on my blog and I was much more timely once I got the email notifications coming in to my Outlook mail app! Thanks for the help, Dr. Hildebrand!

Overall I would say that I was a fairly engaged learner and surprised myself with how much I enjoyed the class as well as the network learning piece.

I guess maybe it’s all a part of growing up!

Listen, I know this post is supposed to be strictly educational, but I had to give this AI thing a try with some outfit suggestions for the upcoming Justin Timberlake concert I plan to attend as a celebration for my 40th birthday! Whoop whoop!

Please enjoy this selection of Justin Timberlake posters that I carefully flattened, mounted on paper and laminated to hang on my wall when I was 15 years old! 😍

I gave Perplexity.ai a try, literally for no other reason than I like the word perplexity. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I asked this simple little AI tool to make some recommendations for what I should wear to a Justin Timberlake concert. The results were fairly typical, not shocking and more or less unhelpful. Plus, my 13-year-old daughter was already scouring the internet for some clothing options she knew I wouldn’t hate and would probably wear. Her choices fell in line with what the perplexity bot suggested:

Then I moved onto something that might actually be helpful in education: Photosynthesis. I love, love, love science and I also love nature and plants, hence my choice!

I do like the idea of AI being able to generate information that’s gathered and geared towards a specific grade level as requested. This could be a huge time saver when looking for information tailored to a specific age group or targeting learners that may need some of the information summarized into simpler terms.

Here’s what Perplexity.ai had to say about photosynthesis for grade three students:

I like that there was suggested videos and activities that go along with the topic that I was researching, although many of the extras available in the Pro version would end up being quite costly. I supposed if this was a tool you were going to use almost every day then it would be worth the investment, but otherwise $20/month or $200/year would be silly to pay!

There was a 7 day free trial option, but unless it auto-cancels, I tend to be the person to forget and get charged for it when I only intended to use the 7 day free trial!

There is also a downloadable app for Apple and Android users should you want access at your fingertips!

Keeping in line with my elementary education selection, if students were using this to generate ideas for projects, I do think it would be very helpful to aid in the creative side of learning. I think the grade level educational videos would also support learning as well.

I think there is currently a challenging climate when it comes to using AI in education especially when it comes to student produced assignments. I don’t think this challenge is going away any time soon! During our breakout room discussion during Tuesday’s class I listened to what some of the others had to say when it came to using AI because I had not gone out of my way to access any of these tools prior to our assignment. Our discussion led me to comment that somehow it feels like cheating to be using tools like this. It is so strange to me that we can draw information and resources from other people’s work that they’ve already produced, that this AI bot has rounded up and analyzed and presented to us for our further inspection and use. This does come back to me being an old-school learner where research generally took place in a library with an open encyclopedia or other book on a specific topic!

Moving forward, this technology is going to be accessed and utilized more and more by our students and we, as educators, need to be aware of its uses and need to be able to guide our students through ethical use practices so they know what is acceptable when using these tools. As if education isn’t challenging enough as it is, let’s add in the world of AI to the classroom! But, this is how we will move forward through education and learning which means I had better get acquainted with these new tools!

It is incredible how much you can learn about someone just by browsing the internet. I remember when a friend finally convinced me to join Facebook and I literally spent HOURS searching up people’s names from high school and just from my hometown in general and scrolling their profiles. I don’t think there was much when it came to privacy options at Facebook’s launch because you could find out what “anyone is….” Or “everyone is….” doing at any given moment!

Read the article about embarrassing Facebook statuses here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/hanifahrahman/00s-facebook-statuses

You could accuse me of being a cyber sleuth. Actually, I would just wear that badge proudly!

My go-to when someone asks me if I know someone or if someone new comes into my life that will be hanging around for more than a day or two? I’m scouring the internet for them. Some people’s digital footprints are huge! Think Bigfoot sized! Others remain impossibly hard to find. But I can generally track someone down to learn a little more about them. Maybe it’s a little creepy and I have likely wasted a legitimate portion of time on these tasks, but I do like a challenge!

When it comes to cyber-vigilantism I do believe that there are lines that can be crossed. People do terrible things and make bad decisions, this isn’t anything new, it’s just that now we see or hear about it within seconds sometimes.

There are posts, groups or articles that I’ve come across that I have wholeheartedly disagreed with, but I’m generally not interested in engaging with someone knowing that it’s going to lead to an argument.

Take into consideration that Estevan has a population of  approximately 11,000 people and this Rant & Rave group has over 4,700 members who mostly just complain; there’s rarely a compliment. I refuse to join these types of groups because I feel like they spread negativity and when there’s strength in numbers and those numbers are fuelling a negative cause… LOOK OUT. I do have friends that have joined these types of groups and they speak about specifics from time-to-time and it’s generally not good!

{This video circulated online about two months ago and caused absolute mayhem for our city counsellors. The information iterated in this video is incorrect or skewed and has been the source of a petition calling for a referendum in my community}

It’s also not in my nature to “take someone to task” over something that they’ve done when posted online. That being said, I have reported posts on Facebook that had the potential to be damaging. I consider myself to be a confident person who has compassion for others and my moral compass is pointed in a positive and well-meaning direction. I will stand up for things that I believe in and voice concern over things that could potentially damage a person or my community.

I feel like our worldviews are influenced heavily by our upbringing, but where we live, as in a physical location of our province or country, often times dictates a common mentality.  This becomes blatantly obvious at election time, but this post is not turning political! In life we all find our people and your people might not be my people, and that’s ok, but at the end of the day, respect needs to be at the forefront of our online presence and our daily real-life activities.  We need to be mindful of the footprints we are leaving in our digital world knowing that it will follow us wherever we go.

My final sentiment for today:

I have to be honest…. I don’t watch, listen or look for the news anywhere. Ever. I cut news out of my life more than a handful of years ago because I found that everything that was being reported was full of negativity and quite honestly, it was hurting my heart. When people are discussing current events, I often have not heard about them (ahem, Kate Middleton discussion on Tuesday night? I had no idea what was going on!) and 99% of the time, it doesn’t bother me.

No news is good news, right?!

This week’s class was actually incredibly eye opening, but also stirred up a sense of fear inside me. I feel like I’m pretty good at identifying, say, a fake social media profile, but this new AI technology where “people” aren’t actually the “real people”? That freaks me out. I think it’s completely unfair for people to take advantage of these new technologies to try and scam people just because it’s so easy for them to do so and is yet another reason why I stay off the internet as much as possible. Or, is this just solidifying a belief that I hold onto and it doesn’t actually make it correct?? According to npr, it is much easier to call a fact a fact when it is something that you like or agree with. This makes sense to me, but I recognize that it doesn’t aid in the process of sharing factual information if our personal bias keeps getting in the way!

Image source here: https://imgflip.com/i/1qdll1

With the digital world and technology continuing to evolve at a break-neck pace, it is important to be teaching students about digital literacy, but how can that even be done effectively? We must start the discussions at a younger age now as so many youngsters are regularly accessing the internet without a doubt being exposed to clickbait in the process. In the Canadian School Libraries Journal article from our reading list this week, it references the National Enquirer papers that were so boldly displayed at the grocery store alongside other tabloids. When I was a kid, this was our clickbait – bold fonts and headlines to grab your attention – except I would just out that back on the shelf and walk away.

The difference in the articles today is that the entertainment factor has disappeared and has been replaced with an ominous presence. All of the technologies seemingly used to dupe anyone and everyone continue to make it harder and harder to decipher what is real or true and makes me question what I can actually believe.

The Backfire Effect, as creatively outlined in The Oatmeal’s comical demonstration, deserves some attention. I have personally suffered from the backfire effect many times in my life. I just didn’t realize there was a name for what I was feeling! This creative article confirms that it’s normal to feel upset when someone challenges beliefs that you’ve held for most of your life. Who wouldn’t? But, it also highlights the importance of listening to a new point of view and allowing time for your emotions and your brain to calm down if your longstanding beliefs have been challenged. I don’t disagree with that suggestion!

I cannot share the source of this particular photo or quote because I have no idea where I found it, but I’ve had it saved in my camera roll since… 2018!

The NCTE framework is something that can be reviewed and considered in any subject requiring access to tech and the internet for research purposes. The foundation of the framework and the need to exhibit caution in evaluating and analyzing sources remains important across all subject areas. Teaching students how to determine whether a source is relevant and acknowledging the perspective that the information is being presented from is also very important. The research and identification process becomes increasingly difficult with every fake news article posted on the internet. Providing grade and age appropriate examples of how to identify false information, especially with our younger students, will hopefully set them on the right track to be able to discern between “real” and “fake” although I question my abilities to do the same on an almost daily basis.

For everyone out there accessing the vast, scary place called the internet, my advice is to err on the side of caution!

During our class last Tuesday evening I had a flashback to last school year during the Scratch demonstration… some students I was working with had gone through multiple simple coding exercises to get to the point where they were able to use Scratch on their own.

Floating around the classroom, I returned to one student’s work station and I think there may have been 14 dragons of all different colours plastered on the screen!

(Believe me when I say this a minor representation of what the student’s screen showed!!) There should also be a warning that pops up before adding the “meow”…….

I decided to check out the Hour of Code options since I had never heard of it before. What a cool website! I love that there are so many different options for ability levels. With technology being introduced and used at younger and younger ages, it is beneficial to have learning options available to those in the pre-reader age range. I also think this is beneficial to those that may be learning a new language as to not feel overwhelmed with a task such as this. The article I’ve linked even suggests that games can be a helpful way to learn a new language, in this case, English.

This is where I need to shoutout . As soon as I saw the T-Rex option, there  was no changing my mind as to which game I was going to code! As it it turns out, it was super fun and super easy. I definitely found Scratch harder to navigate when we used it in the classroom. That being said, I chose the beginner level because that is where my brain is able to process these new and challenging technological pieces!

Fun fact: one of my kids (no one will admit to who actually did the deed) created a YouTube channel in my name back in 2018. They really liked Brawl Stars so that eliminates one of the three… anyway… My “original” YouTube channel is now strictly dedicated to streaming my kids’ sporting events. Between volleyball and basketball, one would have an entire weekend of entertainment lined up!

Instead, I went out on a limb and created a new YouTube channel so that I could share some of the videos that I recorded of my progress in creating this little T-Rex game! I probably shouldn’t pat myself on the back to quickly, but I navigated the YouTube app like a pro <insert pat on the back here>

Please enjoy this short video clip of one of the final stages of my coded T-Rex game!

I feel like incorporating tech into the classroom and introducing coding to our students is nearing a must. Technology is where it’s at, and has been for a number of years. I acknowledge that I am a much older learner, but I am coming around to these new apps and technologies that so many of you are already familiar with. I might actually be proof of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”! But, please don’t refer to me as an old dog because that would make me grumpy!!