I AM ALWAYS LEARNING!

Month: April 2021

Learning Together

I want to begin by saying that I have never felt this close to classmates in any class I have ever taken in my whole degree thus far. The community that we build in the #EDTC300 community is so amazing and I am so happy with all the friends that I have made this semester. In all the ways that you all have helped me, I was to say thank you and I hope that I was also able to maybe in some way encourage others in this class to grow as well! It is hard to say that I have impacted others in this class so in all of these examples I will also share I how learned from these examples! Here is a linked document with most of the pictures of the interactions that I did not add to this blog!

ZOOMs

I want to begin with the in-person connections that I made this semester (ZOOM is what I mean by in person). At the beginning of this semester, I reached out to Caelyn as I had read her first blog post about going Procreate for her learning project! I thought what better way to learn than to bounce ideas with someone who is learning the same skill as I am. So, many texts, facetime, commenting on each other’s blog posts, and zoom calls later I have learned so much from her and I hope that she has learned from me. In discussions, we would talk about tips that we learned, resources that we found for Procreate, free pens that we found online, etc. In working together I think that we both encouraged each other and helped keep the motivation going from week to week in tackling different Procreate tasks! She was amazing to have by my side and I hope that I helped her as well!

selfie from my ZOOM with Caelyn

My second in-person (ZOOM) meeting that I got to have was with Ian the Yoga master! Nearing the end of the semester after spending almost ten weeks watching him get better and better at Yoga I reached out the Ian to ask if he could take me through a Yoga flow. When I reached out to him to take me through this it was a little bit selfish because I was isolating and wanted something to do but I also really thought how great it would be to practice teaching what he had been learning for the past ten weeks. As most say the best way to learn better is to try teaching. And this is what Ian did, he took me through a complete Yoga flow instructing me through a step-by-step on each move, and at the end, we discussed some of the glitches but overall it was hard to give much advice as he was basically a YOGI already!

Ian and I after our Yoga flow

Commenting/ discussing

I loved keeping up to date with what the other people were doing in our class and I loved leaving encouragement and questions on people’s Tweets and blogs. This was an awesome way that I stayed engaged through the class with other students that I did not get the opportunity to meet personally over ZOOM. In doing this there were many opportunities to comment on blog posts and discuss things in the comment sections on Twitter but the best was when I started a conversation on Twitter by simply posing a question to my peers. This was really exciting to me because I was engaging in thought-provoking discussion as a result of leaving a resource for others to look back upon at a letter time and reflect on the discussion that we had. What I love about Twitter is that so many people can learn from the discussions that may have happened months ago. I truly hope that this is a good discussion for people to learn from because I learned so much from this Twitter thread!

please read the comments

Resource sharing

The final thing that I want to reflect on how I contributed to the learning of others was sharing resources. I tried to share whatever I was reading on Twitter that I loved, or articles on slack that I was reading, as well as my document that I put together reflecting on Resources from EDTC300.

I mentioned above a document that I created to break down the resources that I used in this course. That document can be found here! I created this document because we have shared a lot of resources throughout the semester but I wanted to give an honest review of how I liked the top resources that I kept on using during this course. I hope that it helps others in this class have a good idea of some of the best resources (in my opinion).

Overall

I hope that all of the ZOOM calls, discussions, commenting, resource sharing, and talking in breakout rooms throughout this semester coming from me have some how helped other students in this course along their EDTC journey!

Procreate finale

Am I a Procreate pro now? 

10 weeks ago I started a journey to learn online a skill that I had never done before. I decided to embark on a learning adventure for #EDTC300 #learningproject where I learned how to use Procreate with only online resources. This meant that I did not learn anything from anything in person but everything I learned was on some sort of only platform. I realized that the benefits of doing this in a global pandemic is that people have started to share a lot of skills and talents that they have online for others to learn from. In the course of the 10 weeks I learned from YouTube, ZOOM (taught by friends), TikTok, Pinterest, and some creators websites. Here is a week by week break down of my journey that I am so proud of!

Week #1 Path to Procreate Perfection 

The first week is crazy to look back on as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I did not know how to change the colour. My writing on the Ipad was very bad, and I was really starting with nothing. But I had a plan with all my videos and resources in place, including pieces that would progressively get harder and harder,  and I was motivated to get good at using Procreate!

Week #2 Harder than it looks

This week I was excited to start and I was seriously expecting a lot better than this little flow piece from myself. But looking back it is crazy that this was the best that I could do it this time! At this time I was struggling to even follow along with the bare minimum of what the video would ask of me. So this piece I would say this final piece looks nothing like the final piece of the Youtube video I followed. 

Week #3 Writing?

I started to realize that I was going to need to practice some of my skills and what better way than doing cursive sheets as we all used to in elementary school. So with the help of Caelyn we worked on some writing outlines that helped us progress in writing on an Ipad. I am excited to say that this was the week that I saw the most progress and I am so happy to say that!

Week #4 Week of Learning

A month in and we were starting to make progress. This was a challenge that I was nervous about it because it took me back to square one after having a really good week the previous week. When pressed this week with a lot of new techniques it was hard to keep up. This week I worked on shading, and a lot of layering, dimensions, etc. I loved this week because I was starting to feel freer to not follow the tutorial to a T and that was helpful because I was able to adjust this piece to what was working for me!

Week #5 Flourishing 

This was the most fun that I had in a week! This was a come-back week once again! (I really have my ups and downs PS. next week is tough again). I felt like a real pro when I was actually able to recreate the piece almost perfectly without a lot of extra help, pausing, and googling what was going on. I was so proud of two of my pieces from this week that I shared both on my blog post as normally I only share the best one. I was excited to start using this skill that I was putting so much time into to create a piece that I was really proud of and actually sent to my whole family. 

Week #6 To GIF or not to GIF

And this week once again was a struggle. I didn’t mean to but I had a hard week then an easier week over and over again throughout this journey and let me tell you this was a hard week! Not only did I have a million technical difficulties but also creating the GIF was very hard with all the layering and then going back and fixing because you couldn’t see a layer. However, I am very excited that I learned this because I think that this will be something that will be fun to add to classroom presentations to spice it up once in awhile! 

Week #7 ME ME ME

OK I know I have said this before but this was my favourite week! It was my first attempt at creating a piece that got me excited about Procreate in the first place. I have seen these portraits around social media for the past year and I have always thought that they were so cool. I am so excited to say that I am finally able to do one and I think it turned out AMAZING!

Week #8 Starting to get comfortable 

This was such a fun week because I felt the most creative. I felt like I was actually drawing something that was important! I recreated Trista’s engagement photo that I found when doing our Cyber Sleuth. Before this, I felt like I was practicing a skill but after this piece, I felt like I was making art (which is weird because I am not an artistic person).

Week #9 How far will I go?

THE FINAL PIECE! Week nine was the final piece that I created for this class so I thought lets go OG and draw the queen of Disney Moana. I loved walking into this week so confident and then being shut down with my first idea of doing black and white. (we had to keep it consistent to have a fail every second week). However, I got back up and I think I did the most perfect solo drawing on Procreate I could have possibly imagined! Without any help from any YouTube video, website or TikTok I crushed this week’s piece and used all the knowledge from this whole semester to create this beautiful piece. 

My first piece and my final piece!

Resources 

My top three resources that I used were YouTube TikTok and Caelyn. My favourite Youtube creator for amazing step by step videos that described everything in amazing detail was Teela Cunningham. She had amazing videos with everything related to Procreate that helped me at every step of my Procreate journey. She is amazing and has a shop that has free brushes and colour pallets (which were a blessing!) Second resource/ inspiration was TikTok. Although I cannot pin one specific TikTok my whole Procreate journey and steps, and inspiration for pieces each week would not be here without my trusted creative resource of TikTok. I cannot recommend it more for anyone in a creative block. My final and much trusted resource was Caelyn. With us both being on a Procreate journey it was a blessing to have someone who was also learning and growing alongside me and I would often call her and ask her for help with anything that I was struggling with! So thank you Caelyn!

Final thoughts!

I have realized the endless creative possibilities that are available with Procreate. When I first started I was copying exactly what other people had done and now I have enough creative understanding of how Procreate that I am actually able to be creative on my own without a tutorial. Before this class I never thought I had a creative bone in my body but I realize now that I actually can learn how to be creative and this helped me do that! 

Coding? Or a confidence boster?

Coding! 

Ok when I saw this in our #EDTC300 weekly assignments I was really nervous. I have never done any coding before and pretty much anything that involved computers I struggle with. However this was so much easier than I thought it was going to be! 

There are so many options to choose from that I was able to pick something that related to my interests. I love dancing and music so here is a little sneak peak at a TikTok I made dancing with the pineapple that I created the dance for! Don’t laugh, I love dancing and music but I never said I was good. 

Throughout the program of the Hour of Code, they get you to watch videos and have instructions of what the next task you can do is. For as bad as I am with technology I felt very good about navigating this program. Little characters would congratulate me on my achievements shown in the picture above. There was never a moment that I was left confused about what I was supposed to do. Even the very techy things like the coding itself are simplified to help users navigate it better. Here is a screen clipping from when I was learning about the background effects.

I think that this is an amazing way to have students explore new ways that they can be creative and use their minds to discover and explore. I am a fan of this program and I will be getting my brother to do it for me next time! I believe that implementing this into my future classroom will make the students feel unstoppable, make them feel like they are geniuses, and encourage them that they can do anything that they put their minds to. In the course of an hour, I felt so excited and empowered by what I was able to accomplish that I ran around my house showing my whole family my dancing pineapple. I hope that the students in my classroom feel this way as well! 

How far will I go?

This week being the last week for our learning project I wanted to try a fun piece of my favourite person from my favourite Disney video Moana! When I first looked at this picture I thought that it might be cool to try and make it black and white since I had done two pieces that are in colour and I have never seen anyone do a black and white Procreate piece before. However, as you can see from this one picture, I was about half way through and I realized that the black and white was going to make Moana look crazy. I realized that part of using Procreate we use the different colours to make the separate identifiable features in the picture. When using black and white there is not enough deference so the elements are not as distinguishable. So I reverted  back to the colour. 

My first attempt

The past two pieces that I have done to make cartoon versions of people of Procreate I did one that used black outlines, and the other one I did solid colour with lots of added detail. This piece I took some inspiration from Caelyn and her instagram page where she does Procreate pictures of people. In examining how she does the pieces she will often only do very subtle details like a jacket and and does not often add different colours to the hair. In doing this I think that without all the extra details it simplified Moana to the simple recognizable cartoon that she is.

What I learned

This week when reflecting on the three different variations of Procreate profiles that I did of myself, Trista and her finance, and now Moana I realize that there are many different ways to do profiles of people/ characters. In this I specifically choose to leave out the nose, add in the detail of her iconic shirt, and recreate the beautiful flower crown but in a much more simpler way. Every decision that I made in creating this piece was to have people be able to recognize her and I think that that is what art is about. Being able to help people see the true beauty of the image that you have created! 

The best digital literacy lesson plan in Canada

Sorry for lying. However, this is what I will be talking about in this blog post. News, fake news, how to educate students on getting good information, and how we can put this into our lesson plans in class. I want to begin this blog by saying that I am very new in my journey with understanding digital literacy but I am well aware of the Fake news that travels as I have been a victim of it on multiple occasions, and for that reason, I want to help my students avoid it. 

I am currently minoring in Physics so when thinking about how to help students understand fake news in Physics I thought this might be hard compared to doing a research paper in english. However, after looking at the curriculum of Physics 30 this was one of the outcomes:  PH30-SDS1 Create and carry out a plan to explore one or more topics of personal interest relevant to Physics 30 in depth. What a great way to teach students about Fake News then talk about it with them when they are researching a physics topic of interest to them. And let me tell you there are lots of fake news stories in the world related to science.  

I read an article by NCTE titled Digital-Literacy and Composition and it talked about the integration of digital-literacy into the STEM subject which is often not talked about in regards to digital learning. The article spoke about having students start to create eportfolios to present their learning, research, or understanding. When relating that to Physics 30 I think about how the students are required to research and find their own information on topics and how they would be able to present their information online to then share with their peers what they have learned. I love the idea that this article presents that it is important to invite digital learning into the STEM subjects. Science is often a place where people can use false information, biases, and fake news the most.

When finding resources to go through with my students how in this unit they will be researching a topic we will also discuss how they will find the correct and true information. Beyond ‘fake news’ 10 types of misleading news gives the students a good understanding of all the different types of fake news and helps them understand that it will not always be obvious when the news is fake or biased. This will help teach them that even in science things can be twisted to fit a narrative, thus understanding how to get good information regarding their research project. I also read a paper Bias in the News and there is an amazing TedTalk How to Choose your News that are resources that I will go over with my students before their research of a Physics topic. These resources give lots of information on how to detect fake news and biases however my favourite thing that I learned when researching this topic is that we need to double and triple check EVERYTHING. Now more than ever stories get twisted and when looking for the full truth we need to use multiple sources to find the correct story/information. 

I am hoping that by doing lots of research and fact checking this will also help my students to do the same. 

Have you ever been fooled by fake news?

Starting to get comfortable

Welcome back! I am so incredibly excited to share with you everything that I have learned this week! We are nearing the end of our Learning Project journey and so I thought it was time to push the limits. 

Resources 

This week took inspiration from my classmates Caelyn’s Instagram printsbycaelyn. After reflecting on the style of my last portrait that I did in last weeks learning project I decided that I wanted a more simple clean look that wasn’t so busy. So I did some TikTok and youtube search and found out how to do the layering and dived into the first project that I did without following a tutorial.

Game plan So I wanted to go for the more silhouette model instead of just a cartoon version. After cyber sleuthing Trista Kenneth (read my blog post about that here) I spent alot of time looking at her pictures on social media so I decided to do a portrait for her!

From this to this!

As you can tell one is coloured and the other in black and white. I actually pulled the colours from another one of her pictures taken on this day and used them to create the print.

Reviewing

Being it the first project that I didn’t follow a video on I realize that I still need to work on figuring out the layering. I struggled with placing each layer in the correct place so that it would look in the correct order. I am so happy with the way it turned out and I cannot wait for next weeks challenge!

Go check out my Instagram to find send me a picture of you so that I can make you something!

© 2024 Cyandra Cornish

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑