Author Archives: dcz815

About dcz815

I'm currently attending the University of Regina, taking my Bachelor of Secondary Education Degree. Welcome to my Teaching Journey!

Sticky Notes!!!!! Learning Post Week 7

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Howdy readers!

I had a really busy week, as I have been moving back up to the city (finally)!!!! No more commuting is going to not only save me a lot of time and money, but also the stress of winter driving, which is a nice bonus.

Of course, after moving I made the compulsory post-moving Walmart trip. While I was there I finally got around to picking up the sticky notes that I have been wanting to use to make little cue-cards to practice the phrases that have been giving me grief in my French lessons.

Please excuse my horrible photography skills (it took me 5 minutes just to find out how to turn the flash on my camera), but I will save that for my next learning project. Here is a page of the “cue-cards” I have made out of sticky notes to stick into my notebook.

Also, apologies if the image quality is poor, I had to downsize the file to get it onto my blog post so hopefully it doesn’t look as bad for you as it does for me.

Phrases like parles/parle/parlez-vous which mean the same thing but are different depending on context, and feminine/masculine words are the main things that I have been practicing with these cue-cards. I have folded the answers underneath the cue cards so I can check if my answers are correct.

The cue cards also come in handy whenever I am on DuoLingo and get stumped about feminine/masculine words. I kind of use it to cheat (don’t tell Duo), but I feel it’s more “constructive cheating” than anything. Does that make sense?

My question to whoever may be reading this: Do you find cue cards to be an effective strategy for memorization? I personally enjoy cue cards, I find it useful to write things down to memorize them, and with cue cards you can test your retention of very specific things, so it is going a little bit further than simply writing things down.

 

J’étudie le Français – Week 6

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Hello readers, and bienvenue!

I can’t believe this is already my 6th post for my learning project. I don’t know about you guys, but it has been a crazy busy week for me.

My next “step” for my learning project is to make flash cards. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, although I have been compiling phrases which I would like to add to the flash cards. I have been looking for an app that I can download on my phone that might be useful for this, so if you are reading this and know of any, please let me know!

With how busy it has been, I was primarily doing DuoLingo as my main way of learning for this week. I have been learning a ton of phrases surrounding transportation this week, and it has been cool to start to add these phrases to my “repertoire”. It is interesting to see what words it is teaching me; words like train station, or even just train might not be as relevant for somebody to learn in Canada as they would be in France, where those modes of transportation are much more common.

I haven’t given you guys any videos in a bit, so I figured I would share a couple of my lessons to give a sense of where I am at with that. The files were too large to share within my blog post, so they can be found here.

I like recording my lessons, and going back to see what my common mistakes are. I still am really struggling with accents and when to use which ones, but I think repetition is going to be a key factor in overcoming this. DuoLingo will occasionally tell you little bits of what your common errors are, but I don’t have the money for DuoLingo+, so it is more cost-efficient to do film study on my own mistakes and make note of what I should be working on.

To conclude my blog post, I always like leaving you guys behind with a question:

  1. Is my google doc viewable, and can you see the videos I uploaded onto the document?
  2. Does anybody know a way to make it so I can upload my videos directly onto my blog? I’m sure it’s been answered, but it seems to be an issue regarding my file sizes. Not sure how to make that smaller.

As always, thanks for reading!

Cyber Safety in my Educational Experiences

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Hello readers,

For this weeks’ assigned blog post, we were asked to cover the extent to which cyber safety – also known as digital citizenship – had been taught to us, as well as the methods through which they were taught to us as students.

For context, I graduated from high school in 2018 in Weyburn.

I don’t feel as though cyber safety and digital citizenship were topics that my teachers were prepared or equipped for. I don’t think many of them would have grown up in an era where cyberbullying, or the nine elements of digital citizenship made sense. Thinking about it now, I cannot really recall many discussions that were had surrounding the issues that have arisen from a highly digitized world, and that is strange considering it is the world I was raised into. I thought of one example where we were spoken to about topics that related to digital citizenship.

I’m not sure how many people are familiar with an app called YikYak (no, not TikTok), but when I was in high school it became a highly controversial app in which people could anonymously post anything. Anybody with access to YikYak within a certain distance could see these posts and reply anonymously. Obviously high schoolers gravitated towards it, and it became an app where stupid, and harmful rumours were spread. Kids would refer to whoever they were posting about by using their initials, so it was often very cryptic among teenagers. It obviously became a pretty big issue within the school I attended, and it got to a point where our teachers would openly discuss the harms of YikYak, and basically just told us how stupid of an app it was. I’m sure the app is still around, but after a while they were forced to take anonymity out of the app, which kind of killed it for our school. That is the one time I can clearly remember some of the elements of digital citizenship being brought up within my educational experiences.

While I did not often have these conversations with teachers and educators, or even my own parents, I did often see posters about stranger danger, or cyberbullying scattered throughout the hallways. These were more fear-mongering tactics than anything. That is what my memories of being taught digital citizenship consists of more than anything, and I am curious to hear if anybody’s experiences are similar to mine.

Thanks for reading my blog.

 

Telling You About Myself in French

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Hey readers,

I am back with another learning project post!!! This week I am going to use some of my French knowledge that I have gained to tell you about myself, using phrases that I have learned mainly on DuoLingo and YouTube, but also words which I have taken upon myself to re-learn, such as numbers, and seasons of the year.

Je suis un homme. J’ai vingt-trois ans. Je travaille beaucoup! J’étudie à l’Université de Regina. J’habite à Weyburn. J’ai un chat, il étudie avec moi. Je déteste l’hiver.

A new thing I have started doing is taking words which I want to learn, throwing them into google translate and then writing them down into my notebook. I have been taking it upon myself to relearn many words which I would have been taught in school that have not been covered by DuoLingo. Things such as the names for seasons, and numbers up to 100 are things which I have been targetting more heavily this past week.

Above is an example of something I will type into google translate if I want to learn it. I then try to use the newly acquired terminology in sentences.

That is where I have found DuoLingo to be of most use, is helping me to understand the structure of sentences in French. It feels so backwards from English at first, but through constant repetition of phrases in French, it is starting to feel more natural. DuoLingo has been slow in introducing a ton of new terminology, which I understand. It does not want to overwhelm the user with a million different words, and wants to teach through constant repetition, which is a slow (but steady) process. In the past couple weeks, I have come to realize that teaching myself additional words I want to use and learn in supplement of DuoLingo is going to be the most efficient way of continuing my learning process.

I want to conclude this blog post with a question I have for anybody who may know…

Does anybody know how to use accents on a computer keyboard? I have been enjoying the keyboard on my iPhone as the accents are not hard to find, but I would really like to be able to type French with relative ease on my computer too!!! Do I have to change my keyboard settings? Are there third-party apps which make it easier? I intend to do some research on this subject but I also want to hear if anybody else has figured out a way to do this!

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog! Have a great day!

The Rise of the Internet and the Classroom – My Reaction to Wesch and Others

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Hey readers,

I really enjoyed this video by Wesch, and while it has dated in the 15 years since it was posted, I think it has aged gracefully. It documents the rise in the new dominant form of communication:

The Internet

The fact that people across the world are only a few clicks away from each other at any given time has been revolutionary for the way we communicate with one another.

In the video, Wesch seems to have such an innocent outlook on the global outreach that the internet provides us with. In 2008, the internet was a vastly different place, but even then the growth that the internet was experiencing was undeniable. The internet provides us with not only a platform to find almost any sort of information, but also a platform to share anything which we like. Wesch explores the phenomenon of viral videos and their impact on the youth… I don’t know about any of my readers but this video made me really nostalgic. Especially the Soulja Boy video, I remember being about seven years old when Soulja Boy “came onto the scene”.

I think me being a 7 year old who knew the Crank Dat Soulja Boy back in 2007 ties in nicely to the points that Wesch makes throughout his lecture; that YouTube (and the internet) has connected vast amounts of people (mainly youth-driven) in ways that have never been seen (instantaneously across the globe).

This platform can be a positive thing, but it also brings up some challenges. Especially as the internet, and social media continue to push their way to the forefront of the youth’s attention.

In a newer article from August 2022 which shared some statistics from 2014-present day, it is noted by the authors that
“Fully 35% of teens say they are using at least one of them “almost constantly.”

I personally think this number is higher than that, and this number is constantly rising. Kids are constantly growing more dependent on the internet as it continues to advance. The internet can write essays for you. The internet can connect you with friends from the comfort of your bed. The internet can teach you new languages. Interestingly, many things which are connected with the internet are also things which can be incorporated into schooling.

The internet is a tool with unlimited possibilities, but the ways that we use it often waste the potential that it provides us with, and that includes myself. As Wesch states, the internet is a place which is led by the youth. In 2008, when his lecture was posted, I was extremely youthful (maybe I still am). My generation has grown up with the internet, and that leads me to where I am going with this blog post:

As teachers who have grown up with the internet, unlike our parents and unlike most of the teachers we likely experienced, we are much more familiar with the risks and benefits which the internet provides us with. I feel as though it is our responsibility to raise awareness to these risks at all times, however we should still find ways to meaningfully incorporate the internet into our teaching experiences.

It is essential that students fully understand that what they post on the internet is not limited to the small circles that they are likely intended for. My generation did not understand this… I have spent days of time trying to scrub my digital footprint off of sites that I no longer use. Trying to scrub things which I deem cringeworthy many years after the fact. We did not have people to teach us about digital footprints/identity when I was in elementary, or secondary schools. I feel like this is another essential piece of incorporating internet into schooling which often goes uncovered.

Sorry, I could write about this topic all day, and I apologize if this blog post was all over the place… The internet is a complex subject. One thing I am divided on is the use of AI in schools… I am curious to know what others think of AI, or if & how they intend to incorporate it. I am not entirely familiar with AI & things such as ChatGPT, so if anybody could enlighten me on actual benefits that it provides us with in education that would be really interesting. I feel like AI gets a bad rep (maybe deservingly so), but how can we draw the benefits out of AI in an authentic educational setting? Let me know what you think, and as always, thanks for taking the time out of your day to read my blog!

Je m’ennuie – A LONG car ride

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Hey readers,

Over the week of reading week I spent much of it driving. A buddy and I hopped into a car, drove to Fernie to meet with a couple other buddies, and then we all went to Calgary, and then back to Fernie, and then my buddy and I made our way back home. If you were wondering, yes, I am sick of driving. If you are also wondering what this has to do with my learning project, let me explain!

For the 9+ hour trips to Fernie and back to Saskatchewan, I did do a little bit of DuoLingo… My friend kept laughing at my attempts to speak French whenever prompted, and he was driving so I did not want to annoy him the whole way.

The solutions I came up with to get around this were:

A) Use Headphones

and

B) Try something other than DuoLingo!

And with that, I set off on trying to find some YouTube videos… In my previous blog posts I have not included many links, so I thought it would be something new to incorporate some more links to my blog of the videos I viewed, and additionally, give my opinion on how effective some of these videos were for me.

  1. 100 Easy French Phrases to Learn

I thought that this was a great video. I like that it cuts to the chase; often times the videos I watched tend to ramble on for the first few minutes, which I find disengaging. It includes many phrases I was familiar with, and many that I had not learned yet. It was a bit slow-paced, so I put it on 1.25x playback speed and listened to it a couple times. I also learned a great new phrase which summed up most of my trip:

Je m’ennuie, which means “I’m bored”.

 

2. French Greetings (And other videos by this creator!)

This was another great video that I found, and I actually recommend this entire channel. I have watched a few of her videos, and they are extremely helpful in supplement of the DuoLingo app. On DuoLingo, I have been learning many greetings in my “beginning” phases of the app, so this video specifically catered to what I have been learning quite nicely.

3. Learn French in 25 Minutes.

At first, I was not a fan of this video… I’m not sure why, I think maybe the ad at the beginning of the channel trying to sell me something had something to do with it. But I gave it a second chance, since it is literally the first video that popped up when I searched “french for beginners” on YouTube. I really liked this video. It explains some of the nuances of French language that I have been finding really tricky! For example, casual language/formal language and feminine/masculine nouns are explained in this video. Feminine and masculine nouns have been giving me serious grief!!!

 

I am not much of a visual learner, particularly when it comes to watching videos, so this experience was something a little bit out of my “educational wheelhouse”, however I really enjoyed doing this. I think I might have needed something other than DuoLingo, as I found that trying something else in addition to DuoLingo really remotivated me to continue learning! I am now at 27 days straight of using DuoLingo, and am branching off into other methods of learning. I plan on making flash cards for many of the words I have been finding to be tricky, however I am open to any suggestions on any other methods I should try!

Thanks for reading! Au revoir!

Week 4 – Trying Something New

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Greetings, reader!

For this week’s blog, we were assigned to try a tool we have not used before to document our learning project.

To document my learning (and show people what I have been doing), here is a video I made using Microsoft ClipChamp, a free-to-use video editing software that was on my computer. I have never used it before, so hopefully my video turned out alright. It was too big to upload to my blog, so I have attached it into a google document for your viewing pleasure.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19x5sbhNfCwQw4KOqM0AI6aofuwfdPo68-ZfZCU51ZBg/edit?usp=sharing

Please leave me a comment if this video is not viewable! I set it so anybody with the link can view.

As far as how I feel about my progression through my learning goal, I was thinking about some of the comments I received from my readers! One of them suggested making flash cards, as I would be able to memorize words efficiently. That is something I think I will do! I find that in a span of 3-4 lessons, 25-50 words are generally practiced at a time in DuoLingo.

I spend a lot of time commuting, and I find it amusing that I am starting to think of phrases in French while I am driving. Even if it is something simple like “tu manges une pizza” (you are eating a pizza), or “bonne journée, à bientôt” (have a good day, see you soon), I see this as progress!

Certain phrases are difficult for me to remember, for example “parle” (speak) can also be spelled “parles” or “parlez” depending on the context. I find that this has been the most difficult thing for me to understand. I am getting better at understanding the language as it is spoken to me, however repeating it and using the proper spelling of the terms is difficult to get a grasp of! I think the suggestion of flash cards will come in very handy for this.

Back to my usage of ClipChamp, and how I feel it relates to the SAMR model

S- Substitution

For students, viewing a short video is often an efficient way to gather the important points of a certain topic. Rather than a long-winded blog about DuoLingo, why not just show you it in a quick video?

A- Augmentation

For a teacher using a software like ClipChamp, augmentation is attainable through sharing videos with the class. Students can choose to go back, rewind, and view any videos/multimedia that they wish at anytime.

M – Modification

I think video-editing software such as ClipChamp makes for a great modification of a presentation, particularly for students who may be too shy to speak in front of a class, or also for those who may be too long-winded to be concise. It made for a quick, and easy way for me to represent what I have been learning.

R- Redefinition

As was mentioned in “M- Modification”, editing software such as ClipChamp creates a unique opportunity for students to share what they have learned through creating a video. In redefining, students can share what they have learned not only amongst each other, but also have opportunities to post their videos onto a blog like this, or onto another platform such as YouTube!

As always, thank you for taking the time to read my blog! Did you like my video, and do you have any tips for editing videos?

 

My Tech Habits

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Greetings!

For this blog post, I will be responding to the following prompt:

“How do you strike a balance between screen time for academic purposes and personal well-being? Are there any strategies or boundaries you’ve established to ensure a healthy relationship with technology?”

I found this question particularly interesting, as I used to really struggle to balance screen time between productive purposes and other personal uses, and it began to form a very unhealthy relationship with technology – particularly with my cell phone and social media.

Whether it be through silly iPhone games, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., I found that I was constantly getting off task from the more productive things that I needed to be doing as a result of the distractions found on my phone. As a result, I was really struggling to manage my time.

I would constantly remind myself:

“What am I doing?”

“I need to get this done.”

And eventually, I realized that social media was beginning to be more of a hinderance than anything, so to re-establish a balance between productivity and self-indulgence during my screen time, I began to deactivate many of my social media accounts in early 2023. The only one I have left now is Instagram, which I seldomly use.

My baby-boomer Dad hates that I am not on Facebook, which kind of cracks me up. Personally, I have not thought about it since I deleted it. I have definitely felt like this change has increased my productivity, and having trimmed down my social media accounts quite a bit, I find that social media has become more enjoyable in itself. It has become easier to moderate. I no longer go from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat and then back to Facebook and then realize that I should instead be panicked about upcoming deadlines. I get my stuff done in a timely manner, and still find time to use technology in a more leisurely, less addictive manner.

This is what has worked for me, and I used to be under the impression that giving up, or reducing social media usage is something that would be incredibly difficult in this day and age. In my experience, I have found social media to be very easy to ease up on, and I have found this experience to be rewarding. I still am able to keep in touch with all of my friends, and do not feel the “FOMO” that they associate with being off of social media. That is not to say that this is what everybody would find healthy, however in my case it was a great solution to managing my time more wisely.

If you are reading this, I am curious:

Have you ever deleted a social media account, or even thought about it? What was your motive, and if so, did you return to the platform eventually?

Thanks for reading!

“Un point sur mes études” – An update on my studies

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Greetings!

Here is my first update on how my French language-learning process has been going so far.

So, if you read my last post, I was trying to decide between two websites (busuu.com and babbel.com), when a classmate suggested that I try DuoLingo, which is a smartphone app of a similar idea to the websites I had been looking at. Even better, it is completely free to use!

I decided to give it a try, and in what felt like a short time, I suddenly realized I had been on the app for 45 minutes. I was really enjoying the app in my first impressions.

It has some cool features that I noticed:

It keeps a streak of how many consecutive days you have used the app (similar to how Snapchat uses streaks), I feel like this encourages people to continue learning through not wanting to break a streak.

The app is laid out in sections/units, from rookie, intermediate, and onwards. You can “progress” through levels in the app, making your learning feel like a game. If I suddenly feel like what I am doing is too easy (not likely at this stage), I like that it gives me the option to skip ahead.

I also like that the app uses encouraging language, and gives you chances to make corrections when you make a mistake…

However, this leads me to the only thing which I dislike about the app in its free-to-use state. The 5 Hearts.

Similar to apps like Candy Crush, where you have 5 “lives”, DuoLingo in its free-to-use form uses this system. Once these lives are depleted, they take a long time to replenish. Of course, this can be navigated around in a couple of ways:

1) Never make mistakes

or

2) Pay the subscription

With these options provided, I think I am going to try my best to not make mistakes when playing around with DuoLingo. In just my first time using the app, I made it 45 minutes in without making running out of lives. If I am using this app for 45 minutes daily and can see myself making progress without having to pay, and without feeling hindered by having 5 lives, I see that as a win.

In the early stages of me using the app, it introduced me to pretty basic words. Here are some phrases/words that I learned, or perhaps re-learned in some instances through DuoLingo:

Chat – Cat         Chien – Dog               Garcon – Boy           Fille – Girl

Homme – Man        Femme – Woman              Un – A             Et – And

Tu es – “Are you”     Mange – “Is Eating”

 

…And the list goes on!

Most of my activities involved using these words in phrases, or translating phrases which used these words, and through repetition, I found this to be quite effective. Below are some images for examples of what these activities entailed.

I have been really enjoying my experiences with DuoLingo, and I really would appreciate receiving feedback on what others think of it…

Have you used it before? If so, did you find it effective for you?

Thanks for reading! Have an excellent week!

 

 

Learning Project – The Start of My Journey Relearning French

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Hi everybody reading this!

My name is Darian Zadorozniak, and this is my introductory blog post for EDTC 300, where I will be frequently updating readers on the progress I have made in my learning project assignment throughout the semester. Before we get into the thick of it, I figured I should start with a little bit about myself!

I am from Weyburn Saskatchewan, where I am also currently located. I currently am taking my fourth year of studies, pursuing a secondary education degree with a major in social studies, and a minor in english. For hobbies, I generally enjoy watching football, playing some video games, or just hanging out with my grey tabby named Taco. Going into this course, I would have to categorize my general knowledge and experiences with educational technology as limited, and with that, I am excited to learn many new things this semester!

Moving onto the subject of my learning project, the goal which I have decided to set for myself is to “re-learn” and enhance my skills in the French language. Back in high school, I stopped taking French classes as soon as it stopped being mandatory. I can remember that French was pretty much always one of my least favourite classes, however in the ten or so years that it has been since I have taken any additional language classes, I have begun to recognize the importance of bilingualism/multilingualism, particularly as Canadians, one of the most notable officially bilingual countries in the world. Being located in Canada is also the reason why of all languages, I have chosen French to be the one I will attempt to learn.

My knowledge of French is severely limited. I could probably give you the names of colours, fruits, and tell you that my name is Darian in French. That is pretty much where my knowledge ends, so this should be an interesting goal for me to take on.

I am thinking the best way to tackle this goal will be through the use of the internet. I have heard of programs such as Babbel (babbel.com), which are not fully free to use, however I am willing to pay for a subscription to achieve this goal if I find that free-to-use softwares are not really clicking with me. Another one I have fiddled around with is a website called busuu (busuu.com), which allowed me to take a test before showing me a paywall. FYI, the test told me that I was a level 1 beginner in the French language.

At this point, I get the feeling that I am going to have to fork over a few dollars if I really want to progress in this goal, which again, is completely fine with me. Overall, these websites all seem very intriguing and are going to be the direction I likely head in, as they engage the user in real tests and will likely provide me with more tangible methods in terms of actually tracking my progress in achieving this goal.

Other resources out there that I explored are YouTube videos. There are tons of resources on YouTube when it comes to learning languages! So many, in fact, that I found myself a little bit overwhelmed when looking at all of the options. One thing I find with these videos, is that they were not as engaging for me as my earlier experiences with websites like babbel.com and busuu.com. I think this is because these video resources do not provide viewers with a chance for practical application of their skills like some of the other softwares do, so I find myself zoning out and not really getting as much out of it.

Long story short, I found that websites like Busuu and Babbel allow for the users to plan out how much time they would like to spend daily on learning their skills, and help the users plan out when and how far they would like to take their language studies. Therefore, I am going to go with one of these. So, before I start my subscription to one of these, if anybody has any experience with either of these apps I am certainly open to any feedback, recommendations or suggestions that people have!

Thank you for reading my first blog post!

Darian Zadorozniak