An Image Depicting My Journey Towards Truth and Reconciliation
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Monthly Archives: November 2023
An Infographic About My Field Experience
Learning How to Speak to Friends
This week for my ASL learning, I again spent time on the SignSchool website.
The next module to complete was “Friends.”
Anyone else find it worth noting that SignSchool puts friends before family?
Anyway.
The more time I spend on SignSchool, the more I enjoy it. It’s such a good learning tool – and it’s free! Who couldn’t love it?
I made a video to record what my learning looks like on SignSchool and a review of what I learned this time. Here it is:
This week, SignSchool told me a story about a boy and a girl meeting each other. It was a video, and they signed phrases to each other that I had just learned. I then had to answer questions like, “What was the girl’s name?” “What did he ask her, and what did she answer?” It was so much fun and super practical.
If I ever have a student wanting to learn ASL, I will direct them to this site. Who knows, I may even keep learning ASL after this class just for fun!
Is there anything you think I should try next?
Bernice
We’re All Illiterate
Looking at all the data collected about our students’ (and our own) digital literacy is tragic. We’re all illiterate.
It really feels like there’s no hope. Let’s all join the Amish or go live in a cabin in the woods.
Teachers are there to make sure students become literate. Digital literacy is a natural add-on to this. It’s our responsibility as future educators to make sure our students are not illiterate, even digitally.
The first few curricula for Grade 12 Calculus.
Since I’m probably going to be primarily teaching high school math, I don’t foresee myself having a lot of time to spend on deliberately teaching digital literacy. And, in the Saskatchewan Curriculum, the high school math level curricula really have nothing to do with digital literacy, so I’m unsure as to how I could incorporate that in.
However, I believe in educating the parents and not just the child – so sending home helpful emails and information and hosting digital literacy events for parents and students would be within my abilities.
What you see when you go to the Spot the Troll website.
If I was teaching a subject that was less strict than math, I could devote more time to teaching digital literacy. Doing class games like Spot the Troll would be a great way to start. Probably the best and most helpful thing for the students is to speak to them directly in dialogue and educate them that way. I’m a big fan of class discussions – I think they are much more effective than lectures.
10 Types of Misleading News
Another great thing to teach students would be the 7 Types of Mis- and Dis- Information and the 10 Types of Misleading News. Teaching students about what kinds of information are false and why will help them identify falsehoods in their own lives and help others to identify them as well. Slowly, we can build up awareness and thus help society learn what’s true.
Bernice
ASL – Part 8
This week, I went back to the same website as I did last week to continue some of my learning there since I enjoyed it last time.
The next part of SignSchool taught numbers, which I already know (see my posts Numbers, numbers, numbers and Numbers 11-20), and the phrase “How well do you sign?”
I added pictures of me doing the signs for the phrase since a video I would have added here would have been too short, but keep in mind that the signs include movement, and I couldn’t add that in pictures.
I really appreciate SignSchool for the way it teaches conversational ASL.
The next lesson on SignSchool.
When I finished learning these words and phrases, the website took me back to the lessons I’d learned. I’ve officially finished the basics of “About Me,” according to SignSchool.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Do you have any suggestions for any different ASL tools? Is there anything you’d like to see me try to learn next?
Bernice
Hour of Code
Hello!
This week, as part of the assigned work, I spent some time looking through the Hour of Code website and doing one of their games.
I think coding games like this are a great way to teach students problem-solving skills in a fun way. They are forced to find the problem and come up with a solution if the code doesn’t work. And, in a game form like this, it’s not only more fun, but they also receive lots of tips and help.
I looked through a few:
But finally decided on this cute dinosaur game:
After signing up and making a free account, I spent some time going through the tutorial parts of the game. At the end, I had come up with something I was happy with.
I documented the work I did in this YouTube video on the hour of code dinosaur game.
I’ve done games like this in my own school experience, and I’ve enjoyed them when I did. My favorite coding experience was in elementary school. I think I was in grade seven at the time, and our teacher taught us enough about coding to be able to program the website C++ Shell to be able to do whatever we wanted. I created a questionnaire out of it, which, depending on your answers, would recommend what book you should read next.
Have you had an experience learning coding in school? If so, what was it like? Let me know in the comments.
Bernice
A New Tool – ASL Continued
On last week’s post, I had people recommend for me to check my learning of the alphabet and numbers out of order. I wanted to do this by going on the website that Zachary Hirshmiller recommended: “SignSchool.”
What you first see on the SignSchool website
Once I had signed up, I didn’t find a function right away to check my learning of the alphabet and numbers out of order, but I did find a very user-friendly interface that allowed me to choose out of various basic skills to learn.
Once I signed up and logged in
I selected the “beginner” difficulty and went right ahead learning “The Basics.”
This website is a great tool. It started me off with a super fun introductory video that caught my attention and explained left and right-handed ASL and the importance of facial expressions before teaching me any signs.
Then we went through some basic signs:
“What,” “your,” and “name.”
“What is your name?”
Since I already know the alphabet, signing my name was easy.
Me signing the first letter of my name
The website has a feature that accesses your camera so you can see yourself practicing the letters. I don’t really know how I feel about this. Normally I wouldn’t give a website access to my webcam, but I decided to try it, since I’m already trying new things. There is a little info button that says that SignSchool does not have access to my webcam and it is solely for my practicing purposes, so I chose to trust that it’s not lying to me. However, when I tried to click the option to disable the webcam, just to see, it wouldn’t let me. Strange.
The next thing was to learn the alphabet through a sentence. “The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Honestly, I find this approach much more fun (and more helpful) than just memorizing the alphabet in order. (I’m really liking this website so far.)
I used the sentence to check my knowledge of the alphabet out of order, and honestly, it was pretty good. I’m positively surprised at myself.
Here is a review of what I learned this week:
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any suggestions for what I should try next or questions in the comments!
Bernice