Hello everyone! My name is Karley Van De Sype. I grew up with two younger brothers in a small town about two hours from Regina. I moved to be closer to Regina for school about three years ago. In July, my friend and I are going to go teach in Australia! We are both really looking forward to the amazing experience that this will provide for us, both in education and personally.
In the early years of my degree, I did not have much experience using educational technologies. However, I have gained some more experience through my internship and my work with EYES (Educating Youth in Engineering and Science). Through my work I have learned about many different technologies that can be used to teach an array of subjects that I would never though about before. Some of my favourites include squishy circuits, microbits, makey makeys, and spheros. In my internship I began exploring artificial intelligence. I found a website called Gamma that was helpful for taking information that I gathered and generating it into slideshows. I also liked to use ChatGPT to generate math problems for worksheets that I was creating. Additionally, I explored some websites that would take an article and read it aloud. This was great for students who are not as strong of readers as some of their classmates. It made it possible for them to participate in a research project without the stress of having to read everything on their own. After finding all of these resources I can only imagine what is still out there for me to discover.
When it comes to blogging, I once felt that it was silly because the blogs that I had heard about were people posting about their daily lives and as a result it can get boring and repetitive to read. However, in more recent years I have found them to be a great resource. Many things that we are guided to or asked to read are very academic, lengthy, wordy, and often include words that are not a part of the general public’s vocabulary. Blogs are a great way to share equally useful information in a package that is much more accessible and inviting. I also think that with this new age that we live in where we have access to everything at the push of a button and thirty second videos are replacing the written word it is important to recognize that people’s attention span is decreasing. Therefore, a blog can be a great way to get a message across.