Learning the ABCs for ASL was a little difficult for my brain and fingers to move in ways they have not before. I have never had to think of using my hands and gestures for communication. It took my brain a couple attempts to move the way I wanted them to. I had 0 experience when it came to ASL. I tried using Signschool for my ABCs but I did not enjoy the interface of the app as much as I had hoped for the ABCs. A lot of the future learning I will need to know was blocked by paywalls and I am unsure of how much I want…
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Teaching in the Digital Age: Embracing Connectivity, Building Community
Michael Wesch’s presentation on the history of YouTube had a major theme to me. Community. YouTube has created a global community consisting of millions of people. Wesch talks about the “global connections” YouTube, and now every social media platform, that can create “unimaginable possibilities”. Social media and YouTube have evolved over the years and more people are connected than ever before, but somehow still, people feel alone or isolated. In an article by Forbes, multiple studies have been done as to why people feel alone despite the global connectedness of social media. Kids today spend less time socializing in person with one another than kids from the 90s, 80s and…
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Pixels to Papers: Juggling Leisure Tech and Academic Tools
Regular Daily Technology Use On average, I probably spend 7-8 hours of technology, if not even more, between my laptop and my phone. I just realized that is a third of my day. Most of those hours are spent on leisure time either streaming a show on Netflix or Disney+. I try my best not to use social media as much and I actually deleted my Instagram years ago and I never looked back. However, I do still use Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok. I game as well on my PS5 so between my phone, laptop and PS5 I probably spend too much time in front of a screen. Spotify…
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Beginning my Learning Journey
For my learning project, I have decided to do American Sign Language (ASL). I have no experience in ASL and I do not know any signs. My baseline is at the very bottom. I decided to pick ASL for my learning project because I believe it is important in society to be more inclusive to those who cannot hear. Learning ASL would be beneficial to me to be able to connect with those who cannot hear or are hard of hearing. As a future educator, it will be important to communicate with students with simple signs to assist a student in a vast majority of ways or help them communicate…
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Who am I?
My name is Kyler Flahr and I am currently a student in the middle years program at the University of Regina. I started University in the winter semester of 2018 and enrolled in Kinesiology. I did that for a year and a half before deciding to take a break from school and change programs. I have been bartending since I was 19 years old at The Canadian Brewhouse. I returned to school to do social work and continued working. I enjoyed social work and did well in my classes, but I did not know if my mental health could take the toll social work can have. I changed programs for…