I Can (Try To) Help!

I am always looking for support from my colleagues which means that I must do my best to support them as well! EDTC 300 was a very supportive community. Sometimes it is hard to find friends in online classes, but it was helpful that I made friends in other classes that transferred over to EDTC.

Comments on Other People’s Blogs

My comments on other people’s blog posts were more encouraging rather than informational. Although I did give some advice on classmates’ song choices. You can see some of my comments in the images below.

Help Outside of the Classroom

A few classmates and I made a group chat on Snapchat. It was really helpful to talk through assignments and confirm due dates with each other. The group chat says “Blog Post Mondays because every Monday we would meet up in the afternoon and write our blog posts for the week. This was a great way for us to bond and get our work done at the same time.

Participation on Twitter

I enjoyed tweeting, and although I didn’t tweet every day, I found it a very useful tool to find resources for lessons and learn from other teachers. Some images from my Twitter are below. 

Participation on Discord

I was least communicative on Discord, although I did try my best to help those when I could. An example is in the video below.

Overall, I am proud of my participation in this class, helping people when I could!

 

Grab Your Popcorn and Watch What We’ve Learned!

This has been a very interesting class! I enjoyed taking the class along with my friend Faith. So we decided for our summary of learning, we should work together. Our first plan was to explain our summary of learning just by sitting down and talking about what we had learned. And although that would have worked well, we wanted to change it up a little bit. So instead of talking about our learning, we decided to act it out. Please take a look at our summary of learning, and I hope you enjoy it!

I Have Been Humbled

I have been doing my placement in a grade 4 classroom, where students are about 10 years old. When I was younger, I wasn’t allowed to get any social media until I was 13 but students in today’s world use social media as a communication tool. My cousin had to get Snapchat as a way to communicate with her volleyball coach and team. Students need to be literate to understand things that are appropriate and inappropriate to post on social media as well as who to add. Snapchat is a tricky subject because someone can add you on “Quick Add” and all you might see is their first name and their Bitmoji (if you are confused about what a Bitmoji is you can find an explanation here). The quick add section is where someone can add you because you have mutual friends. Snapchat thankfully tells you when someone added you on quick add or if they have searched up your username. The image below is from my personal Snapchat account. I have had a person try to add me 4 separate times using 4 different accounts.

This is from Snapchat, a few days later, she added me again using a different username

Something I have learned, and I will try to teach my students is actually to look at the name. Do you recognize the name? No? Well then don’t add them! Why do you want some stranger texting you or seeing your Snapchat stories? Sometimes someone’s username can come in handy as well. Some people have parts of their last name in their usernames or recognizable words. This is another tool to help your student think clearly before they add strangers on Snapchat.

Learning about online safety would build on the health curriculum in grade 4 and make connections to developing new relationships.

The scores you see below are my results to the quizzes “Can you spot the fake news headline?”, “Spot the troll”, and Break the fake. As you can see, I am not the best detective to when it comes to determining if an account is real or fake. However, I still swear by the method if you don’t know them, then don’t add them. You don’t need to be best friends to add someone on Snapchat but it is good to at least have an idea of who you are adding.

Can you spot the fake news headline?

Spot the Troll

Break the Fake

These quizzes have humbled me and my ability to spot a fake account. People on the internet have been getting very good at faking accounts and news headlines. This is why it is so important to fact-check your information including the site the information is coming from.

 

Thanks for reading,

You’re a gem ☺️

Read My Blog. Read My Blog!

From punctuation to cyberbullying and MySpace to Instagram digital citizenship has been here from the beginning.  In school, there is much to remember when it comes to digital citizenship.

In a time when we use the internet for many different parts of the school, we need to be aware of our student’s digital access. When school was totally online many students needed to have school, computers brought to them because of their digital access. If this is not an option schools need to be aware of what needs to be available for students. Just because they have a computer doesn’t mean that they have wifi to use their computer.

Digital literacy is something that many students need to learn, and school can be a great place for them to begin their journey. When I was in school, I learned that lots of writing come with biases. If you were to get your information from a very conservative website, it will give a different view than a liberal website.

I had to learn digital communication in school along with many others. There are so many ways to miscommunicate in a text message. First off, a period will change the entire conversation.

If a conversation went

  • “Are you okay?”
  • “Yeah! I’m fine!”

Both people in the conversation seem very happy, however this conversation…

  • “Are you okay?”
  • “Yeah. I’m fine.”

The periods give the idea that the person answering the question is in fact not doing fine. There is so much that we need to learn when it comes to digital communication. I think that Jimmy Kimmel hits some key ideas in the video linked here. Texting requires lots of context as well as assumptions but the meaning behind the message can very easily be misconstrued.

Thanks for reading!

Maybe I Should Have Started With This

This week I decided to do a bit of theory. As I began moving towards harder songs, the notes I needed to play were WAY too low and WAY too high on the staff. Even when I tried to count upwards using the handy dandy mnemonic. Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (E, G, B, D, F) I couldn’t seem to get the song to sound right. I got really frustrated with myself I thought to myself “What the heck Meghan! You’ve been reading the notes that are on the staff with no problem, why is this so different?” Then it hit me! Cue the flashback memory music…

When I was in high school I played the trumpet. I liked to think that I was really good but I don’t think this was necessarily the case. I was a second trumpet, for those of you who are unaware in my school we had a band with first trumpets, second trumpets, and third trumpets. The first trumpet players most commonly played the more difficult higher notes, and the second trumpet players played music that was less difficult than the first trumpet players, so their goal is to help the first trumpets. The third trumpet’s music was less difficult than the second trumpet player’s. For more information on trumpet, sections click here.

Other than the subtle brag that I was an average trumpet player I realized that I never really had to learn the notes very high above the staff or far below the staff. This was my chance!

My first step was to understand why my fingers wouldn’t work when I was counting up the scale. Then I came across this photo

Image retrieved from https://socratic.org/questions/how-do-you-read-the-music-notes-above-below-the-staff-in-piano-sheet-music

I thought that the scale was based on the staff. I figured that E, G, B, D, F, and F, A, C, E, was

Image retrieved from: https://socratic.org/    questions/how-do-you-read-the-music-notes-above-below-the-staff-in-piano-sheet-music

the pattern that all the notes would go in, this is not the case. After the last note on the 5 lined staff (an F), I assumed that we would then go up again starting with E then G, B, D F. But in reality the notes go on from F to G then to A, B, C, D before they get back to E. After learning this it was time to get started on learning a new memorization tool. I saw a memorization tool online that went Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always, I think that this saying would work in some situations but because I already learned a similar saying for the treble clef I decided to come up with my own saying! For the bass clef, I came up with the saying Gary Buys Divorce Frosting After. I think this saying will stick in my head much easier.

Also not to mention, I didn’t realize that the bass clef was just an extension of the treble clef. This is a zoomed-in version of the image above. This is something that messes me up! The B on the bass clef is the same as the B on the treble clef however, they are totally in totally different places on the staff.

I used a great website called MusicTheory.net after I figured out how the music staff worked. Linked here is the website. The website had a section called note identification, this section gave

This is a G flat

you a note on the staff and asked you to label the note’s letter. This section was very helpful, and even though I am going to have to practice more, I am feeling confident with my progress thus far.

 

So that was my week! Lots of thinking to finally figure out music theory (a little late but better than never).

Thanks for reading, you’re a gem ?

I Scare Easily, Other’s Do Not!

We watched many videos in my school that were used to scare us!

I also was shown the video about Sarah a girl who had unwanted images released. Everyone in her community then asked her creepy questions about when she was going to post more pictures or the colour of her underwear. This video was shown multiple times in school to deter students from taking or sending revealing images to others. If you want to take a look at the video, it is imbeded below.

The next video is of a girl who posted a photo of herself on a bulletin board. When the photo is taken by one student another one pops up in its place. Before long the entire school has this photo. When the girl decides that putting the photo on the bulletin board was a BAD idea, she takes down the image but another one pops up in its place. Then we see the terror in the girl’s eyes because she can never take the image off the bulletin board. This video definitely deterred me from taking and sending revealing photos of myself.

We also watched a video in middle school that unfortunately, I cannot find. The premise of the video was to show that in the 1980s if you took a revealing photo it would take 1 min for the image to develop whereas if you were to take it in 2014 the image could get around the world in the same 60 seconds. This video was meant to show us how quickly one decision can change your life however, again, I do not think that in one minute of posting a photo it would necessarily get to other countries.

The goal of the 3 videos was to scare us, and it worked for me! I think that many students were not affected because of the probability of this happening. In the video with Sarah, there were multiple old men asking her very uncomfortable questions, which is something that is unlikely to happen given that the adults (including a coach at her school) would be admitting to looking at child pornography.

Overall I wish that we watched videos that were meant to inform us rather than scare us. Why would posting a revealing photo be a bad idea? Who can see the photos you post? What are some solutions if you are feeling pressured into sending photos to others? If you do send photos what are ways to keep yourself safe? I think the last question is very important because although everyone in my class watched the same videos there were still students that sent revealing images of themselves to their peers. If we teach older students how to keep themselves safe this may be a better tactic than just telling them that they are not safe.

Thanks for reading!

I Love Hashtags!

Before I took this class, twitter was the furthest thing from my mind. Some first thoughts that came to mind when I heard Twitter were politics and reading. As someone who only went on Instagram, I was expecting twitter to be so much reading. Suffice it to say, I was wrong. I have learned that unlike other social media platforms Twitter has a character limit. I have been enjoying posting on Twitter for the last month!

Twitter has been helpful in my classes thus far so I am confident that it will help me in my future classroom. One activity I saw on Twitter was about the game spoons. The article suggested that students can make fraction cards and find equivalent fractions regarding their cards. The students will pick up the cards and pass them on if the card doesn’t match what they are trying to collect. I was able to use this idea in my EMTH class. If you want to check out the Twitter post I’m speaking of it is linked here

So far, my favorite part of Twitter, aside from all the interesting articles I’m finding is the #hashtags. Every time I post get excited because I get to think of fun hashtags to use! My favorites thus far have been #takecareofyourself #learnthroughmistakes #practicemakesbetter. My friends even call me the hashtag queen because I have started to use hashtags in my daily life. When I am ready to get lunch I will text my friends #lunch or when I finish an assignment I’ve been working really hard on I will say #finallydone. I get a kick out of thinking about different hashtags to use!

My friends call me the #hashtagqueen because of all the hashtags I use!

Twitter will also be helpful to create relationships with other teachers and even reach out for advice from other teachers. I wouldn’t be posting on Twitter using the students’ names or posting about their home issues; however, I could post questions similar to “my class is learning fractions, any good ideas for lessons” this way the lessons and ideas can come from other experienced teachers.

Piano Got HARDER!!

This week was frustrating! As I stated last week, I was playing songs such as Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but this week I think I became a little too ambitious. This week I played the song “All of Me” by John Legend. At first glance, I thought that this song would be more at my level because it was more difficult, but I felt that it was something I could play. Well, it was definitely more difficult! The song had four flats in it! I had to work my brain far harder than I did last week to remember the notes, the flats, and how to properly move my fingers. I have the video of me playing linked below, and honestly hearing it back is so rewarding because I can hear major progress in my playing!

I used time-lapse on my phone to document my learning. I have never used time-lapse before, but I am glad I did this week. A time-lapse option is included in the iPhone camera, and it takes a picture every few minutes. I think that this is a very helpful tool to use in the classroom to document the progress of something that is constantly changing. An example could include growing a plant in class. The plant wouldn’t look very different to the naked eye from day to day because the students will always be looking at it, but if there was a time-lapse of the plant the students could see the months of growth within a few moments.  I think that because the students can see the process of the plant growing through the time-lapse this tool would be in the redefinition area. Because of the time-lapse, students can see the plant’s growth, flowers bloom, fruit appears, and leaves die. They can see the life cycle of the plant and they might not notice the significant change if not for the time-lapse.

When I made the time-lapse on my phone, I was able to see my progress. The only problem with the time-lapse is that I couldn’t hear my progress. This makes lots of sense because a time-lapse is just multiple images that make a video. When I finished practicing, I was very frustrated with myself, and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere but when I watched my time-lapse back, I saw that I put a whole lot of work in, and I was proud of myself!  I don’t think I would use this tool again to document my progress in piano, mainly because it is important to be able to hear the piano. However, I think that the time lapse would be a lot of sense in situations that do not require sound.

The other internet tool I used today was an app called “MuseScore”. This app has piano sheet music, but it also plays the music with you. I also found the app helpful because it included the words with music. When I played the note, I would sing the corresponding lyric (not very well may I add). This helped me because I could hear if a note was off depending on where I was in the song. There were some issues with this app. First and foremost, the app has in-app purchases, and as seen in the video below they pop up at inopportune times. If you paid for the subscription, you wouldn’t have the apps.

This is the sheet music from MuseScore

Thanks for reading, you’re a gem ?

Get to Know Me!

Image

Hi everyone! My name is Meghan Wright, I come from Estevan Saskatchewan, which is part of the unsurrendered land of Treaty 4. I am in my 3rd year of the Education program, and I am so excited for pre-internship to start! I think that it is important to mention in every introduction that I love reality tv, especially the Bachelor franchise, the sneak peek for the finale episode of the bachelorette is linked here. In case you don’t believe my pure commitment to this television masterpiece, The photo below is of my google doc where my sister and take notes on the episodes!

I think online classes have made me less scared of blogging. Whether it be a forum post or communicating over discord, covid helped us learn how to communicate in many different ways! However, I am extremely glad that lots of my classes are back in person. I am living in residence and I love the opportunity to spend time with my friends!

I have a few social media platforms, but this class will be my first time using Twitter. I am hesitant to create my blog on edusites because I do not know the platform and it’s tools, but I am excited to learn. If you would have asked me this summer, I would say I considered myself technologically literate, but I must say that these new sites have me feeling a bit overwhelmed.