Peeke's Portfolio

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Please click HERE to see my Summative Project…

I love doing these, I find they are a great way to stop and take the time to reflect on the things that I’ve learned this semester, and consider how I am going to change what I do moving forward. 🙂

I’ve got to tell you, this week’s class spoke to me in a very big way.

This year I am very fortunate to be a Learning Facilitator with my school division. With this role, I can learn more than ever by being in many different classrooms with many different teachers. I’ve been participating in various Professional Development courses along with this one, and have been researching best practices to support our teachers in the ways that they need. 

The abundance of learning has been both a massive blessing and a massive challenge. I love learning new things and trying new practices but have also felt very overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. I find myself unable to focus on just one area at a time and have been trying to work on time management to keep things in order in my brain. 

As frustrating and difficult as it has been to get back on track, it has helped me empathize with both students and teachers who feel incredibly overwhelmed by the abundance. So, as I said, when Dave Cormier spoke to our class about learning in a time of abundance, I found myself adding his book and his blog to my already abundant list of professional reading that I have been very successfully putting off. 

For this post, I want to explore WHY, for the first time in my life, I seem to be experiencing some sort of task paralysis. 

Let’s back it up…

I truly have never stopped to think about how access to information has changed over thousands of years. Dave reminded us that books and scribes used to be incredibly labour-intensive to create, and for that reason, very difficult to come by. This is why a need for the catechetical process of teaching, which we see happen in the church all the time. The teacher states something and the congregation (who all have to be together in the same space to hear) will repeat these things back. Because only the teacher had the text, it required those gathered together to memorize to learn things. This is how things were taught in schools.

As information became more available as a result of the printing press, students still learned from their teachers as well as from books. We would go to the library to find books to perform research and learn about topics, being led by our teachers.  Dave shared that schools were designed to solve the problem of information scarcity… so what does that mean in a time of information abundance?

I’m part of the generation that experienced schooling both with and without the internet. I remember the excitement of being able to hop online to chat with my friends, download music, and ask any question I wanted the answer to. When someone asks me a question I’m unsure of, my first instinct is to pull out my phone and google it. Access to information is such an amazing gift, but as we know, too much of anything isn’t always good. 

Coming back to University 10 years after I finished my Bachelor of Education degree, I’m finding it so much more challenging to focus in general… and it’s not just because I’m working a full-time job this time around. I am finding myself searching instead of researching because my brain always seems to have 50 tabs open. Even as I sit down to write this, I have a movie on because doing one task at a time just doesn’t seem like enough…

If I’m overwhelmed as someone who has been working in education for over ten years, how must our new teachers feel when they have so many options and so much information when planning their units and lessons. Josh made a great point that student engagement seems to mirror teacher engagement… but how engaged with students be if the teachers are also feeling frozen with too much information? How can I effectively support them?

I don’t remember if it was mentioned by Dave or Dean, but it was said that curriculum leaders should find just one or two things that teachers can use and avoid loading them up with too many ideas; this is something that I’m working to focus on. It’s my job to take what teachers are asking for and filter out that abundance into something more manageable. 

I’m curious, how does everyone manage to balance the massive amount of information that we are receiving in education today? Have you found yourself paralyzed by having too much on the go? 

… seriously. Maybe at some point, we could get away without being digitally literate, but as the world around us changes, this is becoming more and more crucial for everyone. This week we had some wonderful content catalyst presentations from Andrea and Dustin to dive deeper into this.

In the article (shared by Dustin) Digital Literacy: The Most Valuable Tool for Lifelong Learning, Rob Ewart shares that digital literacy is “… having the skills you need to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information occur through digital technologies such as internet platforms, social media, and smartphones.” As Andrea shared in her content catalyst video, digital literacy goes beyond knowing how to use a device.

Andrea shared a great article titled Empowering the Future: How Digital Literacy in Schools is Shaping the Next Generation that expresses just how relevant digital literacy is today. In this article, the author stresses that “To fully prepare students for the digital world, providing opportunities for them to apply their digital literacy skills in real-world settings is crucial.”

This takes me back to something called Genius Hour which I did at the beginning of my teaching career. I dedicated one hour a week to student-led inquiry projects and supported my students along the way. At first, my administrator wasn’t thrilled with the idea… they were very concerned about how it would be graded, and what outcomes I would be meeting. In my opinion, this is a delicate balance… as teachers, we are mandated to teach the curriculum to ensure that every child has equal opportunity, but we also want to foster that curiosity and ability to learn in many different ways.

So… I used Genius Hour self-assessments to support my ELA outcomes. I found that with the right group of students and with the right preparation, this approach got students excited about learning and motivated them in new ways. I learned to take a step back and look at what I really wanted to instill in my students… critical thinking, problem solving, and a curiosity that would drive them to learn more.

I can see parallels between these inquiry-based projects and fostering digital literacy… taking a step back and trying to conceptualize the real-world applications of what you are teaching. When our students get out into the world, they will absolutely need to be digitally literate. It’s in everything we do… it’s how we learn, how we communicate, how we work, and how we operate from day to day.

I guess my question for you is this… what about our educators who feel very strongly that digital learning should be avoided in the classroom?

If too much screen time is harming our children, then is it fair to assume that we can keep them away from it forever?

Or should we face the facts that this is where we are, and commit to learning and changing to give them the best opportunities we can?

An always-present characteristic of being a professional is being open to new learning and change. – Jim Knight

Proofread with the help of grammarly… although I copy and pasted the text after putting in my images and links. Next time I will run all of the text through first and then add images and links. I am finding that using this tool is helping me to keep my work more concise and clear!

Please note: to easily see the comments that were added to the outcome maps, you will need to download the pdfs and open with Adobe. The internet version isn’t quite the same.

You are also able to print these with the continuum connections by following the graphic below the links.

• Sun West Outcomes Grade 5 with Digital Citizenship

• Sun West Outcomes Grade 6 with Digital Citizenship

How I got here…

I was inspired by my content catalyst project to try to create a document that will make it simple for teachers to incorporate digital responsibility and digital citizenship into their teaching without having to find additional resources.

I really love the SunWest School division Outcome Maps and always had them posted beside my desk, so I wanted to use that in some way and build on it.

Where I ran into issues:

1. How am I going to add them to a PDF? There is a word document version of the outcome maps, but it doesn’t include the Treaty Ed Outcomes… maybe I will have to re-type it?
2. I want to connect everything to the Digital Citizenship Continuum from the Ministry of Education… how am I going to fit that on there as well?
3. As I started to type outcomes on a table and include information from the continuum, I felt like teachers wouldn’t find it beneficial to have multiple documents (we want to keep it as simple as possible), so I came back to the idea of using the PDF.
4. I googled how to add notes to the PDF, and came up with adding sticky note comments. But what if teachers want to print?
5. I learned that they can summarize comments in the printing selection, so I will need to include instructions on that…
6. It was very frustrating having to change the author of each comment to “Digital Citizenship Connection” – this took so much time… until I found out I could just update the author name and save that time.

Overall, trying different formats and figuring things out took a lot more time than I anticipated. I was hoping to complete this for grades 5-8, but ended up with just two grades. I also found it was more challenging to relate outcomes directly to the continuum, but I wanted to keep it aligned to this document as much as possible.

I will share this with our grade 5 and 6 teachers, and if they see benefit to it, it’s definitely something I’ll keep chipping away at!

This week, Taylor led an interesting discussion about the ethics and morals of using Artificial Intelligence in education (specifically, Chat GPT). This is something that I have been struggling with myself, wondering when it’s appropriate to utilize this tool as an educator vs. when it should be avoided.

I started by watching this TEDX Talk that Taylor shared with everyone. In it, Erik Winerö talks about how over 100 years, the record for pole vaulting has “…improved by over two meters, or in other words, by 48%” He explains that the reason for this is the development of the equipment. People didn’t care that vaulters were using different poles, they just cared about how high they could jump. He relates this to generative AI, saying that teachers may consider it “… a flexible pole to help our students overcome their higher obstacles… That what matters is the quality of the product that our students produce.”

Erik continues with his athletic metaphor by telling us to imagine a coach telling a sprinter to run from point A to point B… the person could use a bicycle or take a shortcut to get to that end goal. In doing that, they would still reach the destination but fail to get the training they should be doing to get better at their sport.

Now let’s think of this in the scope of education… although the use of AI may help students push out an improved result, we have to think about whether it is helping their learning along the way. Part of learning is running into obstacles and learning how to overcome them. Erik says that “if there is no resistance, no real learning is taking place.” 

My big takeaway from this video is that although AI can make a lot of things easier in the world of education, we need to think about when it is appropriate to use, and when it isn’t. This conversation was brought up in our small group when Dean shared this thought…Let’s say you have a teacher use AI to create an assignment. A student takes that assignment and completes it using AI, and then the teacher uses AI to grade the assignment. What’s the point? What’s being done? Really… if a student wants to get the opinion of AI on their assignment, can’t they plug it in themselves? 

This leads me to think about when it is most beneficial to use AI as a teacher. I have been working my way through The Artificial Intelligence Playbook and here are some of the ideas that are laid out:

• To scaffold assignments to meet the needs of students
• To gamify learning
• To find real-world connections
• To teach students how they can use AI
• To create AI-resistant assignments (ideas to foster critical thinking)
• As a starting point in planning

There is so much to learn, and there are so many wonderful ways that we can use AI to help our students. If I’m being totally honest, at this point I am feeling very overwhelmed by it all. I suppose the best way to start is just by trying one thing at a time to see what sticks.

I’m curious, what are some beneficial ways you have used Generative AI in your classrooms? In what ways can I support my teachers as a facilitator when it comes to the use of AI?

Note: I wrote my first draft, then ran it through ChatGPT to proofread. The prompt replied: “Your text is already engaging and well-organized. I’ve made some suggestions for clarity, grammar, and flow. Here’s a revised version.”  I went back through it to make sure that my direct quotes were not changed and to put the links back in. I also changed some of the words and statements that just didn’t sound like me.

It feels like every week brings information overload (in the best way possible), and this week was no exception. From deepfakes to fake news, media literacy, biases of all kinds, and the filter bubble, there was plenty of discussion and reflection. So, let’s dive right in.

What is fake news, anyway? And what is the difference between misinformation and disinformation? Chris opened up his content catalyst video by explaining this distinction. He included a helpful infographic and emphasized that the difference comes down to intent:

• Misinformation is false information spread without the intent to cause harm—people share it because they believe it to be true.
• Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to mislead and achieve a specific goal.

https://www.maltego.com/blog/infographic-misinformation-and-disinformation/

Note to self: When teaching this to our students, it’s a great opportunity to discuss morphology and the meanings of the morphemes mis- (incorrect, as in “mistake”) versus dis- (apart, as in “distant”).

Chris also shared an insightful article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review on combating misinformation. The authors argue that we need to “radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks” (Lord & Vogt), suggesting that occasional digital citizenship courses are not enough.

Having fallen prey to disinformation myself, I can attest that combating it requires people to consistently question the content they consume. It takes practice and frequent reminders. As educators, we need to integrate this mindset into as many lessons and discussions as possible. Reminding students that it’s okay to use the CRAAP test (thanks to Kathleen for sharing) helps them adopt a more critical lens when evaluating information. Here’s the CRAAP test infographic.

Lisa led a fantastic discussion on cognitive bias and the filter bubble. In the article she shared, author Vangie Beal notes that confirmation bias is the most prominent type of bias when it comes to fake news (misinformation and disinformation). Beal defines confirmation bias as “the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information consistent with one’s own beliefs” (Britannica).

It makes sense, right? When searching for information online, we tend to agree with facts that align with our existing beliefs instead of challenging them. This is a major issue because it facilitates the spread of misinformation—something we all experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What complicates this further is the filter bubble. In the same article, Vangie Beal describes filter bubbles as “intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see, and then give information to the user according to this assumption Websites make these assumptions based on the information related to the user, such as former click behaviour, serach history and location.” This creates a vicious cycle of misinformation. I can only imagine how much this has exacerbated issues that were already polarizing enough. While it’s understandable why filter bubbles exist—it seems logical for search engines to prioritize what users want to see to keep them engaged—perhaps this wasn’t fully considered during development, or the companies involved simply don’t care.

Anna explored fake news through the lens of deepfakes, which are images or recordings convincingly altered to misrepresent someone as saying or doing something they never actually did. (Merriam-Webster)

Reading this article that Anna shared initially scared me. It made me question how we can teach students to differentiate between real footage and deepfakes, especially as the technology improves and becomes harder to detect.

After watching Anna’s content catalyst video, I realized it all comes back to teaching critical thinking and encouraging a skeptical, analytical approach. It’s ironic that while technology contributes to these issues, it also provides tools to verify information. I also believe it’s crucial to teach students about the risks of using deepfake technology. In my school division we have an Administrative Procedure on use of AI, which states that creating deepfakes is not, even for educational purposes. As educators, we can foresee the potential dangers, but our students might not yet understand these implications.

My hope for the future is that our students will continue to think critically, questioning the content they consume online and from other sources. While there was initial fear that increased technology use would make young people less intelligent, I believe it’s pushing us to think in new and different ways.

How many times do you think the average classroom teacher hears their name in a day? Or how many questions they are asked?

When I was in elementary and high school I remember believing wholeheartedly that my teachers knew the answers to everything. I have this vivid (and embarrassing) memory from 20 years ago… I asked my eighth grade teacher about a bump that formed on my ear after I got it pierced, thinking she would know exactly what it was. She thought it would be funny to tell me about a made up ailment called “toboggana” and that I could lose the ear. I mulled this over at recess and decided that I would ask another teacher the same question. Little did I know, my grade 8 teacher had told her coworkers during the recess break about this prank she was playing on me, and the more adults I asked, the more they kept telling me it was this fictional condition.

I got home from school that day and jumped immediately on the internet to see if I could find anything about this strange “toboggana” online. Thankfully, my teacher had called my parents to let them know that this was happening and my mom was able to talk me off of the ledge. I was absolutely mortified, and one would think that this experience was the last time I was ever so gullible. Unfortunately, that would take another 10+ years to overcome.

This was a time when the internet was still in it’s early stages. YouTube wouldn’t exist for a another year, and you had to patiently wait for the dial-up internet to connect before downloading your free music on Napster to burn some CDs for your boombox.

That is my excuse for always believing everything I read online. When I was on the internet, it was such a new place… nobody really ever taught me to be critical of the things that I was reading online (or hearing on the news). I chose to take things at face value, and learned some hard lessons along the way. If only I had been more media literate.

This week, my wonderful classmates Kathleen and Kelsey presented insights on what media literacy is and why it’s more important now than ever before to teach to our students.

In Kathleen’s content catalyst video, she shares that “Media literacy is the ability to understand information that is presented to us and respond appropriately.” (FutureLearn, 2021)

Understanding information is something that only becomes more difficult the more that we see technology progress. We are surrounded by disinformation, misinformation, fake news, and media bias. It scares me to think of what my 13-year-old self would have thought and believed when consuming all of these through the media.

Kathleen and Kelsey both led wonderful group discussions that allowed me to reflect on just how important it is to teach media literacy to our students. In The Importance of Media Literacy: Navigating the Digital Information Landscape, Niall McNulty breaks media literacy down into different skills:

Access: The ability to obatin and use media in various formats.

Analysis: Deciphering and understanding the meanings behind media messages.

Evaluation: Critically assessing media content for quality and credibility.

Creating: The capability to produce media content responsibly.

Action: Engaging with media in a productive and socially responsible manner.

McNulty, 2021.

These are very similar to the 6 Central Skills of Critical Thinking that were brought up in the TedTalk that Kelsey shared:

Screenshot taken from “The Importance of Teaching Media Literacy Skills – Assiata Ayinla – TEDxDixwell”

Where do I even begin teaching this?? I’m not sure yet.

The big takeaway that Dean left me thinking about after this class is this…

when we are getting a million questions a day, it’s okay to just not know the answer.  In a world where it seems that everyone has an opinion or takes a stance, it’s okay not to. We should be showing and not telling our students this. If someone asks for my opinion about a difficult topic, it’s fair for me to say, “I don’t know what I think, and you don’t have to, either.” Which leaves me to ask you this question… Why do we feel like we need to know the answers and that we need to have a stance? Has it always been this way?

Woah.

That was my initial thought after our presentation from Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall McLuhan and son of Eric McLuhan. I’ve needed to take some time to really digest what he had to say and what it means to me.

The Tetrad

Andrew explained to us that his father and grandfather developed the media tetrad as a way to apply scientific laws to the topic of media and technology.

The first is that new technology or media enhances or amplifies the way we live in some way. For example, the smartphone would enhance the way we communicate with each other or find information.

Next we have reversal. The way that Andrew explained it was that every technology has a tipping point, and when you go over that tipping point you can reverse the characteristics of that technology. The point behind the smartphone was to help people stay connected, yet we are currently in a place where we are more lonely than ever before.

The third law is retrieval, which means that every new way of doing things actually brings back an old way of doing things… this one stumped me, so I asked pi.ai for some help on this one. The response was that “smartphones retrieve the functions of older technologies, such as telephones, cameras, and maps, combining them into a single device.”

Finally we have obsolecense, which means that a new technology takes over for an old technology… that doesn’t mean the old technology stops existing, but the role of it changes.. like how the the smartphone changed how we consume traditional media (magazines, CDs, television).

Can we apply this to the way we teach?

Andrew went on to share some information about Marshall’s book “City as Classroom” written in 1977. He shared that teachers didn’t like the guide because there were plenty of questions but no answers, which you can see in the preview that is linked. The point of this is that we live in a world where information is all around us, so we can’t expect to “cram” it all into our students. “You need to train their perceptive abilities to gather information for themselves.” – Andrew.

Let’s try applying the tetrad to the technology of 20th-century classrooms (again, with the help of pi.ai but re-worded by yours truly to keep things short and sweet)…

• Enhance – Schools enhance the way we learn… we can effectively teach large groups of students at the same time which is a big improvement.
• Reverse – Thought it was great at the beginning to educate large groups of students at once, it has become more and more apparent that this one-size-fits-all approach does not work. We actually do need more individualized instruction.
• Retrieve – We do retrieve more traditional methods when it comes to teaching. We use memorization, direct instruction, and books (both online and off).
• Obsolesce – With grouping students by age (grade), the idea of the one-room-schoolhouse has become obsolete.

All in all, I have to admit that this discussion left me very interested in just learning MORE about everything that I can when it comes to education and how we can continue to adapt our practices to best meet the needs of our diverse classrooms.