How Have I Contributed to the Learning of Others?
I have contributed to the learning of others through our weekly zooms and in breakout rooms, through comments on blog posts, resource sharing in the course community and in-person interactions. In this post, I will share the most significant of these and how it contributed to the learning of others. As future educators it is important that we can help each other grown and learn since we share a common goal of doing the same thing for the next generation.
On the Discord class community, I shared a resource that I had found that was so closely related to this course. It was an article by CBC News and it discussed how Australia passed a youth social media ban. The link to the article is here: Australia passes youth social media ban. Now, it has to figure out how it will actually work | CBC News. The article talks about how Australia has passed a law that bans those under 16 years old from using it. The law puts pressure on social media companies to make sure that they are taking “reasonable steps” to keep out users under 16. If they fail to do so they will receive fines of up to $44 million CAD. The difficulty now is how they are actually going to do this. It doesn’t appear that there is a concrete plan for how they will keep those under 16 from using social media apps.
As soon as I came across this article I sent it to the discord as soon as I could. I knew that it would be worthwhile for the class to look at since so much of our course has been discussing students and their use of technology in the classroom. Many of us agreed that it is a big distraction at the moment and that social media has affected how students interact in the classroom now. Sharing this resource allowed my peers to critically think about what this means for Canada and all of us as future educators.
Now that Australia has taken that first step that no one else has taken, they could be paving the way to how technology and social media are used in western society. There could be huge setbacks from this also. There could be legal challenges with privacy or free speech. Also, the legislation does not explain what “reasonable steps” means. What are companies exactly supposed to do? There are many concerns because so much of what is to come is unknown. There could also be so much positive to come from this as well. What if kids become more engaged in the classroom, more in control of their learning, more creative. We don’t know what is to come so we better pay attention. By sharing this article with my peers I invite them to engage in these questions and think about what their future might look like.
On our weekly zoom meetings I actively engaged in the learning of others. While in the big group setting, usually my camera was off because I would be eating or driving home from a long day at the university. Once we would enter breakout rooms I would put either of those on hold and usually be first to turn on my camera and start the discussion. To engage my peers learning, sometimes I would play devils advocate despite totally agreeing with them. I think its a good practice to be able to argue for both sides as then you can be as transparent as possible. By combating some of their statements peers would get to really develop their own ideas. If they were just regurgitating some one else’s ideas this would force them to think about what they truly think and if they truly agree with that.
Kade Aseltine’s learning project revolved a lot around cooking. I popped into his second post when he made sweet and sour chicken which I thought looked great so I left a comment letting him know! I also recommended he try some baking. It’s always a good idea to have a sweet treat nearby. Kade liked my comment enough to give it a try. He even shouted me out in his next post – Thanks Kade!! He made some great looking, and I imagine greater tasting, cookies. Since then I had actively popped into Kade’s Kitchen to see what else he was making and they all looked delicious !! It was awesome to see everyone step out of their comfort zone a little bit and try something new. I really enjoyed watching Kade’s Kitchen bounce between a cooked meal and a baked treat. It really shows how versatile Kade’s Kitchen is!
My first comment:
The week after:
I also contributed to others learning in-person as well as online. In education you get to see a lot of the same faces in different classes. In my EMTH 300 class I have a lot of peers who are also in this class. While in class together we always discussed each other’s learning projects and bounced ideas off of each other, all contributing to each others learning. Near the start of the semester I remember discussing with Kenzie Behrns about her learning project and how she is learning to play Piano Man by Billy Joel – A great song. While discussing I shared with her how I used to take piano lessons when I was a kid. I mentioned to her how I struggled with retaining anything because I would practice a good deal, only once a week before my lessons. I shared how when I started practicing for a shorter time, but everyday, I learned and retained so much more. She was already practicing consistently so it kept her focused to do so which obviously paid off because she can play the song extremely well! I would comment online and we would also talk about it in class.
This would be how I contributed the most to the learning of others. I was always supportive of trying something new and eager to give some help if I could offer it. I am really impressed with how everyone continued to grow and improve each week. I love to see the effort that every single one of us put in to helping each other learn. I see now why networking is so important because together we can achieve great things! Thanks to all of you that left comments for me to read and change how I approach things. Cheers!!