Thank you for following me along this journey. I have to say I am a little nervous about sharing this post because I have tried to play a full song and sing. Usually I need a little special encouragement to get up and sing and it is almost always with the karaoke machine helping me out. So putting myself out on the internet is a bit scary.

First I need to tell the story regarding this post. Nothing can ever be easy haha. The song I chose is In Color by Jamey Johnson and you can play it using a number of different strumming patterns ranging from quite easy to difficult (for me), or you can pick the string. I had been practicing to play this song with the basic strumming pattern because that is where I am at, especially when you add signing. As I am practicing the song one last time before I record it I break my bottom string. If you look close in the video you will count 5 strings. So I experimented and it didn’t sound good so I decided to try picking. I hadn’t tried the picking yet, I just assumed it would be harder. The good thing about the picking was that I didn’t need the bottom string. So this version of the song I learned in about an hour, that is the one thing that I can say I am proud of through this process. It is still nothing fantastic but I was happy with how I was able to adjust. Here is my video, please don’t judge too harshly.

I have added my original lesson as a comparison. The videos are completely different skills but I think it is safe to say that I couldn’t do this in January.

One unfortunate thing was that my daughter kind of fell off the map with this but she became too busy and I didn’t want to overload her. Hopefully she will try it again this summer when we have some free time.

What did this project teach me?

When this project started I had never blogged before, I had never made a video before (I know, hard to believe), and I hadn’t played the guitar in 30 years. I learned a lot.

For my skill of learning the guitar I mainly used YouTube, like this video that I quickly used today.

I did however move away from videos as I went and started to go old school with some Chord Charts that I found helped me because I could slow down the timing and then speed it up once I got the hang of the chords and strumming or picking.

My tech skills including video making and blogging have really evolved. Even if my videos are still boring, I have learned a lot about making them and I have become much quicker at producing them which is a nice relief from my first attempts at editing. I also feel like this project forced me to want to make my blogs engaging. Yes I know this is a long one with a lot of writing but I think most of them were funish. In doing this I learned a lot about creating memes, and adding videos, pictures, and presentations.

The last thing that I now need to learn is how to re-string a guitar. Thank you for following my journey, I hope you enjoyed it.

Collaboration is one of my favorite things about teaching and learning. Being able to work together to accomplish a goal makes the process so much more enjoyable and it provides so many different perspectives which leads to deeper growth.

I will admit that I was not the perfect student when it came to all aspects of our learning community. Discord was a little bit like……

However, aside from Discord I felt like I was a active member of our learning community and I hope that I was able to positively influence some of my classmates through my blog posts, reflections, responses, and discussions in class.

Evidence of blog interactions can be found HERE You may have to refresh the page if the comments don’t show up!

Here is a PowerPoint presentation that highlights my involvement in our learning community and growth. Thank you very much to my classmates and Katia for a great semester. Good luck with the rest of your classes.

Contributing to Learning.pptx

Just to be safe I have created a YouTube video of the presentation.

I made my original post which explained what I learned but it was very basic and after watching some of the other summary of learning posts I was inspired to try something different.

I decided to play off of my learning project and make a song and a music video to highlight my learning. This video has some terrible acting that was inspired but some country music videos of the past. Give it a listen and hopefully it does a good job of highlighting just how much I have learned in this course which is a lot.

I decided to keep my original post which can be found HERE 

I hope you enjoy the video!

Social media activism is an interesting topic and one that takes me out of my comfort zone. The rise in social media users has dramatically increased the amount of social media activism, but what kind of impact does that have on us as educators and should we be responsible for promoting social media activism.

Can Online Activism Be Meaningful?

I think the first thing to establish here is what does meaningful mean to you? Producing change, and creating awareness are two completely different things to I think it is important to be aware of that. There are many aspects that go into social media activism, some positive and some negative but at the very least being an online activist does spread the word because online you have the ability to reach millions of people. The first video that I have posted does a great job of looking at the meaningfulness of social media activism. They go through the history of activism and how it has changed throughout time and how many view online activism as #slacktivism. They also use the example of the black squares representing Black Lives Matter as being fairly useless but at least you can show your friends that you support the cause. Towards the end of the video it is noted that although social media activism may not create a lot of change (but it does create some), the pros outweigh the cons and it is ultimately meaningful. The video is fairly lengthy but if you have time give it a watch.

Can We Have a Productive Conversation About Social Justice Online.

I really don’t know if there is a yes or no answer to this question. On one hand it can be very easy to have productive conversations because you are preaching to the choir. We have all likely been using social media long enough to understand that our algorithm continually fills our feeds with articles that support our interests. As the previous video points out, unfortunately the internet is not a free space where we can post whatever we want and have it viewed the same as every other comment or video. The social media apps are owned by companies and those companies dictate what we see and why we see it. So it is often that we are being surrounded online by like minded people. On the flip side there is the fear that comes with activism online. A former social media social justice activist says that, social media activism is a scary place. This activists blog talks about the fear of being canceled. The strict rules that online activists feel they need to follow because there are so many activists that are looking to cancel others who step out of line. That can make it very difficult to have productive conversations.

What Is Our Responsibility As Educators?

I might be the cute little black sheep. Social justice is an important part of society but I don’t think that being an activist is the job of educators. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think teachers should be activists period. It means that I don’t think you should HAVE to be an activist. I believe that it is important for students to understand social justice and how you can become part of activism in a positive manner. As educators we should provide the information and some of the opportunities (we can’t control what our divisions allow and don’t allow), and we need to let students make their own decisions. My goal as an educator is to help develop good human beings, people that are respectful, people that help the less fortunate and marginalized, and people that will be positive contributing members of society. I do this by trying to be a good person and just because I don’t model active citizenship online I don’t think that makes me a bad person or a bad role model for my students. The reality is that I don’t spend much time on social media and when I do it is as a break, for entertainment purposes. I support causes in person when I get the opportunity, I don’t avoid these issues, but my online platform (very tiny) is just not a priority for me right now. It might be something that becomes more of a priority but right now my kids are my number one priority and they command a lot of my time and I don’t see that changing anytime sooner, nor do I want it to.

I will leave you with one more short video that highlights many of the things I’ve mentioned including the positives (much more) and negatives to being an online activist.

I have a lot going on in my learning process right now. I am working on a song with 4 chords that I’d like to learn for the end of this class, and I am working on Jolene which involves a bunch of picking and again 4 chords. Neither are going as good as I hoped so I decided that I needed to simplify my process this week. I decided to find a song with 2 chords to work on. Here is the video that I used to work on A Horse With No Name

What I found by moving to a simple song with simple chords and a simple strumming pattern was that I could focus on a specific area for improvement. The area that I felt benefitted from this was my feel for the strings. I felt more comfortable feeling the difference between the strings and I think by continuing to work on songs like this it will help develop the skills that I need for the more challenging chord changes.

My colleague and former intern asks to listen to this video while I was working on it and the feedback was not positive haha. I don’t think it sounds as bad as he thought but it definitely is not a masterpiece.

The other thing that I changed up this week was the way that I learned the songs. I decided to print off the lyrics of the songs with the chords which I found at ultimate guitar.

The reason I did this is because I found that when the lyrics were on the computer screen I was having trouble keeping up with the music on the video. This way I am able to slow the song down to my own pace and once I get the hang of it then I can speed it up to the actual pace of the song. I found this to be beneficial but I know the song that I was working on. I am not sure if it was work as well with a song I am not as familiar with.

Let me start by saying that I am new to the AI game. Prior to taking this class the only AI tool that I have used is chatgpt, and I had only used it a couple of times. For this assignment I checked out a few different tools. The three that I found most useful/easiest to use were copilot, GPTzero, and magic school. I decided to try out magic school and this tool is quite amazing. I started by scrolling through the website and checking out the different options. I decided to try the Rubric Generator, so I took one of my assignments that I knew I didn’t love the rubric for and put the assignment into the tool and poof, there it is.

I attached this to my assignment and now I have a new rubric. Next I wanted to test out the worksheet generator. It was super easy. I chose a topic (basketball), and a grade level and it did the rest of the work. Here is the grade 11 worksheet that was generated.

basketball worksheet

Hopefully that link works but what it created was a three page document with fill in the blank, multiple choice, and short answer questions. It also attached an answer key!

I think that magic school is a great tool for teachers for a number of reasons. I love that it is easy to generate grade appropriate assignments without having to provide extra information or continually asking the AI tool to make little changes. I also like that this is a time saver, especially when generating a rubric. I find rubrics so time consuming and I know there are other rubric generators out there but I never really found one I liked previous to this one. I think that an AI tool is nice to have in your back pocket. Sometimes you have an idea for an assignment but just don’t know how to put it on paper or in a presentation. This can provide that extra help that teachers sometimes need to get their message across. The other thing that I noticed while working through some examples is that it can provide different ideas for you to use when teaching. Looking at the basketball worksheet that was created I realized that there are some aspects of the game that I don’t always go into detail on and I probably should. Having the worksheet is a reminder to make sure I cover those areas.

Magic School is a tool designed specifically for teachers but there is a sister site called magic student which is a great resource for students that provides all types of writing tools as well as creative ways for students to present their work.

I think that if AI is used properly and with a bit of caution it can have a place in education. I think what we need to be aware of is having AI do the work for students and teachers. I think that it is important that teachers don’t just rely on AI as that can take the creativity and fun out of lessons.

Today I was having lunch with a colleague who is in his 28th year of teaching. He asked me if I use AI. I said, I have been using it a little bit since I started this class. He went on to tell me that his friends wife was showing him the magic school website. He was amazed by what the AI tool could do. I told him that ironically I was going to be blogging about magic school today and that I have used it to create a few resources of my own. For me it was cool to see an old school teacher acknowledging the benefits that AI can provide.

This past weeks assignment proved to be more difficult than I expected. Most of my learning project posts have been quite similar, with a break down of the week and then some videos to show evidence of where I (and Sophia) are at. I have found that the easiest way for doing this is by creating videos and going through YouTube. I have used a couple of different apps to make the videos but for this assignment I wanted to look for something that could be used more efficiently in the classroom. I didn’t think screen casting would be for me so I was looking for more of a presentation designing app. First I tried Canva, that was a flop. I had a hard time putting in clips from my videos and it just wasn’t what I envisioned.

So I moved on to Videoscribe and Powtoon and found that I didn’t like either of them basically for the same reasons as why I didn’t like Canva. This was really disappointing because I love the Videoscribe videos and I am sure there are ways to do what I wanted to do with these apps but I am a long ways from being an expert. This led me to my next stop, Vyond and after a while of using this tool I was feeling the same way….

But unlike Lebron after a non call, I didn’t give up. I came back to Vyond the next day and for some reason my issue was solved. This was great. I could now put in my content the way I wanted and try this tool that I thought would be great for teaching. Here is what I love about Vyond, it is basically PowerPoint on steroids. You can add all kinds of characters, props, cool little thought bubbles, videos, images, voiceover and more. I know most of these things can be done on PowerPoint but this seemed a lot cooler and it was kind of a combination between PowerPoint and Videoscribe. Now the bad. I spent a lot of time trying to find the right tool and then the time to make the presentation with cutting clips and everything else that went into it. I saved it and went to download it. I was on a 14 day trial but it turns out you can not download or share your content unless you pay. So for a week subscription it was $10 USD. That was a no for me but I wasn’t sure what to do.

So I found a way to make it work. I used the snipping tool on my computer to record my presentation which I then copied into Clipchamp and downloaded to my computer. Now I just simply had to convert it to a YouTube video called my my learning project in order to share it because the size of the video was too large to share directly to this post.

Throughout this process I have found pros and cons to multiple presentation tools. I think that Canva, Powtoon, and Videoscribe and great presentation tools but they not as easy to deal with when it comes to inserting videos. The real downfall for Vyond was the price. There are too many good tools and apps out there to be spending that kind of money on Vyond in my opinion. Thanks for sticking with me through this journey. If you missed it, here is my presentation once again.

Khan Academy Kids was on the list of suggested OER’s that we could look into even though it was “not an OER in the technical sense”. From what I can see, the reason that Khan Academy may not technically an OER is because it is more of a learning app. There is not a lot of give and take and remixing with the lessons. Although there are printable lessons, and the digital activities are provided for you if would be difficult to get a digital lesson and take it and make it your own. I still decided to choose Khan Academy Kids as my OER to research because it is a resource that my children have been using for years, and I really don’t know much about it. I never really investigated Khan Academy Kids before because this is something that my wife set up for the kids and she knows a lot more about this area than I do.

I am going to look at this through different lenses. First, the children’s lens.  My kids have always used Khan Academy Kids through the app on the iPad. It is very easy to use, I think my youngest probably started using this app when she was 3 years old and was able to navigate it on her own. Here is a video that walks you through getting started.

The program is limited in the way that it is only designed for students up to grade 2, but within the pre-school to grade 2 range it offers a number of different learning areas such as bookings (listening to), art, letters, math, reading, and logic. I think the biggest aspect for kids is how the learning is presented. There are different options such as videos, audio, and fun characters that help the kids work through their learning.

From a parent’s perspective, Khan Academy kids is very easy to navigate and teach to your children. The icons that are associated with each subject or category don’t change and some are very straight forward with the crayon representing “create” and the book representing “books” it is easy for the young kids to remember which category is which. Parents are also able to go through and choose what lessons they want their children to work on, which is very beneficial.

For a teacher this is a fun way to provide the opportunity for extra help. This is a resource that can be done at home, and the children love doing it, let’s be honest, what kid doesn’t love iPad time. Teachers can set up their classroom where they can select activities that they want completed just like parents are able to. They can also monitor the children’s progress, so they are able to see where the students are having success and where they are not as successful. There are also printable resources for teachers as well.

Khan Academy Kids is a very easy to use and fun resource for kids, but does it really work? According to a University of Massachusetts study, it does. The study found that kids from low-income families that used this resource showed substantial gains in pre-literacy scores. My first thought when reading this article was, how do these kids access the app? The study goes on to point out that almost every family now has some kind of mobile device, which I never really thought about. I have always thought of devices as something for the privileged, but they have really become more of a necessity in today’s world.

Welcome back. In today’s video I attempted to play the chorus to Jolene. The fact that actually playing the song only lasted a few seconds is not a complete failure. Jolene is known as a fairly easy song to play but I think the challenge for me is just simply lack of experience. The chords that are used are quite simple and easy enough to change but they still require a bit of visual focus for me. The chords are A minor, C, and G.

Where I get into trouble is that I need to peak at the chords everyone once in a while and I also need to look at my picking to make sure I am hitting the right strings. These are both things that I think I can improve on with a little more practice but right now they are an issue. The third issue is that I need to be looking at the screen for the chord changes. As you can tell, looking in three different places at once is not a recipe for success. I think I need to try to find some alternate ways of learning, whether that is different videos or different types of resources. Here is my video and I will post the video that I have been using as a resource as well. Thanks for checking in!

This week we decided to do things a little bit differently. We decided to do our videos separately because Sophia wants to learn more about rhythm and hearing and feeling the music. Where I am trying to figure out the best way to be able to perform a song. It has left me feeling like this dog

I will start with Sophia’s videos. As I mentioned, she is trying to listen to the music and essentially she is trying to mimic the sound that she hears. She has a long ways to go in my opinion but I think it is very important to start to train your ear to the music. This is an area that I have always struggled with. I have two videos of her, one may not work because it has been blocked by YouTube because it was so similar to the original….

This is the one that was blocked. Seems to be working.

I have been finding that there is so much more to playing songs than just strumming and changing cords. Lots of songs have different picking patterns involved in them so I decided to try and work on that aspect. To do that I found some “riffs” to work on. This is basically easy picking patterns that create part of a song that is often repeated multiple times. I decided not to edit out my mistakes because I think it is important to see the struggle. Unfortunately that means the video is pretty long. See if you can guess the 3 songs that I am playing. I give little hints throughout the video.

I hope you enjoyed the videos this week. Below is the video that I used to learn the different riffs.