The end has finally come. This is my last post giving you all a summary of my learning throughout EDTC 300. I just want to say thank you to everyone who was involved in my learning journey.
Please enjoy the video of my recap of what I learned.
I hope to see many as coworkers in the future. Wishing you all the best!
Until me meet again!
Zach
Well, it looks like our time together is coming to an end. I enjoyed being apart of this community that Katia has built for all of us. The way we all came together and helped each other out with our learning journeys and technological topics was truly inspiring. I hope I can create a community like this in my future classroom.
Throughout the semester, I tried my best to contribute as much as I could in my classmates’ learning journey. However, to be honest, I found it quite difficult. Majority of the topics I explored I knew nothing about. In cases like this, I would comment words of encouragement to my classmates. While this doesn’t directly improve their skill on the task at hand, positive reinforcement still goes a long way in self confidence. I noticed other classmates have the same issue when commenting on each other’s posts. This was evident as I say Kelsey say something similar and I responded with,
“Hey Kelsey,
I can connect with what you are say in many ways. As I was trying my best with keeping up in posting comments, I felt like in many cases I didn’t have much to offer other than encouragement as I had no experience with many topics. However, I strongly believe that positive reinforcement and encouragement is just as valuable as tips on a specific skill. So, keep it up!!
Zach”
For the few topics I did have some knowledge on, I tried my best to offer advice where I could. One student in particular, chose to do bathroom renovation as their learning journey. Before coming to university in pursuit of becoming a teacher, I went to school for four years to become an electrician. I attended Sask Poly Technic and worked as an electrician for five years. This resulted in me have some knowledge in renovations, specifically the electrical aspect. I commented on Madison’s post offering guidance if she needed,
“Hi Madison,
What a great skill to learn. Shocking how much you can learn from TikTok! The reno is looking amazing. I am excited to see the final project at the end of the semester. Keep up the hard work. I don’t know how much new information I can give you but if you have any electrical questions throughout your renovation feel free to reach out and ask! I have an electrical background!
Good luck with everything.
Zach”
I did share the same learning journey with one classmate. We both decided to learn Spanish. While I had some background knowledge on the subject, my classmate did not, causing us to have different starting points. I would express to my classmate what worked and what didn’t work throughout my learning journey. I hoped that this will help her in her future learnings on the subject.
“Hi Kelsey,
It was nice hearing about your learning journey of the Spanish language. Learning a second language is so difficult, so good for you on taking on the challenge. I also chose Spanish for my learning journey. However, I had a decent amount of background knowledge going into it as I spent 5 months in South America a few years ago.
Reading your recap, I used many of the same online resources that you did. I think my biggest advice for you moving forward is that all these apps have different strengths and weaknesses. So, in my opinion, I think it is very valuable to use a combination all the apps you explored. All of them have something to offer. Now, if I had to choose one resource, I think I would go with YouTube. It is so diverse in what you can focus on.
Anyway, I hope you continue your journey in learning Spanish after the semester and maybe one day we’ll run into each other and be able to speak in Spanish!!
Good luck in the future.
Zach”
I hope that I was able to assist a few classmates’ learning journeys throughout this semester. A full list of my comments is on this Google Doc.
Thanks for everyone who commented on my posts as well!
Ciao!
Zach
Welcome everyone! This is the last week of talking to you all. ☹ Thank you for embarking on my journey in learning Spanish with me. Let me give you a rap up of the last 10 weeks of seeking out a variety of online resources to assist me in learning Spanish.
As mentioned in my first post, coming into this journey I did have some background knowledge on the Spanish language. In 2017 I was backpacking through South America for five months. I visited Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. While being fully submerged in Spanish speaking countries was beneficial to learning Spanish, I did not learn nearly as much as I was hoping for. Majority of the time I would be staying or working in hostels that welcomed travelers from all over the globe. Because of this, the universal language that majority people would speak at these hostels was English. This resulted me in speaking more English and ultimately learning less Spanish. Throughout this time, I noticed that my vocabulary, especially in certain settings, got strong, however my fluency in forming full sentences and the conjugation of verbs were quite weak. This led to me choosing Spanish as my learning journey topic. So, let’s recap!
Looking for apps that focus on fluency, sentence structure, and conjugating verbs and not just vocabulary was difficult. Apps like Duolingo, FluentU, and a few others were just that, vocabulary driven. While vocabulary is important in learning a language, I found with my previous experience with Spanish, my vocabulary was already decent. The other thing I noticed while searching for online resources was that many of them required costly monthly subscriptions to join. While I started many one-week free trails, I would not be willing to pay for many of these platforms if it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.
I also stubbled upon a few different resources such as podcasts, YouTube, and even Artificial Intelligence (AI) that I absolutely loved. Not only do these require no additional cost, but I was also able to be extremely specific in what I wanted to learn. The variety of different pages or channels to choose from were endless. This drastically improved those aspects of the language I was searching for as I viewed many different teaching styles and strategies. I found myself being much more confident while articulating sentences, rather than just piecing a few words together.
Concluding these 10 weeks, I can honestly say that my knowledge of the Spanish language has drastically improved. While there is still room for improvement, my fluency in everyday conversations is quite impressive. This was evident as I have been talking to a few friends of mine whose first language is Spanish. They have complimented me on how well I am speaking, improving my confidence while doing so. I can understand much more as before I had to ask the speaker to talk and pronounce very slowly and clearly for me to comprehend. I am also much more diverse in the context of the conversation. For example, rather than just being comfortable in restaurant settings and brief introductions, I can now hold a conversation in many topic areas. I strongly believe that this was a huge success in learning the beautiful language, Spanish.
Thank you all for tuning in and experiencing this journey with me. Hope you all the best in your future endeavors.
Zach
Without a doubt Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new hot thing in town. However, it is raising much concern in the field of education. Should students be able to use AI tools such as ChatGPT? Should teachers be able to use ChatGPT? Should educators be teaching students on using ChatGPT?
Before I dive too deep into this controversial topic, I do want to tell you about my personal experience about using AI. Last spring, the University of Regina began to really crack down on students using AI. There were many emails sent out reiterating the details of academic integrity. Many professors, at least in my experience, flat out told students if they were caught using sites like ChatGPT, it could result in being kicked out of university for an extended period of time. While this was happening, my ENGL 110 professor was literally teaching us how to write academic papers using AI. You can see how contradicting this was. He taught us how to properly prompt and navigate the app, putting great emphasis on the fact that the material produced is still our thoughts and ideas. He just expressed how much more efficient the app truly is, also highlighting the pros and cons of using it.
To this day, I use ChatGPT an enormous amount. In my opinion, ChatGPT is just a much more efficient search engine than things like Google, which in my opinion is a form of AI anyways. Finishing up my pre-internship a couple of weeks ago, I can honestly say I used ChatGPT almost everyday. It can produce material such as unit/lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes, exit slip, etc. in seconds, saving me hours planning on my own time. In addition, it assisted me with talking points, asking essential questions, and even possible responses that children that age are likely to respond with. This was especially useful for when talking about touchy/sensitive topics. I find that AI is almost how the internet was viewed when it first came out. Many people thought the internet was going to break the education system. But, as we can see now, the internet is an efficient and import tool that we use everyday in our classrooms. I believe that is what we will see AI being for us in a few years.
So, if teachers are allowed to use it to improve their practices, should we be allowing and/or encouraging students to do the same? Like my English professor taught me, if we do teach our students about the app, we must make sure we are teaching them how to use it properly, not losing their critical thinking strategies. This means we need to be showing them how to keep their main ideology on a topic while using AI. We must remember, AI is a tool to ASSIST one with a task, NOT to do it for them.
One issue I do see arising in the near future is the potential for copyright infringements. Because AI grabs things from all over the internet, it will be tough to know if the app is plagiarizing sections from published articles. This could lead to huge liability problems.
What do you all think about AI? Should we allow students to use it? Should you be able to use it as a teacher? Let me know below!
Zach
Welcome back to the blog my friends!
Today’s topic is an interesting one. To continue our conversation about the everlasting affects of our digital footprints. Is it a good thing to be having our identity online for everyone to have access to? Should our digital footprint be erased and started over when we turn 18? Should people have the same consequences for their online activity as their in-person activity? So many questions arise when we open this up. So, let’s dive right into it!
To start, during class when we were tasked to see what we could find out about ourselves just from a simple Google search, how did you feel? What first came to mind? Anxious? Scared? Embarrassed? I felt all the above. I really had no idea what was going come up. Luckily, nothing came up that I was surprised about, nor did I have anything to feel embarrassed about. I have never had a Facebook or X (Twitter) account, and although my Instagram is private, I’m not overly active on posting material. So, with that regard, I was okay. Other than that, I had a few different sport related items come up. This was a relief to me as I really had no idea what was going to come up when searching my name. I hope most of you all had similar results!
Now comes to the controversial part… should things we find online about people follow them around forever? Should we be publicly shaming people for things they have like, said, or done online? Should we be firing people from their day jobs for their digital footprint? Should politicians and celebrities be held to another standard than teachers and nurses? Well in my humble opinion, for the most part, I do NOT think what we do or say as children/teenagers should follow us into our adult lives. I promise you I am a much different person than I was when I was 16 years old. Now saying that, if you do or say something online as an adult, then yes, I believe there should be consequences. For example, for the lady who tweeted racial comments and worked in PR as we saw in class, then yes, I believe that her getting fired from her job was a accurate consequence. However, I do not believe she should have gone viral, with the whole world hating on her. This can lead to so many serious issues. Two negatives do not make a positive (unless we are multiplying integers). I believe some of comments she received was just as bad as her initial comment and yet those people, from my knowledge, did not receive and backlash. So, where do we draw the line?
Much to think about when it comes to our digital footprint. Let me know what you all think about some of these topics!
Zach
With everyone having access to throw whatever they would like up onto the internet, we must step back and ask ourselves “What is real and what is fake?” While some people put this false information up for clicks, views, and clout, some are just doing it to troll victims online. Despite their reasoning of why, it is happening everyday, and it is our responsibility filter through all the nonsense.
As we’ve entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), this just adds to the problem of what is real and what is not. This is demonstrated in the article Break the Fake as the quiz shows a hawk grabbing a drone as prey. This photo is 100% AI generated, yet from the untrained eye, one cannot tell the difference. This doesn’t just stop in photography. AI can also create extremely vivid videos. As talked about in class a few weeks ago, this can also lead into fake videos such as pornography involving you or a loved one. Scary, I know! On top of this, we also must cipher through a vast number of new articles to find out if the information we are reading is reliable or not. As seen in Can You Spot the Fake News Headlines? This just shows that we need to be educating not only our students, but ourselves as well on how to identify if these news articles are legit or not.
I am going to assume that many of you all are also semi-addicted to their phones like I am. More specifically, addicted to your any social media accounts. Unfortunately, this type of trolling that we are seeing doesn’t just stop depending on what website you are on, it is flooded on our social media feeds as well as seen in Spot the Troll. This becomes extremely concerning as this is where most of the students we teach get their “news” from.
Moving into a teaching role, I think there is many things we can do to educate our students on how to become more away of identifying the fake news/trolls out there. First off, I think it is essential to go over what a secured site looks like in oppose to one that is not. As these children are moving into their teenage and young adult years, they must know when a site is secure or not when giving banking information out. In addition, as classrooms are moving more towards the “Genius Hour” activities, this would be a great way to introduce the topic and have students explore the issue.
What other activities/lessons could we do in the classroom to raise concern on the issue?
Let me know down below.
Zach
Welcome everyone to another week of me trying to become fluent-ish in Spanish. I’m not sure about all of you, but I am finding it very difficult to find new online resources that I haven’t tried before. However, after some searching, I stumbled upon a podcast called, “News in Slow Spanish”. News in Slow Spanish is an online resource that is intended help language learners improve their Spanish all while staying up to date on current events. An interesting and quite innovative idea I must say!
Let’s begin the positives of the podcast. This resource provides new stories and current events all around the world in slow, clear Spanish. This content is aimed for Spanish learners who want to improve their listening and comprehension skills, a skill that I find I am quite weak at. Each episode covers a range of topics such as sports, politics, culture, and much more. With the entertaining host speaking slowly and clearly, it gives non-native speakers an easier chance to understand and follow along. In addition, many other resources I have explored have different categories to learn about. For example, I am extremely good at vocabulary and conversations in a restaurant setting now because almost every resource covers that. While this is important, this app stood out because it taught me vocabulary and phrases that I have not been exposed to yet. The last thing that I really enjoyed about News in Slow Spanish is the cultural insight that it brings. One of the main reasons I choice to learn Spanish as my learning journey is because I feel like love with the Latin America culture while I was traveling there. This podcast is great for learning that culture aspect, learning different types of slang while doing so. As much as I like this new resource, it was not all sunshine and rainbows.
It is with great sorrow to announce that News in Slow Spanish once again requires another paid subscription! ☹ This subscription, from what I could find, is $14.99 USD a month. For monthly, quarterly, and annually subscriptions do offer discounted rates, it is still too rich for my blood. When will these resources learn that I am a struggling university student lol. I was fortunate to sign up for a free trial and able to get the gist of the podcast. The other aspect that I wasn’t crazy about was the limited content that the hosts covered. It would be nice if they had more news stories that I was more interest to listen to while improving my Spanish.
Overall, News in Slow Spanish did ultimately improve my listening and comprehension skills. By regularly listening to these stories, my vocabulary and grammar improved giving me more confidence ability of the language.
Ciao,
Zach
Welcome my fellow bloggers. I hope everyone is finding great progress in their journey in whatever they may be learning. As mentioned in my previous post, I am finding it harder and harder to find a reliable online resource to help progress my Spanish. However, this week I stumbled upon a resource called “Coursera”.
Coursera provides access to online courses from universities and institutions all around the world. Coursera provides courses for a variety of topics that one may want to learn, including 21 different languages. Typically, topics are taught by professors and experts in their respected fields. Obviously, I was there in my quest to learning more Spanish. The specific courses that I explored was taught by Dr. Robert Blake at the University of California, Davis.
Being on week 9 of my journey of learning Spanish, I feel like I am progressively learning more and more Spanish everyday. Because of this, I feel like I am also becoming pickier on the resources I use. Being able to identify what works and what doesn’t pretty quickly. Coursera offers both free and paid courses. While free courses are available, gaining access to graded assignments, certificates, and choice of specific areas often require the paid subscription. And as many of my fellow students are in the same boat as me, being a university student is EXPENSIVE! Which means, no thanks to the paid subscriptions. Another aspect I wasn’t crazy about was the lack of interaction Coursera had to offer. Some other resources I explore had a great variety of discussion forums and community features, allowing the user to get instant feedback from peers and feel a sense of community among other Spanish speaking people. Lastly, I found this resource difficult to stay self motivated. In my opinion. Completing online courses takes a great level of self-discipline and without having any strict deadlines or in-person classes, I found it difficult to stay on top of lectures and assignments.
Now, Coursera is not all bad. There are a few things I really like about the resource as well. First off, there was a wide range of course options available. This caters to all levels of Spanish speaking students, from beginner to experts. The other aspect that was very apparent, was the structure that was laid out for learners. It was clear that these courses are taught by professionals and experts from top universities and institutions, ensuring that there are high-quality instructions. While I did harp on Coursera in the paragraph above for not being very self-motivating, I did find a silver lining in that. It allowed the user to become more flexible while learning. I could access course material, assignments, and quizzes all at my own pace, allowing me to be learning at my own convenience.
Overall, I found Coursera to be a decent online resource. Signing up for the free trail, I could tell why so many users would be driven towards the site. If it wasn’t for the subscription, I would most likely explore Coursera in more depth. Thanks for reading friends!
Zach
Buenas tardes todo! (Good afternoon everyone!)
I’m not sure you about you all, but I am getting to the point where I am starting to struggle to find good, reliable, online resources to continue my journey of learning Spanish. This week took me a bit longer than regular to find the resource I was going to use. But, nonetheless, I found one that might just be my favourite one yet! I present, Coffee Break Spanish.
For the ones who are not familiar with Coffee Break Spanish, it is a podcast that has mini lessons that you can listen to. I listened to these podcasts through the app Spotify. I found that Coffee Break Spanish has been the most convenient and accessible resource I have used thus far. It was so easy for me to plug in my headphones and just listen. Whether I was commuting to work or being at the gym, this kind of accessibility was unmatched. I didn’t need to set time aside just to learn Spanish, rather I would learn Spanish while doing something else. The other aspect I really like was how it had a structured lessons easy to follow, making it ideal for beginners/intermediates like me. Each lesson would focus on a specific topic such as greetings, restaurants, everyday conversations, and much more. The last thing that I loved about Coffee Break Spanish was in addition to the lessons, they also had quizzes. This was a great way for me to track my progress through my listening.
Some things that I didn’t overly like about the app was while Coffee Break Spanish was great for beginners and intermediates, I could tell it lacked advanced content. As I am continuing to improve on the language week by week, I could already sense that I would hit a plateau fairly quickly using this app. Another thing I noticed was while this resource provides a solid foundation, there were additional resources needed. The app did not go into great detail about grammar, comprehension, and conversations of the language.
Overall, as a starting point, this is my favourite online resource yet. As mentioned before, nothing can beat the accessibility that this app provides. Not having to set a specific time out of my day to learn Spanish saved me a lot of time and stress.
Thanks for listening!!
Zach
Bienvenido mis amigos (Welcome my friends). Today I will be reviewing learning Spanish via social media. Who knew I could use Instagram for something useful other than mindlessly scrolling through my feed late at night while I should be sleeping?
While there are many different social media applications, I would have to say Instagram dominates my use. Whether it be for following professional athletes to finding new recipes for supper, I use Instagram for informational and non-informational content. So, I thought, why not try using Insta for learning Spanish?
To start on this process, I had to find the Instagram pages I would use. I found a few with a simple Google search. The three accounts that I focused on during this journey was: @SpanishDict, @Ohlalagram, and @hablomosespanol. @SpanishDict offers daily vocabulary, grammar tips, and interactive quizzes to challenge the learner. @Ohlalagram provides visually appealing infographics and a variety of language memes to make learning Spanish fun and engaging. Lastly, @hablomosespanol offers short language lessons, and cultural insights that every other resource that I have explored has yet to touch on.
To begin, the accessibility of social media is unmatched. They are free to use and accessible for all ages and levels of Spanish speaking learners. With almost everyone having a phone at their disposal, hopping on Instagram for a few minutes here and there is accessible for almost everyone. This was especially beneficial to me with having a such a busy schedule; I could get a few minutes in during my lunch break or for the few minutes while I’m laying in bed. The other aspect I like about this resource was that it was a lot more fun and engaging than other resources. With the interactive and sometimes funny videos, I was excited to move onto the next video. Lastly, as I mentioned before, this was the first resource that I explored that also taught about the culture of Latin America. This is exactly why I wanted to learn Spanish in the first place, I love the culture! They would also teach slang terminology that native speakers use in their everyday lives.
While social media was an interesting online tool there were a few cons I’d like to mention. Being on Instagram learning Spanish was a bit of a double-edged sword. I found myself getting off task quite often as I would wonder off onto another page and go down a rabbit hole of nonsense. I found it difficult to stay on task for a long period of time. Another thing that I wasn’t a fan of was the lack of structure. There was no continuity in the learning process whatsoever. For a beginner, this would be extremely difficult to navigate the complex language. For myself, having a bit more background knowledge, it was a bit easier but still challenging to say the least.
Overall learning Spanish through Instagram is something I never thought was possible. It was a pleasant and surprising experience. For quick little tidbit lessons, there worked perfectly.
I’m curious, has anyone else tried learning Spanish through social media? Let me know!
See you all soon!
Zach