Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Tech Task 12
The Future
What an exciting time to be a teacher, we have so many resources and technology available to us. As we move forward this will only continue to increase. In the immediate future I see schools all moving towards becoming 1 to 1 schools, meaning that each student has their own device. I have been in schools that already have this set up and it does create a whole new world of possibilities in your classroom. I really like a quote from the late Yogi Berra, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future". When it comes to technology it is improving so fast that it is difficult to try and even fathom what is possible. I found this video (shared below) and I used it in a presentation for our literacy class. It is about this innovative and interactive e-book, the video is a few years old and this book is actually available in the app store. When technology can make a book so engaging and hands on it really makes me question if we will have physical books in our future classrooms. I think that paper books are on the way out. When you think of each student having their own device, how easy would it be for each student to have all the books they need right on their device. One thing that I do not see happening is teachers losing jobs because of the prevalence of technology. Yes students have more information available to them but that has just changed the role of the teacher. Instead of providing the content for students the teacher has shifted to be more of a facilitator of learning. Think of it from the digital book perspective, yes they may replace physical books. But the students will still need to be able to read regardless of what format the book is in. Look further into the future, say 20 years down the line, it will be interesting to see what our roles look like as educators. I think we will see a lot of change in that time but as long as we embrace the change we will be just fine.
What an exciting time to be a teacher, we have so many resources and technology available to us. As we move forward this will only continue to increase. In the immediate future I see schools all moving towards becoming 1 to 1 schools, meaning that each student has their own device. I have been in schools that already have this set up and it does create a whole new world of possibilities in your classroom. I really like a quote from the late Yogi Berra, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future". When it comes to technology it is improving so fast that it is difficult to try and even fathom what is possible. I found this video (shared below) and I used it in a presentation for our literacy class. It is about this innovative and interactive e-book, the video is a few years old and this book is actually available in the app store. When technology can make a book so engaging and hands on it really makes me question if we will have physical books in our future classrooms. I think that paper books are on the way out. When you think of each student having their own device, how easy would it be for each student to have all the books they need right on their device. One thing that I do not see happening is teachers losing jobs because of the prevalence of technology. Yes students have more information available to them but that has just changed the role of the teacher. Instead of providing the content for students the teacher has shifted to be more of a facilitator of learning. Think of it from the digital book perspective, yes they may replace physical books. But the students will still need to be able to read regardless of what format the book is in. Look further into the future, say 20 years down the line, it will be interesting to see what our roles look like as educators. I think we will see a lot of change in that time but as long as we embrace the change we will be just fine.
Tech Task #9
Using an Online Video in the Classroom
I really enjoy TED talks, I find it is one of the best resources for finding informative and inspirational videos. One video that I found which I would like to use in my classroom is a Ted talk by Eduardo Briceno. In the video he talks all about how we can get better at things. His point is that you wont just get better if you do the same thing over and over again. If you want to get better you have to do harder and harder things, you have to challenge yourself. What I find with the way he delivers his speech is that it leaves you inspired. After watching the video you want to challenge yourself and try to get better at something, which is why I want to use it in my classroom. In my classroom I want implement some sort of independent inquiry based learning. For inquiry based learning to be effective students need to invested in what they are learning about. I think it would be a great video to use to help get students excited to be in charge of their own learning. Hopefully they would take that initiative and really challenge themselves with whatever the choose for inquiry based learning. If the video was well received and students seemed inspired by it, I would consider showing more videos like this one. If I ever thought students were getting lazy or off track with their inquiry projects I could show another video that makes students realize the importance of taking charge of their own learning.
I really enjoy TED talks, I find it is one of the best resources for finding informative and inspirational videos. One video that I found which I would like to use in my classroom is a Ted talk by Eduardo Briceno. In the video he talks all about how we can get better at things. His point is that you wont just get better if you do the same thing over and over again. If you want to get better you have to do harder and harder things, you have to challenge yourself. What I find with the way he delivers his speech is that it leaves you inspired. After watching the video you want to challenge yourself and try to get better at something, which is why I want to use it in my classroom. In my classroom I want implement some sort of independent inquiry based learning. For inquiry based learning to be effective students need to invested in what they are learning about. I think it would be a great video to use to help get students excited to be in charge of their own learning. Hopefully they would take that initiative and really challenge themselves with whatever the choose for inquiry based learning. If the video was well received and students seemed inspired by it, I would consider showing more videos like this one. If I ever thought students were getting lazy or off track with their inquiry projects I could show another video that makes students realize the importance of taking charge of their own learning.
Monday, 6 March 2017
Tech Task #10
Commenting on a Students Blog
I checked out Kristen Thompson's Canadian History Class' blog. The students posts were very good, some were very creative. I really liked a graphic that one student created about Louis Riel. They had a picture of Riel made out of a bunch of different words that describe him. The blog post that I chose to comment on was also unique. The student had written a post from the point of view of a teacher in a residential school. I thought it was a really authentic way to share knowledge about residential schools. I have shared a screenshot of my comment below:
I checked out Kristen Thompson's Canadian History Class' blog. The students posts were very good, some were very creative. I really liked a graphic that one student created about Louis Riel. They had a picture of Riel made out of a bunch of different words that describe him. The blog post that I chose to comment on was also unique. The student had written a post from the point of view of a teacher in a residential school. I thought it was a really authentic way to share knowledge about residential schools. I have shared a screenshot of my comment below:
Sunday, 5 March 2017
Week 8
This week we had the principal of Minnedosa Collegiate Bryce Ridgen as our guest speaker. At Minnedosa Collegiate the school is 1 to 1, meaning that for every student at the school there is a device. Whether it be a tablet, ipad, or laptop all students have some device available to them. My last placement was in Rivers and the school there was set up in the same way. Both schools are in Rolling River School Division so perhaps it is a division wide initiative. Being the principal of a 1 to 1 school Bryce had many good ideas to share with us. One idea that I really liked was using Padlet so that students can anonymously collaborate as a class. So you could create a discussion on Padlet and put it up on the smart board. Then students would be able to share their ideas anonymously up on the board. I like the of being able to share anonymously, I think that it could bring up some really good conversations. As a phys. ed. teacher I could see it being really good for some difficult topics that come up in the health curriculum. Things like sexual health and mental health are topics that not all students are willing to talk about openly in front of their peers. Padlet would give students a venue to share what they want to share and ask questions that they want to ask, without that fear of being judged by their peers.
The part of the presentation that I really liked was when Bryce talked about rethinking summative assessment. This has kind of been an ongoing theme with a few of the guest speakers that we have had. I really like the inforgaphic that Bryce showed us, "101 ways to show what you know", which I have shared below. This is an image that I would like to put up in my class or hand out to students. I plan to give students plenty of choice in class. This graphic would give students all sorts of different ideas of things they could do to show me what they have learned. Bryce showed us some example of things that students had done for him. It was amazing the creativity and knowledge that was achieved by high school students. I look forward to the unique projects that my future students will take on.
The part of the presentation that I really liked was when Bryce talked about rethinking summative assessment. This has kind of been an ongoing theme with a few of the guest speakers that we have had. I really like the inforgaphic that Bryce showed us, "101 ways to show what you know", which I have shared below. This is an image that I would like to put up in my class or hand out to students. I plan to give students plenty of choice in class. This graphic would give students all sorts of different ideas of things they could do to show me what they have learned. Bryce showed us some example of things that students had done for him. It was amazing the creativity and knowledge that was achieved by high school students. I look forward to the unique projects that my future students will take on.
Friday, 3 March 2017
Tech Task #8
Podcasts
I have tried listening to a few different educational podcasts and have not had much luck finding any good ones that interest me. The problem I think is that they often spend too much time introducing the teachers/ educational professionals who are going to be on the podcast. Then when they finally bring them on to speak, the guest themselves spend more time talking about who they are. They only end up talking about their ideas for a few minutes. To me it just seems like too long to listen to only get a few minutes of actual ideas and strategies that you could use in the classroom. Perhaps I just had bad luck with the educational podcasts that I tried but for me I didn't find listening to these podcasts the most worthwhile professional development. I think I will stick to educational blogs, twitter, pinterest, teachers pay teachers, ect. for my personal time spent on professional development.
I do however have a podcast that I listen to on a weekly basis. It is just a personal interest of mine but I like the possibilities of being able to incorporate it into a math classroom. The podcast is called TSN hockey analytics. They have a weekly 45 minute podcast where host Andy McNamara usually has a few different guest speakers and they talk everything new in the hockey analytics world. Hockey analytics is a new fad in the sport where people are creating these new advanced statistics to determine all sorts of things about the game. Who the best players are, what the best strategies are, which teams will win, etc. The traditional hockey experts who have been around the game forever are being replaced with mathematicians/ statisticians. If anyone has ever seen the movie Moneyball, it is exactly like that just with hockey instead of baseball. I think it could be a great way to get students excited about math. I really like the inquiry based learning idea that has been shared with us by guest speakers. When I first thought about inquiry based learning I thought it would be really good for science and could see it working not bad with history. I didn't think of math for inquiry based learning really at all. But when you think about it, the main knock students have with math is they say "when are we ever gonna use this". Inquiry based learning would be exactly that, seeing a bunch of different ways that you can use math in real life. I think math would be perfect for a 20time project. One day a week they are able to get away from a traditional math class and do something that interests themselves. If there were hockey fans in the class I would encourage them to look into hockey analytics. If there were students who liked other sports, they could look into analytics into their sports. There would be lots of different options for the non-sports fans as well. I think it would be a great way to get students interested in math and learning in new ways.
I have tried listening to a few different educational podcasts and have not had much luck finding any good ones that interest me. The problem I think is that they often spend too much time introducing the teachers/ educational professionals who are going to be on the podcast. Then when they finally bring them on to speak, the guest themselves spend more time talking about who they are. They only end up talking about their ideas for a few minutes. To me it just seems like too long to listen to only get a few minutes of actual ideas and strategies that you could use in the classroom. Perhaps I just had bad luck with the educational podcasts that I tried but for me I didn't find listening to these podcasts the most worthwhile professional development. I think I will stick to educational blogs, twitter, pinterest, teachers pay teachers, ect. for my personal time spent on professional development.
I do however have a podcast that I listen to on a weekly basis. It is just a personal interest of mine but I like the possibilities of being able to incorporate it into a math classroom. The podcast is called TSN hockey analytics. They have a weekly 45 minute podcast where host Andy McNamara usually has a few different guest speakers and they talk everything new in the hockey analytics world. Hockey analytics is a new fad in the sport where people are creating these new advanced statistics to determine all sorts of things about the game. Who the best players are, what the best strategies are, which teams will win, etc. The traditional hockey experts who have been around the game forever are being replaced with mathematicians/ statisticians. If anyone has ever seen the movie Moneyball, it is exactly like that just with hockey instead of baseball. I think it could be a great way to get students excited about math. I really like the inquiry based learning idea that has been shared with us by guest speakers. When I first thought about inquiry based learning I thought it would be really good for science and could see it working not bad with history. I didn't think of math for inquiry based learning really at all. But when you think about it, the main knock students have with math is they say "when are we ever gonna use this". Inquiry based learning would be exactly that, seeing a bunch of different ways that you can use math in real life. I think math would be perfect for a 20time project. One day a week they are able to get away from a traditional math class and do something that interests themselves. If there were hockey fans in the class I would encourage them to look into hockey analytics. If there were students who liked other sports, they could look into analytics into their sports. There would be lots of different options for the non-sports fans as well. I think it would be a great way to get students interested in math and learning in new ways.
Thursday, 2 March 2017
Tech Task 11
Show and Tell - RefMe
One app that I have found that I would like to share with my future students and you guys as future educators and it is called RefMe. I found this app somewhere in my post-secondary education and have used it ever since. Essentially it is an app that can help you organize and easily cite all the references you use, either for a paper, project, or whatever else. I found this to be one of the most difficult parts of transitioning from high school to university. You get to university and all of a sudden you are expected to write these academic papers; and there are all sorts of different formats MLA, APA, Chicago Style. If that is not intimidating enough, they scare you with the fact that it could be considered plagiarism if sources are not cited properly. That is one thing that I wish I would have came out of high school with more knowledge on. Which is where I think this app can be used; to teach students how to references sources in their writing and how to do it quickly and easily.
The app is available for your phone, tablet, ect. There is also a website that you can use. You sign up for an account and then everything is all in one place. The coolest aspect of the app has to be the fact that you can scan the barcode on a book and the app will give you the reference for that book instantly. I have used this so many times for textbooks. Professors always ask you to reference the textbook in your paper. So I just hold my phone camera up to the barcode on the back of the book, the app recognizes it, it asks you what format you want the reference in, and it gives it to you. Almost like magic!!
The format of RefMe is easy to use and easy to stay organized. It is like most programs where you can have different folders and within the folders different files. The files on RefMe are called projects, and within them you can store all the resources you have used for that project. How I liked to use it was have folders for each class then if there was a paper I would create a project for it. Then when you are done your paper you can simply export all the references. It also makes collaboration easy as you can share the projects. So if you are working on a group project you can share the RefMe project with your group members. Then everyone will be able to add the resources that they use for the project. There is no longer the need for one group member to go around collecting a list of all the resources everyone used. Everything is in one place and the references are made for you.
Referencing isn't the only skills you need to write a good academic paper. For teaching students how to structure their papers in the appropriate format I would recommend the Purdue OWL.
If you give your high school students these writing skills and show them this app they are going be thankful. Start them into it slowly and gradually show them more and more. Even just leaving high school with some awareness and skills will make the transition to college/university that much easier.
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