Category: Blogs

A Digital portfolio in the classroom is a great tool to enhance communication with parents or guardians. Apps like seesaw are able to aid in creating a digital portfolio in a very quick and simple way.

What does a digital portfolio look like in a classroom?

A digital portfolio is a tool which can be used to store documents, photos, videos, and other files in an online space where teachers, guardians, and even students can access.

Why would a digital portfolio aid in a classroom?

The first and most obvious reason is how having good communication with guardians of students, this is great for building more learning opportunities for students at home. when parents know what they are learning in the moment they are able to encourage and develop more learning moments. This also allows guardians to communicate more effectively with students letting students create better conversational and emotional skills. Students will also be able to go back and look at their previous work in the class and see how much they have improved.

What is seesaw?

Seesaw is an app which makes the digital portfolio setup and maintenance process easy and simple for teachers. The app can be downloaded on phones and laptops and has a great user interface so beginners can find their way around the app easily. Seesaw provides so many tools to make the organization and implementation process very easy for students, teachers, and guardians to use. Seesaw also allows students and guardians to comment on their kids/classmates work (it first has to be approved by the teacher) letting parents and friends express their joy for each others learning.

Overall having a digital portfolio in the classroom is a great way to simply communicate with guardians. With an app like seesaw there is very little extra work load and for the amount of benefits that can come with it, it is definitely something I will use in my classroom.

Being able to go to the design lab and district resource center was a great experience and will help me so much going foreword in my practice. We were bale to see so many cool resources in the district resource center allowing us to better know the resources available to us in the future and during our practicum. With some super cool resources like an eye model, egg incubators, outdoor sitting chairs, a hawk mini robots there is sure something in their that I will use in my future practice.

District resource center: https://www.sd5.bc.ca/resources/drc/Pages/default.aspx

The design lab had so many cool pieces of technology which could be used in so many different ways. Instead of choosing one piece of technology I tried most of them or at least watched other people trying them so I could see the usefulness of everything. Some of my favorite pieces were the Lego board which simulates an earthquake, the iPad and the amount of different learning opportunities they have on them, the little circle bots which would follow lines and complete certain tasks when a color patter was drawn, the 3d printer, and the laser cut out.

Here is a video I found on the SD5 video which I assume the kids made the robot able to complete a rubrics cube and a kid who is very impressive at rubric cube. When the presenter was speaking and watch this video I am so impressed by the capabilities students have with technologies, students can really excel in this field and blow all of our expectations. I am very happy students are getting this opportunity more and more as its a great way for them to show their creativity and skill within a new field more rarely used in the classroom.

“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”

John Dewey

This is a quote which has been shared with us multiple times throughout this semester. I have loved this quote since the very beginning but it is never more apparent then right now. Technology is so important in our everyday life and their are so many new job opportunities within these fields. It has taken schools longer then it should have to implement more technology within our classrooms. Now with the understanding that it is important to teach kids good technological literacy we have so many new opportunities to give to our students.

What is prodigy?

https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/

prodigy is a game math game designed for students and teachers to learn/teach within a classroom. Prodigy is a great example of gamifying the classroom, It is interesting and engaging yet has great learning outcomes. Prodigy allows students to collect pets which they can then use to beat villain’s and collect more pets. Too beat these villain’s students are required to answer math questions to use their powers. Students can select between their own character or the pets they have gained. There is also a game for language arts although I have not explored this yet but from reading a quick definition on this game it seems great as well.

Pros of prodigy in a classroom

Prodigy has a great deal of customization for the students, I believe this can encourage engagement for the students as they will want to continue collecting more animals and customizing their characters. The platform also gives great customization too teachers. Prodigy allows teachers to view their students progress and customize students learning outcomes based on where the classroom is at and based on where students individually are at. I believe this platform will engage students too the point of students playing the game outside of school time.

Possible Cons of Prodigy in the classroom

The biggest con that I have thought about is how students will develop a love for the game and not the math. While this will create engagement and most likely lead students to more learning there is one thing that is bad about this. We have learned throughout the year how giving students prizes after completing tasks can become ineffective in later years as students wont be prized from their actions and will fall out of love of reading, math, etc. This could happen with prodigy as without the extra dopamine students would be familiar with using prodigy they will not want to do math without an extra prize.

Another possible con is it may become distracting for students. due to the amount of customization students may become distracted and focus on this part instead of the math. However to unlock items students must answer math questions, this may encourage the students to continue with the math to know the outcome is the ability to costumize their character more.

This week in technology class we focused on coding, this was a great opportunity to learn something which is what I did. Using Hour of code I was able to learn my first bit of python a very popular coding language. This was a great experience as I was able to create a mini basketball game, while it wasn’t very groundbreaking and was a very simple game creating it myself still made me feel really good.

The game I created: https://www.codesters.com/curriculum/hour-of-code-2019/Basketball/22/

This is a great resource to use in class as I believe there are many students who don’t have the access to technology like this and wouldn’t have looked into coding without a class centered on coding. Using scratch even students in younger grades can create a game. Scratch uses block coding instead of the usual algorithmic way, while this isn’t as in depth or used at higher level of coding it still gives students skills that are required for coding with HTML+ or python. This is a great opportunity for students of all ages to show some creativity in something new, letting students who may have not found their “niche” a new opportunity to discover something their very passionate about.

Here is my name card I made in scratch (press the spacebar): https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/754639152/embed

Coding fits into many parts of the BC curriculum, listed here are just a few of the ways it connects with a grade 4 classroom:

Ideating: Choose an idea to pursue: there are so many ways students can use coding for, this lets them come up with an idea an attempt to create their idea.

Prototyping: Construct a first version of the product, making changes to tools, materials, and procedures as needed: Coding is a long process, it is likely students will fall into roadblocks, making changes to their ideas and tools may be necessary for them to accomplish their goals in coding.

testing: test the product: While coding their is a lot of trial and error until ending up with the final product. Students will have to test their product to see where they need to make changes to pursue their idea.

Stop motion

There are so many different versions of stop motion, such as puppets, Lego, cut outs, but my favorite is Claymation. One of my favorite movies of all time “Fantastic Mr. fox” is made with Claymation. This movies is one of the funniest most heartwarming movies I have ever watched, ever since watching it for the first time about 2 years ago I’ve recommended it to all my friends. This movie also includes my favorite scenes of all time, I don’t really know why its is but every time I watch the movie and this scene comes up it just makes me feel so good.

The story follows Mr. fox and his family moving into their new home, a big tree near three farmers. This is very dangerous for his family as the farmers want to get rid of the foxes. Mr fox goes on missions to steal poultry and eggs from these farmers, making the farmers team up to get rid of the animals. This results in a big battle of wits trying to figure out how get rid of each other.

Too create a large stop motion project in a classroom it would be idea to have access to iPad and a stop motion interface such as zing studio. I believe the most effective way to make a stop motion with kids is with Lego. This is because lots of kids have Lego giving them the ability to bring in objects and sets from home. As well as the very easy ability to create sets and endless possibilities of what the characters of the story may be doing. Lego characters are also able to hold objects, stand up on their own, and move with some flexibility. There are also so many resources online on how to make Lego films as this is a very popular hobbies for many people. This creates a limitless amount of opportunities for students.

Too finish this blog post off I will add the stop motion me and my group made in class with LEGOS.

Graphic design is something I am planning to use in my classroom a lot. The way I view my self using it the most in my classroom is in classroom design and worksheet creating.

I want to fill my classroom with lots, and a good way to do this is creating things with Canva. creating things to hang up in the room will be very easy to do using Canva, giving my room character and hopefully creating a space where students want to be and feel comfortable in.

The other time I plan to use Canva is in worksheet creation. whenever I am making a sheet I plan to hand out to my students I would like to make them feel special so the students can enjoy them more. I will do this by adding a little bit of “pizzazz” using Canva or similar platforms. I find these little things important as I believe it makes students want to participate more when they see there teacher putting their passion into every part of their practice.

I find Canva an extremely easy to use platform that is organized and has an extremely nice layout. Whenever I had an idea it was very easy to find where to find the tools to execute my ideas. Even when not paying for the full version their are so many tools and templates you are able to use that someone without much graphic design experience like me has so much to learn and work with.

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For my first tech In Situ we went to Gordon terrace and had a conversation with the principle in their maker room. Afterwards we went to two different classrooms and got setup on epic books. My group was with two boys and we/I read them two books called “I Can Find It: A Rainey Day” and “Curious George“.

https://www.getepic.com/app

Feelings:

I very much enjoyed Reading and talking with these students and felt quite happy and excited throughout the in-situ.

Evaluation

Good: Me and the students connected pretty well and read the first book with ease, afterwards we did the quiz and aced it and the kids seemed to enjoy it. The first book also asked questions to find stuff creating more engagement throughout it.

Bad: Once the students realized you could touch the scree and flip pages they would continually flip the pages while in the middle of the second book. This was hard as I didn’t know how to control them and make them stop and stay on task.

Analysis:

Since the students were in grade 1/2 I understand that their attention span is not too long. Reading two books can be hard for them as they may loose interest quickly, too combat this I would add something else in between books to create more interest within the second book as its “something new”.

Conclusion:

I could have tried to find a book more specific to their interests, when choosing a book they just pointed at a random one but since they didn’t really know what it was about it may not have captured their interests enough to stay engaged.

Action Plan:

If I were able to redo this experience I would probably have put more of an emphasis on the badges you earn after reading a book. This is due to my classmates explaining there students found this very exciting and created more engagement in their group.

Started making this street part for myself but I do not have enough clips to finish the rest of it so far.

When I’m making a video usually the first ting I do is find a song I would like to choose. This is usually the most annoying part as it usually takes a while to find the song I want to use. After that I make sure all my clips are on my computer so I don’t have to go back and find them in the middle of editing my video.

During the time of editing the video I usually just put a random clip in, I will then listen to if it matches with the music. If it does then I may just leave it but if it doesn’t I will edit the length of the clip until it matches with the music. This is the point where I may add slow motion to a clip if I believe it may add to it.

Once I have matched all the videos to the music I will mess around with filters and colour correction. In this video I only changed the colour of three clips. In the first I only added a black and white filter until the trick “starts”, in the second I added a black and white and vintage looking filter, and in the last I made the colours very bright and placed it as an overlay of another clip to get a cool effect.

While searching my digital footprint I was able to find out that I have a very small public presence on the internet. I also found out that there are many people with the same name as me.

I was only able to find my Facebook page while searching my name up and even after finding that my profile is private so not very much shows up. I was unable to find any other of my accounts on google while searching my name or even the usernames of my other accounts. However if you search my name on these separate platforms my accounts do show up, all these accounts are then private so very little information shows up. I am hoping to keep it like this as I would rather have a smaller public presence online.

This is a very big difference then searching my name 3-6 years ago which we had to do in class during high school, I remember photos of my self showing up. Although these photos were usually not from my social media but other forms of media such as the local newspaper, posters, etc.

My experience with social media has been quite large with great influence on my life. At the moment I am trying to use as little social media as possible. I only use Instagram for posting and seeing what my friends are up too and Facebook for keeping up with my family and Facebook marketplace. At points in my life I was using a lot more social media then I am currently before I decided I would try to stay off of most platforms for my own mental health. For this class I have recently got Pinterest which I have heard can be really helpful for classroom ideas. I’m hopping I can leverage my Pinterest to help me create a better environment and class for my future students.

My Pinterest: https://pin.it/1iKPTm8

Due to social media being a very important aspect of this class and very important within modern and a teachers life I have had to think about what I would like to do with my personal accounts. I have came to the decision that I would like to keep my personal accounts on private only accepting people that I know personally as I would like to post with more freedom then having a public account would allow me too. I have not decided yet if I want to make a public account centered around teaching and believe that is a choice I will make once I’m in the classroom and can better understand how that would work.