Author: bharkin

I chose the word balance(creating time for the things you have to do, as well as the things you like to do) as my professional and personal goal for the year back in January.  After being responsible for 20 students in a K/1 classroom for several weeks, I can say that making this my goal was the right choice. Not just for me in my personal and professional life, but as a goal for teaching my students. It’s important to teach not just the curriculum set out by BC education, but to teach students that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do but you’ll also get to do things you want to do, especially if you get the first out of the way.

I extended the definition of balance in brackets above, to include a balance between ways of teaching, like that behind the idea of the 6 language arts of reading, speaking, viewing, listening, visually representing, and writing. I wanted to create lessons and units with a variety of teaching styles on my part, as well as a variety of activities for students to engage with and learn from. I wanted a balance between teaching and learning through experiences.

In my original write up about my goal for 2020, I talked about creating flow and balance between subjects and student’s needs so that no one thing is more important than another. After being in a classroom for a period of time, I feel even more strongly about maintaining balance and flow for my students. Being sensitive to the balance, flow, and needs of my classroom required me to be present in every moment and taught me to take things one at a time, while still keeping in mind where we want to go and where we have already been.

Balance is something I will continue to focus on in and out of the classroom and I will continue to strive for this balance in my personal and professional lives as I feel that it is incredibly important for me and for my students.

This semester we have had many guests speak to us about various tech and apps to use in our classrooms. It’s amazing just how many resources we have to help us in teaching content as well as core competencies. I can see how easily new educators could be overwhelmed by what is out there. However, I think it’s important to remember that this tech and these apps are meant to make our jobs easier so if something isn’t working for you, there are other options.

There is technology and apps that allow for online portfolios, parent communication, grading, inclusion of extraordinary learners, student creativity and collaboration, teacher reflection, and the list goes on.

Something I found to be most interesting in this course, it that you can teach skills in technology, coding, and ADST without actually using technology. I’ve attached an ADST lesson plan that I plan to use in my practicum with a class of grade 3 students. I will use it as the opening lesson to this topic so it is not content heavy and fully hands on and open to student creativity.

EdTechLesson

I missed the day Karen Lirenman came to show us apps to use in our classrooms but thanks to my triad group, I am putting the pieces together.

From what I gather, the apps Karen focused on were creative in nature. Apps that could be easily used by the students to showcase their creativity, and who they are creatively. In my opinion, most, if not all apps that are brought into the classroom should be both easy to use and easy to be creative with.

An app that fits this bill is “Book Creator,” where students have the choice of what kind of book they want to make and how they want it to look. This is an app I would love to use in my future teaching as it seems like a great way to get kids excited about writing as they would be working toward a final product that is creatively personalized and easy to share with others.

Kristina Tzetzos spoke to us assessment and how it can be used to increase student engagement and accountability. She talked about how important it is for educators to know the difference between when students are taking directions and when they are taking direction. Such a subtle difference in writing is actually an entirely different process in practice. Traditionally, western education comprises teachers giving students directions and expecting them to follow along. But with the new BC curriculum, much more emphasis is put on students taking their own direction; asking questions, being creative, being innovative.

With the new curriculum, teachers need to teach students the skills necessary to monitor their own behaviour, track their progress, collect evidence of their learning, reflect on the process and skills learned, and assess themselves and their peers. This is a lot to unpack and Kristina posed a very relevant question. “How accurate is student self assessment if they don’t have the skills to do it?”

Sandra McAulay was back with us again today to talk about coding in the elementary classroom. She said that you can start with simply the language used in coding (programmers) and work up from there, however, she began with sequencing and instructions and embedded the language that way. It was awesome that while she asked us for real life examples of instructions (making Kraft dinner, directions from Google Maps), she also modelled exactly how she would handle a classroom of children throughout activities (thanking on-task children, setting expectations).

Sandra shared a few coding in real life activities we can try in our classrooms. I noticed that these activities could be implemented as part of ADST and/or language arts, and that they meld well with core competencies, especially the ones related to collaboration and creative thinking.

She also showed us a Scratch Jr. project that covered ADST and science. The student had to follow specific criteria for each scenario. Each scenario shared information and facts about primary, secondary, or tertiary consumers, and the animals moved or spoke based on the coding behind it.

These are all things that I will implement with my own classrooms as they are approachable for me (as someone who isn’t tech savvy) and for students (little people who are just learning about these things).

Tim Carey shared with us today why he began podcasting. He uses it as a way to engage in professional learning and to gain fresh perspectives, as in his podcasts he reflects on his own teaching and interviews other educators. He believes that you need to challenge yourself in order to achieve growth, and this is his way of doing just that. He pointed out that podcasts can be an easy way for educators to keep up with new ideas and perspectives, especially if you don’t have the time to read, as podcasts can be listened to while engaged in other activities like driving or doing chores. He uses the app Anchor to publish his podcasts.

While I don’t think I’ll start listening to podcasts, it is good to know that this form of information is out there and that there could be cool podcasts to share with classes.

Carrie Antoniazzi came from Science World today to speak to us about computational thinking and how to implement it in the classroom. She was kind enough to allow us time to go through some activities ourselves like coding in real life and coding without computers (writing down directional instructions for a human robot to follow) and the Knight’s Tour board (starting at one and ending at one and filling each square once). These activities were highly engaging for us as adults, so I can only imagine that students would have a great time engaging with and solving these activities.

I thought it was very cool that she shared a video with us that exemplified computational thinking. The video was of a dad asking his children to give him instructions on how to make a peanut and jelly sandwich. If the instructions were too vague, he would do funny things to show them that the instructions were not clear enough and they would use their logical reasoning and use patterns in order to ameliorate their instructions.

I will definitely be using these activities in my future classrooms as they are straight forward, yet challenging.

Cliff Waldie was in today to tell us all about Fresh Grade and how it can benefit us as educators, our students as learners, and our students’ adults through open communication. This communication includes expectations, how things are assessed, student work, and prompts for self reflection. Fresh Grade is a great platform for communication with students’ adults in a form comparable to an e-portfolio. It’s a great place to upload student work and student projects and artwork so that things are not just completed in class and sent home as “dumpster projects.” It’s great how flexible Fresh Grade is on the side of the teacher as to what can be included and how things are shown. Even the way things are assessed and how you convey that to the parents/guardians/caregivers of the students can be creative and reflective/reflexive to that of student performance and teacher preference. Fresh Grade is something I will definitely consider fiddling with when I have my own classroom and students.

• Ed Tech for all students – not just older students
• networking can be exhausting
• picking and choosing what works for you – you can’t do it all
• office 365 – sway – kids collaborating
• remind instead of planners – used with students and their parents as reminders and to be kept in the loop (set settings to one way communication – create boundaries)

Sally made a lot of good points in her presentation but the overall theme that I picked up on was self-care. While it’s important to be reflective and reflexive in your teaching, you have to do it in a way that works for you. Blogging is a breeze for some and a burden to others, twitter can be helpful or exhausting. She pointed us in the direction of a few apps that could aid in our future teaching. Things like sway in office 365 can be used when students need to collaborate, or sway being used to keep students and parents in the loop with homework or school events. She made the point that while open communication with parents and students is important, it’s just as important to create boundaries that work for you.

• Valerie Irvine
• modality – face-to-face or online
• should there be flexibility in modality accessibility?
• multi-access – mix of face to face and online
• social justice issue? pay more for online programs because of rural living
• choice could increase student engagement
• choice could decrease classes missed by students with anxiety or other health issues
• language is changing around the idea of multi-access modality
• check your bias – transference of expectation

Valerie brought up the question of whether their should be flexibility in the modality of education and made some points to support why there should be. While there are many benefits to a face-to-face modality, it is not always feasible for some students for whom an online or mixed modality education would work much better. Perhaps choice would increase student engagement and increase retention in students with extraordinary needs and/or anxieties. As with most things, your thoughts and feelings about it can influence how you approach it.