Author Archives: vieir112

Feb 19 2019
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332thursday10

When Teachers Talk – Ep 1

Hello teachers!

For this media reflection, thanks to our open-minded professor Dr. Bonnie Stewart, Andrei Aitonean and I have been given permission to collaborate and make a podcast together as our multimedia reflection.

Now first let me apologize for the length of 16:45. Andrei and I were really enjoying pioneering this new medium of expressing our opinion.

The first thing I discussed with Andrei is my lack-of-understanding what this module is used for. The video with Terry in the beginning talked about how Terry wanted to improve his old-school teaching style. But Terry’s problem was never related to the process of applying the Technologist module. Because of this, I could not make the connection with my brain and I read the entire module unsure if it was designed for teachers, or students, or whomever.

This it might just be me, but too many hyperlinks on a web page cause me to lose sleep at night. Seriously. Here is my alternate suggestion that I mentioned on this episode of the podcast:

“Design Thinking” is just a synonym for “Backward Planning”. This is an excellent tool as we all know. By clicking on one of the hyperlinks, you are re-directed to a page that enlists 7 distinct ways how to backward plan. I was not aware there were different approaches to it. This was interesting to read.

The third step in the Design Thinking process was the “Ideate” step. This is where the teacher starts to brainstorm how to solve a problem that they understand and are aware of. I believe this to be the most crucial step because this is when change for the better begins.

This module seemed more like advice to solving a problem than an actual suggestion to solutions. It explains how teachers can understand technology to its full potential, but nowhere are there examples of projects that have worked for teachers, nor are there ideas for teachers to take the first step into solving a problem in their classroom. The definition of digital literacy is discussed in our podcast and I can’t help but to notice that there were no suggestions for how non-tech savvy teachers can improve their technological education. This module is a great tool for explaining to teachers what they need to change, but is not so great at explaining how they need to change.

Oct 28 2018
3 Comments
332thursday10

How Technology (Should) Participate In The Modern Classroom

The Influence of Participatory Culture on Education is a short video that really cuts to the chase. As an in-service teacher, I can understand how scary it might be to include social media in a classroom. There is so much at risk. But like the podcast from 3 weeks ago mentioned, some risk is worth the reward.

I was really surprised when Jenkins said certain social media-based school conversations is considered cheating. I couldn’t agree with him more when he says that this just enforcing the old-school autonomous learning model. There is no difference talking about exam material face-to-face or on social media. This is one of the ways technology is excellent for education. Students can come together in a time of desperation and can help each other out with just the click of a button.

The second main topic that Jenkins covered in the video was an interesting one. I admire his intentions, however I am afraid I don’t feel exactly the same about open sourced free online education. We’ve all learnt so much from YouTube since its birth in 2005. Jenkins believes that University Professors should upload their course-related videos to the life-changing social network instead of uploading them onto a privately owned network ran by the institution. I understand that some students who deserve an education but can’t afford it would benefit immensely from this. However I am concerned how this will have an effect on teacher employment in the future. Like I mentioned in my Twitter essay, is it possible one day that a few remarkable teachers might take over the jobs of the rest of us? It is impossible to know.

In my Twitter essay I talked about how Michele Jacobsen (Teaching in a Participatory Digital World) thinks technology can relate to real life work which would potentially get students excited about their future. She says students would get motivated about “[…] opportunities that are similar to the everyday activities of [working] professionals”. As a future math/science teacher, naturally this got me thinking. I like the idea of having my students do an project about global warming or the importance of recycling, and being able to share it with other students around the world. Or an arts teacher could upload the class’ anti-bullying posters on the internet to spread awareness. The possibilities are endless.

Finally, since reading this article, I’ve been struggling to think outside the box of how I can include technology into a mathematics classroom. I came up with one idea where perhaps students could use www.desmos.com to plot functions for an assignment that I have yet to come up with. This would graze the surface of programming functions for those who are interested in pursuing a career in that field one day, and for the rest of them, they would gain skill on a graphing calculator.

 

Twitter Essays are my new favourite way to publish my multimedia reflections. I am not a very visual person, so this allowed me to express my thoughts through words and GIFs. The biggest challenge was staying within the 240 character limit per post. I do appreciate the existence of this character restriction because it forced me to summarize the video/article and format my essay with informal bullet points. Because each post ranges between 1-4 sentences, hopefully it also captivates the reader more than a regular essay would.

 

To read the Twitter essay in its full glory, click here.

To watch Henry Jenkin’s video, click here.

To read Michele Jacobsen’s article, click here.

 

 

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Oct 02 2018
4 Comments
332thursday10

Teachers & Technology – Friends or Foes?

My colleagues and I are very fortunate to be the first generation that had technology integrated into our classroom. However, there is a time and place for everything. Online courses have not been around for too long, and we can see that they are not as productive as we would hope for. However online courses might be able to become friendlier. On the podcast, they discussed several alternatives to engage students more in an online setting.

The Piktochart itself was so simple to make. I can see myself using this in my professional career in both math and physics. The first use that comes to mind is online posters for the students to look at before the subject is taught. For example, for Classical Mechanics (a chapter in Physics that studies motion), perhaps have animations of cars driving faster than other cars, or different weights falling. I could also incorporate some text in the form of bullet points, next to the images to stimulate their thinking. It would be great for my students to look at for 5 minutes the night before the lesson. Just to give them some basic ideas on what we’ll be talking about. I strongly recommend to all of my colleagues to try this application because it is super user-friendly. Just make sure to use Google Chrome since Internet Explorer is not compatible with the website.