End of Semester Reflection

 

    I made it! I finished my third year, five-week long practicum, and let me tell you I had major breakthroughs and learning throughout these past five weeks. Looking back to the beginning of this semester, one of my burning questions in regard to technology in the classroom was how I can incorporate technology into my assessment. Although we did not explore many tools and resources we can use to document assessment, I feel that I did find many tools and resources that I could use to assess my students learning and understanding. One of my favourite resources that I took away from this course was the virtual tour website. I feel that this resource is a unique way for students to demonstrate their learning and understanding, and is a unique way for me to assess their learning and understanding. 

Looking at this semester as a whole my perspective on integrating technology has changed considerably. I have often struggled to see the implications of technology in younger grades, such as kindergarten. However, through this course I have recognized that integrating technology in the classroom doesn’t mean students need to be consistently using technology in lessons, but it could just be the students recognizing how to treat technology. This is crucial in the early grades such as kindergarten, and I am looking forward to integrating this new perspective into my future teaching. 

As a final reflection of this semester, I have learned the importance of collaboration with fellow peers. If it wasn’t through the extensive collaboration I have had with my peers over this semester I would not have had as many resources and tools to reserve for both my practicum and my future practice. We all come from different experiences, and different backgrounds, which means we all have different knowledge to bring forward. I believe that I had a lot of experience exploring educational apps on iPads, and that was something that I was the best able to share with my peers. While other peers of mine had more experience with educational websites, and were able to share that knowledge with me. Overall I am looking forward to continuing collaborating with my peers in my future practice. 

In conclusion, this semester has been a rewarding experience for me, especially in developing my knowledge and experience with technology. I have learned a lot about technology in the classroom, and I am looking forward to incorporating this knowledge into my future practice.

Coding for Kids Lesson Plan

    One of my favourite units when I was a student was the grade six sky science unit. Now that unit is one of my favourite ones to teach. For today's blog post I created a lesson plan that combines problem-solving through coding on the website Scratch and exploring the implications of gravity in space. You can take a look at my lesson plan here. 

"What happens when you burp in space?" lesson plan

    While creating this lesson plan, I thought this lesson plan would be most ideal to hook students into the sky science unit. The sky science unit has no outcomes related to gravity; however, students can take their prior knowledge from the air and aerodynamics unit and integrate it into the sky science unit through this lesson. I also think that it would be interesting to use this lesson plan in a classroom that is teaching students about their bodily functions. We all know that our students love to laugh when another students release their gas, so this lesson could introduce normalizing our bodily functions in a fun way. If you have any other ideas on how you would utilize this lesson plan, please leave them in the comments below!

Connecting With Nature Lesson Plan

    Two of my favourite things are spending time outside and technology integration in the classroom, so why not combine both of them into one lesson? Linked here is a lesson plan I have designed with grade one students who are exploring their senses in mind. In this lesson students will be going outside to learn how they can use their senses in nature. Additionally, students will be using their iPads to document themselves using their senses and learning how to use the airdrop feature on their iPads as a technique to eject media. I enjoyed creating this lesson as it allowed students to take their learning outside the classroom, while also allowing them to build their foundational knowledge on technology use. 

Connecting with Nature Integrated Lesson Plan 

    Although I specifically used this lesson to have grade one students explore their senses, I believe the nature and technological integration in this lesson can be used across the curriculum. One way I would like to alter this lesson plan in the future is taking my students on a field experience rooted deeply within nature, such as taking students to Ann and Sandy Cross here in Calgary. Although in the science curriculum you can find many integrations into nature, I believe it would be engaging for students take photos and videos of things in nature that they found interesting. Overall, I really enjoyed creating this lesson and I look forward to integrating it into my future practice. 

Disneyland Virtual Tour

 

Disneyland Virtual Tour

    For the first time ever last year I got to visit Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disneyland has easily become one of my favourite places in the world, so naturally when I had to create a virtual tour for my emerging technologies class I would do one for Disneyland. Until I created this tour, I never saw the implications that Disneyland could have in the classroom, but now my ideas are flourishing. In this virtual tour I showcased three of the rides in Disneyland that I adore, and some interest points in those rides that I believe could be used in the classroom. You can click here to go to the virtual tour that I created. 

    I personally believe that the opportunities to implement Disneyland in the classroom are endless; however, I want to discuss three big ideas that I am interested into implementing into my own classroom one day using my virtual tour.

1. Create your own "It's a Small World Wall" 

The wall at the entrance of It's a Small World is stunning, but also features many patterns and geometric aspects. In my tour I feature the clock that was made to look like a face using different geometric shapes. However, when you encourage students to build their own It's a Small World Wall students are gaining experience with geometry, patterns, building, and potentially even colour. This can be linked to many curricular outcomes across all grades, especially in math and the visual arts.

2. Explore the rockets on Astro Orbiter 

In my virtual tour I showcased the rockets you ride in while riding Astro Orbiter. These rockets of course have many differences from real rockets, but do have some similarities. I think it would be particularly meaningful to students to explore these similarities and differences during the grade six sky science unit; however, they are many other curricular connections you could make to this. Additionally, I think it would be interesting to dig further into the imagineer's design of the ride Astro Orbiter, and how they came to develop the design of the rockets. 

3. Analyze a POV Scene from Nemo's Submarine Voyage 

In my virtual tour I picked one point of view shot for Nemo's submarine voyage as a point of interest; however, you can see all the ride in it entirety in many YouTube videos. I have linked one here. While creating this point of interest I thought it would be interesting to have grade one students, or any students who are exploring animals to analyze an animal POV scene from the ride. This could bring up many interesting, and important conversations such as if it is okay to take animals from their home in the ocean. 

    These are just a few of the ideas I have for integrating Disneyland, and my virtual tour of Disneyland into the classroom. I personally believe any virtual tour could be used similarly by picking out relevant points of the tour and finding ways you could integrate it into the curriculum. To me, virtual tours are like field trips, but you have the freedom to travel anywhere in the world to allow for more meaningful connections for your students. Therefore, I believe virtual tours should be integrated wherever relevant to allow students to make the most meaningful connections. If you have any suggestions on some of your personal favourite virtual tours I would love to hear them in the comments below! 

Sign Me ABC's App Integration

     For my emerging technologies course, two of my fellow teachers candidates and I created a lesson plan using the Sign Me ABCs app. The Sign Me ABCs app is an educational app that teaches its users how to sign the alphabet, some animals, and some songs. Our lesson had an emphasis on students learning the sign for one of their favourite animals.

    To download the app from the app store, click here. 

    To download the app from the Google Play Store, click here. 

Link to Sign Me ABCs Virtual Lesson

    After teaching this lesson plan to some of my peers, I found that an advantage of this app and our coordinating lesson was that it encouraged students to learn sign language, which is becoming more integrated into classrooms. Additionally, it allows for the classroom to be a more inclusive environment of hearing impaired students. However, a downfall I found with this app and our lesson is that it doesn't encourage students to engage with the sign language they are learning. In future lessons I would extend the length of this lesson and encourage students to engage more with their new knowledge. For example, I would get students to pair with a partner and sign their chosen animal and potentially the letters to spell out the animal. This would allow students to engage more with what they are learning and make more meaningful connections. 

    Overall, Sign Me ABCs is a well formatted app that is easy to use, and I would recommend it to any teacher who is looking to make their classroom a more inclusive space. Leave your comments below, and let me know how you would use this app in your classroom!

Tsuu T'ina Nation Digital Story

     Over the past couple of weeks, I have been able to research and explore how the Tsuu T'ina nation came to be what it is today. Additionally, I have been able to explore the Tsuu T'ina Nation middle school, and how they integrate Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing into the Alberta Education curriculum. This has allowed me to reflect on my professional responsibilities as an educator, and create lessons that I would like myself to learn in regard to Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. 

    For today's blog post, I have created a digital story that compiles my findings and my goals into a video that can be found here. I hope you enjoy watching my video, and you are free to leave any input or resources that you may in the comments that will help me achieve my goals. 

Twitter in the Classroom

Before you started your practice in education, did you use Twitter? I may be the only one in thinking this, but I absolutely love to use Twitter personally to share photos and funny tweets with my friends. Therefore, when my professor Norm in my emerging technology class mentioned that we would be creating a professional twitter to share our education journey I was ecstatic, and my mind started racing with ways I could integrate Twitter into my practicum classroom this year, and even my own classroom in the future. 

Here are three ways that I would potentially integrate Twitter into my future classroom, and ways you could too: 

1. Have students take over Twitter for a week and discuss a topic related to their in-class learnings.

During my grade six field experience at Langevin school in Calgary my mentor teacher ran a blog for her classroom. One of my favourite ways she used this blog was letting her students take over the blog to talk about a topic. Each week a student would take over the blog and talk about their learnings throughout the week. One week a student discussed a field trip they went on, and what they learned. I believe this would be a fantastic idea to implement on Twitter, especially because the word limit is smaller and allows students to warm up to the idea of using technology publicly. Twitter may also be a nice alternative to a blog for younger students who are still learning how to form sentences, or who are just learning to type.

2. Share updates with parents on their student learning.

Over the past two years in the education program I have seen technology be used in a variety of ways to inform parents about what students will be learning about each week. I think twitter would be useful in this way as you can create threads. One way I would use Twitter threads to update parents about student learning is create a thread about the outcome students will be learning in a certain subject for that week. For example, I could tweet: 

“This week our kindergarten’s will be learning about the numbers one and two in math, and how to represent them in different ways” 

You could then add a tweet to that thread to show examples of student work, provide parents with extra support they could use at home, questions to ask their children, and much more. 

3. Use Twitter to connect with schools and teachers around the world. 

One of the biggest things Mount Royal teacher candidates learn during the education program is the importance of collaborating with peers. Although it is super important to collaborate with fellow teachers at your school, I believe it is just as important to connect with teachers all around the world, who all have different points of view and experiences. The more teachers and schools you are able to connect with, the more you are able to add into your tool kit for your classroom. I also think it would be cool to connect with a school in a different city, or even country that your class could be pen pals with. Twitter truly provides so many opportunities for connections. 

    And there you have it, three simple ways that you can integrate twitter into the classroom. Of course there is so many additional ways that you can bring twitter into the classroom, and if you scour the #EDUC3326 hashtag on Twitter you can find dozens of other teacher candidates who have written similar blog posts to mine, and run their own twitter!

    If you would like to follow along on my twitter journey you can click on the twitter logo below, and it will take you to my own personal twitter, or you can find me @MsGiesinger. 

P.s. If you have any of your own recommendations, feel free to comment them on this post!

Year 3 Goals, Experiences, and Questions

                                 Professional Responsibilities 

Honours cultural diversity and promotes intercultural understanding. 

Planning for Learning

Uses resources that accurately reflect and demonstrate the strength and diversity of First Nations, Métis and Inuit. 

Facilitating Learning 

Integrates digital technology and resources, as appropriate, to build student capacity for:

- acquiring, applying and creating new knowledge;

- communicating and collaborating with others, critical-thinking; and

- accessing, interpreting and evaluating information from diverse sources  

Assessment 

Creates multiple and varied  assessment tools that align with outcomes.

Inclusive Environment 

Creates and manages effective classroom routines and procedures to 

promote positive, engaging learning environments.

My Previous Educational Technology Experience 

Throughout my time in the education program I have observed technology mainly being used through chromebooks to use google docs and conduct research. However, I have also observed my mentor teachers use iPads as an assessment tool where they take pictures and videos of students' work to help track student thoughts and progress. 

My own personal experience with educational technology is I have created websites and online stores. I also have experience with photography, videography, photo and video editing, and social media platforms such as youtube. These all of which I believe would be useful to help integrate technology into the classroom. 

My Questions about Educational Technology

I think my own personal grey area when integrating technology into the classroom is how to incorporate technology into assessment. I have seen my mentor teachers use iPads as a way to document verbal responses; however, I am wondering if there are potentially websites that we can use to help us assess students through technology. I am also wondering if there are any websites that we can use to help us create assessment tools such as rubrics.