Author: kwilliamsteaching (Page 2 of 2)

Sketchnoting is something that I know quite well; it is stuck in my head due to events that happened while my English 11 class was covering this unit. I can confidently say sketchnoting is the largest of the few things I remember from English 11 because halfway through our term, the lovely COVID-19 hit. With this being the last unit before the nothing during quarantine, it has latched itself inside my noggin. That being said, I do love sketch notes. I find it super useful for myself as my brain works better when there are colours and pictures to connect to the text we are learning. It has taken a long time since high school for me to be able to consistently utilize sketch notes because I would always get in my head and worry about the quality of the pictures and if it was up to the high standards that my high school English teacher set. Since coming to university, I have let go of those worries and remembered that the whole point of sketch notes is to help your own brain and not worry about nonexistent rules

Below, I have included a few pictures of different sketch note elements and how those elements can come together to create sketch notes based on an article titled The Scientific Case For Doodling While Taking Notes.

In my grade 5 L2P class, I believe that sketch notes would be super beneficial because nearly every kid in the class loves to draw and doodle during free time and read-aloud time. They are still learning how to take notes when reading or listening, and if we get them started on sketch notes now, they will gain the skill and confidence through middle school and into high school. In high school and university, note-taking is vital to understanding what you are learning and how to study for tests and assignments, so having the fully developed skill would give them a leg up over students like myself, who were not good note-takers going into high school and university. Using the art that they already love to make sense of new and confusing topics would be an easy way to broach note-taking in differing forms.

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The TPACK model could help me choose the best technology for each situation by making me stop and assess the three main types of knowledge and their intersections to determine what will benefit the most. The three types of knowledge are Technological, Pedagogical, and Content, each of which is essential in determining the best route for your students. The specific group of students and the teacher’s teaching style will also heavily affect what is implemented because they are the context that shapes everything. TPACK is a great way for teachers to assess their own teaching and how well they integrate technology that I look forward to using in the future.

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Don’t forget to come back for the next post,

-Kristen

Admittedly, I am very new to 3D design and 3D printing. My technological skills and knowledge are still heavily on the learning track. For this reason, I am personally a lot more wary of using 3D printing in an elementary classroom.

I believe that 3D design has a spot in a grade 5 classroom, but I am not so sure about 3D printing. 3D design could be worked fairly easily into different subject areas like shapes/geometry in math, living things and cloud formation in science, and character design in language arts. Since it can be combined into other units, it is not taking any time away from other subjects but rather adding to them. It is also beneficial for students to be able to conceptualize and visualize things in 3D as it will crop up later in their schooling.

An excellent example of using 3D design across a different subject area is incorporating it into a social studies unit. Similar to the activity we did in our tech class, my L2P class worked on the spaghetti marshmallow tower challenge, but it was different because each group had a set of instructions for how they had to organize themselves. Each set of instructions depicted a different type of government – democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, and anarchy. The kids did not know this at the time, but as they attempted to build their towers, their actions were influenced by the leadership style and at the end of the activity, this was explained to the class. I am generally not a fan of social studies, but doing an activity like this with the class gave me a new perspective on it, and I found it really useful to use the 3D design elements to broach a non-favoured subject. It also made a clear point to the students about different types of governance and what they mean. Here is a link to the lesson and activity.

When it comes to 3D printing, I believe that it is really cool to do and play with, but I do not think it is necessary in an elementary school. In elementary school, there is so much that students need to know before they move up to middle school that should take priority. When students get to high school or maybe middle school, it would be better because it can be incorporated into a computer or technology class that is more specific to the learning around it. Elementary school students are still relatively young to properly utilize and respect tools like 3D printing. Another point against 3D printing in elementary schools is simply a cost and accessibility issue. 3D printers are notoriously expensive and not something that many elementary schools would have room for in their budget. The elementary school I am in for L2P receives minimal funding as it is, which barely stretches to cover everything students need, like support aids and does not have extra money for technology tools like computers or tablets, let alone a 3D printer.

On a different note, however, learning to design and print a keychain with my name in class was super cool, and I am glad we got the opportunity to try it. I have included a picture of my design below and a video of how I created it; it is simple but still pretty cool, in my opinion.

It was tricky at first because I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing, but as I continued to play around and follow a few step-by-step guided videos, it became easier and more fun. Admittedly, this could pose a challenge for someone who struggles to visualize things in 3D and can’t mentally rotate objects but that is where programs like Tinkercad can come in handy. It can help develop any 3D perception/visualization skills that may be lacking.

Catch you on the flip side,

-Kristen

Gen AI is such an interesting concept to me because, in some ways, it can be helpful and beneficial, but on the other hand, it can be used to cheat and skimp on actual learning.

When not attached to schoolwork, I find AI to be interesting because there is so much that I do not know about it and there is so much it can do. For example, I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot to “make me a funny picture about AI” and this is what it popped out.

copilot.cloud.microsoft/?fromcode=bingchat&redirectid=FD53339E53ED4E23AB698A4BE7ACD7DC&login_hint=kristenbwilliams%40uvic.ca&auth=2

Similarly, during our class activity time, when we were tasked with asking AI a simple general question and then expanding to a more specific question, the questions I chose also demonstrated a good non-school use of AI. Example below in the form of a screencast.

Whether using it for picture creation, learning new recipes, or asking about the weather, AI can make searching and learning easier and quicker! This can be beneficial in the classroom but may pose some drawbacks.

My current L2P class is in Grade 5, and I do not believe there is a reason they should necessarily be able to use AI freely. I do believe that there is a place for AI in this classroom, but only as a teaching moment or a group search led by the teacher, taking into account what my L2P partner commented on my last blog post about working new technologies into our classroom. What I mean by this is that it is good that the students are taught about programs like Chat GTP and Microsoft Copilot, but they must also be taught how and when to use AI safely. Most students will have access to or stumble upon AI platforms on their own, so teaching them how and when to use them is vital. An introductory activity or use of AI in the classroom could be if the teacher opens an AI platform like Microsoft Copilot on the big screen and, together as a class, researches a question or plays with image creation. I do not believe it is appropriate for students this young to use AI on their own because they cannot properly notice or asses possible risk factors and it would turn into more of a distraction then a learning tool. With more education behind it, I believe it can be used more for middle school students when it comes to idea generation, simplification of text, or research purposes.

Personally, I do not use AI for writing my schoolwork or answering test questions, partially because I do not know how to use it but also because I believe in doing the work yourself and proving to yourself and your teacher/professor that you actually know what you are doing/talking about. On the other hand, I do not judge people who use it for whatever purpose because everyone is on their own path, and AI can have positive benefits as well as negative. In the past, I have used AI to re-explain a piece of text that was not clicking and create a mind map to use to assess what I was looking at. The redefining task worked well and gave me a better understanding of my topic, but I found that when asking it to create a mind map, it became more confusing and unhelpful than how I had started.

As you can probably tell, I have pretty mixed feelings about the use of AI in schools and maybe it’ll get clearer in the future after more learning on my part and my thoughts will evolve.

See you later AI-ligator,

-Kristen

This week in Tech we learned how to screen record with audio and how to make a simple video interactive in a multitude of ways. For my screen recording teaching video, I demonstrated how to make a simple poster on Canva. It was very interesting to learn how to record a video of my screen, and I am honestly excited to be able to use it in different ways to aid student understanding and learning. When it came to making a video interactive, I was surprised that this was even possible because, in my mind, a video is just a recording and not able to be interacted with beyond maybe sound quality, brightness and length editing. Below I have added my first ever interactive screen recorded video! I hope you enjoy because I sure did making it. : )

I also have a link here that you can follow to get to Canva to start designing.

Canva Free

As for the topics of discussion this week I am going to touch on the questions wondering if including H5P tools could potentially be a useful tool at the grade level I hope to teach (or not), and how Multi-media Learning Theory can help create more effective instructional videos and tutorials.

When it comes to deciding on which grade I would like to teach I am admittedly still up in the air a little but for my Link2Practice I am in a grade 5 class so I will use that as my grade level reference. I strongly believe that the H5P tools would be perfect to use in videos for my grade 5 class because there are a few kids who, like myself, have a shorter attention span when listening to long educational videos that do not pertain to their interests. But if there was an interactive part where the class could guess the correct answer out of 4 options or if a question is true or false, they would likely be far more attentive (I know I would). They would get to be a part of the video and interact in a way that is more memorable than a person droning on and on. Rather than being told to pay attention because they will have to individually answer questions after, they get to answer questions in a group and get a collective excitement if they get the answer right and if they get it wrong, increased anticipation for the next question to win/beat the system collectively.

As for the use of Multi-Media Learning Theory, I again strongly believe that it significantly benefits learners in elementary and up. When there are too many things going on in a PowerPoint-like presentation or video, kids’ attention spans can drift from the main points of the demonstration to less vital details like a presenter’s face. As we talked about in class, we are drawn to faces, and kids are no exception, so having a camera on during the presentation could mean they are not retaining the information that prompted the presentation in the first place; the same goes for too many graphics/pictures especially if they are irrelevant to the topic. On the other side of this theoretical coin, there is also an issue with there not being enough additional stimulation to help kids draw connections between what they are listening to/reading. If you have a page of just text or if you are speaking with no additional visuals, the kids are less likely to remember what was being taught because it can start to blend together. So, to combat this, we must include relevant visual aids like pictures, gifs, or short video clips that can be mixed in with pages of blocky text or long drawn-out spiels. Kids are also well known to not all learn and absorb information in the same way, so to include multiple different types of media for the same presentation is also, at its simplest, a form of inclusion that should be applied in every presentation.

(See the pics below as an example of non-relevant pictures that, although beautiful, do not connect to what I have been talking about.)

The first pic is from a beach in my hometown at sunset, and the second pic is of two of the five goats that were my coworkers over the summer (Albert is the white one, Frank is the darker one, and they are besties). I took both photos myself! : )

Until next week,

-Kristen

Q: Do we need to re-imagine education?

I believe that education is constantly evolving, and continued imagination is key to beneficial improvement to the curriculum. There are things in the current education system that can be used as a foundation but adapting to the changing times and needs of students is very important. For example the students that are growing up with the current level of technology in the world and the classroom need to be taught differently than I was and those before me who had much different levels and appreciations of technology within classrooms.

Q: What obstacles do educators often face when they try to change pedagogy?

One obstacle to changing pedagogy is doing it alone. If one teacher or school changes its educational structures too drastically, it risks not fully preparing its students for higher educational structures, like universities, that still use the old structures. Another challenge educators could face is the pushback from parents not fully trusting that their children are going to be fully prepared for the future. Similar to the parent in the “Most Likely To Succeed” video, some parents believe that since they were taught using this system, it is good enough for their kids, or it scares them because it is so different than anything they know or are used to.

Q: What concerns or excites you about this approach?

One thing that excites me about this approach and hopeful change is that there is so much we can continue to learn and improve for the students to come! I am excited to see where education pedagogy goes in the future and what new adventures it holds for us!

This is a picture I took myself of the monkey tail tree on campus.