School Visit

Today’s school visit was very inspiring and interesting. Going into a school like this and meeting the students is very eye opening and really shows how diverse schools can be while being functional. The students all worked on their own inquiry projects and decided what information that they wanted to learn in the day, with their work being assessed through portfolios. The student that I got to interact with the most told me all about his virtual reality inquiry project in which he was creating a virtual art sculpture. The children seemed incredibly focused on the tasks they working on and none seemed distracted on their phones or with each other.

I think this type of school is such an incredible example of taking learning to a whole other level, but can also see where their would be some lack in social interactions. I know that high school for me was a time that I participated in many sports teams, clubs, leadership programs and really spent time with my peers. It is difficult to tell if this kind of school would present these same opportunities and if the benefits out way the things that the school lacks. As told my the principle the school was still very new and had only been operating for 6 years, I think that while the school may not yet provide some of the same social programs that there is still room to be able to implement them. I also think that there is a certain student type that would absolutely thrive in this learning environment and a certain type of student that does need a little bit more structure and guidance.

Blog Post 3# Formative Assesement, Video Conferences, Video/Audio Editing

Today in class we got the opportunity to talk to a really unique individual who has a totally different view on assessment. Instead of the formal “report card”, Ian Landry has been using a tool called E-Portfolio’s which are a form of assessing students by gradually accumulating their work throughout the year to be able to visibly see the progress made to that individual learner. I think this is an amazing idea because of my experience’s in elementary school and high school with formalized report cards. When it came to elementary school I stayed back in kindergarten due to an illness and then skipped back up into my age group in grade 5, skipping grade 6 and going straight to grade 7. Because of this skip my math skills were very lacking and because I excelled in other subjects this struggle went very unknown by my family and by my teacher too as I copied work and some how squeak by on my tests. When I would receive an average number such as a 2 or 3 the issue was still left unnoticed because my other grades were fine so I must have been fine! To this day I still struggle with basic math skills because of this gap that was never fully addressed. It is had to say but maybe my mom who was a high school teacher would have noticed me struggling in my work if she had seen the lack of engagement and progress made throughout that grade 7 year of school. I really like how the idea of portfolios are completely personalized, no one learns the same way and all students progress comes in different forms, comparing them with the letters 1-4 does not gauge a students capability or intelligence. I also liked how to E-Portfolio’s are said to reduce that insane crunch time for students, I remember my mom stressing incredibly for those weeks and also remember comparing my report to someone else’s in a subject and receiving the same bland comment. Therefor I am really impressed with this idea and I think it’s a really progressive way to help students stay engaged with their learning and build confidence not straight competition.

Video conferencing is a subject that I have never really explored before so today was really interesting for me. I was completely surprised by the quality, effectiveness and productivity of the call. The first thought that comes to video conferencing to me is technological problems and shaky screens but this was nothing like that, we were able to hear and see the speaker very clearly and he could easily hear and see us raising our hands and engaging. It didn’t feel any different really then having a professor lecture from the front of the room. It would be really cool to be able to have guest speakers speak from these in an elementary classroom, it is sometimes difficult to have someone who is maybe wheel chair bound or paraplegic travel and actually be present in the classrooms. This kind of technology would make it way more accessible to have individuals speak to students, just as we did today.

As for Video/Audio editing these were also very new to me as I only actually got my first laptop a year after my high school graduation and it was ASUS so did not automatically come with apps such as imovie or garage band. I think it would be a really cool idea to incorporate both into classrooms with projects like creating a student narrative in which everyone has a story, and when we share our own experiences, they can be a motivating factor for others — and help us reflect on our lives and choices. Narratives can be about students themselves, a fictional character or historical person. Students could use web castify for this, make an imovie, simple iphone video or do a podcast/interview etc.Social Media Curating is simply filtering through all the interesting content across the web and sharing the best news, articles, videos and infographics on your social channel. The program hootsuite enables users to keep track and manage your many social network channels. It can enable you to monitor what people are seeing your content and allows you to respond automatically. On the website hootsuite talks about how it allows you to easily grab your curated content, ensures only approved content goes live, see your schedule easily, disocver content and organize all your content. It is an easy way for teachers to connect with one another, stay organized and isnpire other educators.

Another resource we have learned about are QR (short for “quick response” code) . They are a type of barcode that contains a matrix of dots. They be scanned using a QR scanner or a smartphone with built-in camera. … For example, scanning a QR code with your phone might open a URL in your phone’s web browser. We used one of these in our literacy class first semester for our end of the semester project for finding art in downtown Victoria. When you scanned the code it took you to a map of all the different place based art in Victoria, this tool could be used in huge variety of ways in all types of classroms. You can link them to audio files, science experiments, projects etc. and in some places they are even used for a type of currency.