The subject of my group’s presentation was JustSketchMe, however, I really liked the presentation on Classroom Screen. It is a tool that I didn’t know about before. It is a whiteboard that you can personalize! I think this will be handy as a new teacher. If I know which class I’ll be substituting for ahead of time (like even just the night before) I could make a classroom screen and it would be a really nice professional touch! Here’s a classroom screen that I just made to familiarize myself with the tool:
I think I’ll use this! There is a paid and free version. One must have the paid version in order to add photos to the whiteboard screen and to properly use the randomizer. I would really like to use both those features, so I would advocate for getting a school plan, or I might just pay the $29.90 to use it.
I really like the timer feature too- it is a great way to show the students how long they have left in the activity and could reduce the anxiety. I wonder if Google slides has a timer I could add to it. Using these tools could help accommodate all learners with various needs (having clear directions and a rough schedule is necessary for some learners, but helpful for all learners.
If you are curious about our group presentation on JustSketchMe, here’s is a link to our slides and a link to a video of our presentation (warning – it’s a big file). Honestly, I probably won’t ever use this, but it accomplished our goal of incorporating all our subject areas into one project. 🙂 Would you use it? Or would you use Classroomscreen, both, or neither? Let me know what you think!
I think that AI can be used in education to enhance learning. AI is here. It’s with us and if we don’t embrace it we will be left behind. Does it mean that we don’t need to teach students how to write? No, but we can now focus on the process more than the product for learning and assessment.
I use AI to help me create scenarios for lessons. AI can help create targeted lesson plans and help develop materials to teach the learning objectives. It is a powerful tool and can enhance professionalism. However, we do need core functional competencies. I haven’t researched it, but it seems that there are new and relevant skills that can be taught and focused on instead. When we do a research paper, our skills are in finding relevant sources and then applying them to our topic. I don’t know where things will go.
My stance is to embrace technology, and at the same time, ensure that students spend ample time outdoors and away from screens. I think we need to teach balance.
I popped in the last two reflection lessons into Chat GPT:
What do you think falls under the category of legitimate use for AI in schools? Where do you draw the line?
Here’s the answer (small, italicized words copied from Chat GPT):
The use of AI in schools can bring about several benefits, enhancing educational experiences and administrative processes. Here are some legitimate uses for AI in schools:
Personalized Learning: AI can analyze individual student performance data to tailor educational content to each student’s needs, providing personalized learning experiences and targeted interventions.
Automated Grading: AI can assist teachers by automating routine tasks, such as grading assignments and tests, allowing educators to focus more on providing qualitative feedback and interacting with students.
Adaptive Learning Platforms: AI-powered platforms can adapt to students’ progress, adjusting the difficulty and pace of lessons based on individual learning styles and performance.
Data Analysis: AI tools can process large volumes of data to identify trends and patterns, helping educators make informed decisions about curriculum development, resource allocation, and teaching strategies.
Virtual Assistants and Chatbots: AI-driven virtual assistants can provide instant support to students and teachers, answering common queries, offering guidance, and facilitating communication within the school community.
Administrative Automation: AI can streamline administrative tasks, such as scheduling, enrollment, and resource management, reducing the burden on school staff and improving overall efficiency.
Language Learning Apps: AI-powered language learning apps can provide personalized language instruction, assessing individual strengths and weaknesses and adapting lessons accordingly.
However, there are ethical and privacy considerations that should be taken into account, and it’s important to draw a line to ensure responsible and equitable use of AI in educational settings. Some considerations include:
Privacy Concerns: Safeguarding students’ privacy is crucial. AI systems should be designed with strong data protection measures to prevent unauthorized access or use of sensitive information.
Equity: There should be an effort to ensure that AI applications do not exacerbate existing educational inequalities. Schools need to consider issues related to access, affordability, and the potential for bias in AI algorithms.
Transparency: AI systems should be transparent, and users should have a clear understanding of how algorithms operate. Lack of transparency can lead to mistrust and concerns about the fairness of AI applications.
Teacher and Student Collaboration: AI should complement, not replace, human educators. It should be seen as a tool to support teachers and enhance the learning experience, fostering collaboration between teachers and students.
Bias and Fairness: Developers must actively work to identify and mitigate bias in AI algorithms to ensure fair and equitable outcomes for all students, regardless of background or demographics.
By addressing these considerations and establishing clear guidelines, schools can leverage AI responsibly to enhance educational outcomes while safeguarding the well-being and rights of students and educators.
In Education, it would be useful to follow up questions with the students – they could orally summarize their work on the next day so that they can’t just copy and paste without even reading or learning the content.
I think that gamification in learning can be a great way to extrinsically motivate young learners to learn something. However, it can also be demotivating. In class, someone mentioned using a gamified app, Duolingo, to learn a language – they had this incredible streak of learning – 600+ days if I remember correctly, but when they were travelling in a place where they couldn’t access Wi-Fi, they lost their streak and gave up learning the language altogether. In this case, gamification killed their intrinsic motivation to learn something by a failure in the reward conditioning. They were no longer learning the language because they wanted to, but because of the extrinsic reward. So, when they couldn’t receive ethe extrinsic reward of a points of their learning streak, they gave up learning the language altogether!
Gamification could be used where there is no intrinsic motivation; however, where there is intrinsic motivation, I would rather nurture the joy of intrinsic learning than implement reliance on gamification.
In a learning environment, I would use gamification to mix things up and help students have a fresh perspective on learning, but it’s important not to over rely on it.
Q1. What strategies can we employ as educators to teach the ethical and productive use of AI?
Use AI for jumping off points. Sometimes it’s really hard for students to get started on a project. I’ve witnessed this in EAL classrooms, English classes, and computer science. Choice is an important factor in motivation, but when the scope of choice is so wide, many students struggle. You could write: My areas of interest are 1._____________, 2.______________, and 3._______________. What would be a good inquiry topic for me?
I used ChatGPT and it gave me error messages, but Microsoft Bing generated these suggestions after I typed in “My areas of interest are 1. Outdoor Education, 2.Neuroscience, and 3.English Language Learning. What would be a good inquiry topic for me?”
Microsoft Bing’s answer: That’s great that you have such diverse and interesting areas of interest. A good inquiry topic for you would be one that combines these three domains in a meaningful and relevant way. Here are some possible inquiry topics that you could explore:
I like the second suggestion, so if I was starting a new inquiry project, I could use it!
Q2. What strategies can we employ to minimize the risk of plagiarism?
Another way to use AI ethically and productively is to require the responses or reflections to be personalized or based on the student’s experiences, and then add a photo of their experience.
Q3. How can we prepare for instances of suspected plagiarism in our classrooms?
It is important to have your own rules for AI in the classroom and to post them visibly in the class. If something comes up, you will have the rules to fall back on. Get students to co-construct the rules in the first week of class.
This is the first time that I’m using a speech to text device – it’s amazing.
In the lecture today I really appreciated the sharing of my cohort I didn’t realize the extensive effort that it takes for students who have disabilities to need to advocate for themselves so much and that exhaustion factor really makes me want to try to implement the UDL framework in my lessons.
Even though UDL has been talked about in many of our other classes it was good to hear about it again because I haven’t actually taken a deep dive into it, and I do feel like it’s really important so I’m glad that we learned about it again today.
In my undergrad I took a neuroscience class, it was called motor learning, but it really addressed the neuroscience of learning in general. In that class my professor how to Swatch 3 short videos -no more than two minutes each, and at the beginning of every 8:30 AM lecture we had a test on the content of the video. Many of my classmates hated that because they didn’t watch the videos, but I loved it because I did watch the videos and I got a mark every single time and it was incredible scaffolding for learning. I think that I would like to do that for some of my PHE classes. In many of the classes that I observe and teach there are a lot of international students. It’s quite clear that they don’t understand the directions even when the directions are clear and concise. So I think making short videos prior to the class for the students to watch where they can use closed captions and replay the video if they want to they could learn the skill of the sport if that’s what we’re doing that day and come to class knowing what’s going on and feel a lot more confident.
I also appreciated what was shared in class by one of my cohort members about thecurb-cut effect. This means that when you use the universal design for learning for a certain population of students, to help them learn, you actually also help a large population of students that you didn’t necessarily target with those accommodations. So in a PHE setting I think that if I use the UDL framework for the purpose of helping international students, I think it would actually help a lot of people who aren’t confident with their sports skills.
I’m getting excited about this. I’m glad that I learned today about the universal design for learning and had firsthand impact input from my classmates that made the learning so real. I was also grateful for another classmate’s input on how important it is to access the help that’s available as a teacher and to know that the school counselors actually nerd out on learning accommodations, so they are super happy to help. So, that sums up my takeaways from the lecture today and I’m feeling grateful for that lesson and all my classmates that shared!
I came back to UVic to finish the second half of my undergrad in 2021, so I missed the emergency transition during the pandemic. I enrolled in three classes. Transferring to an online learning was difficult for me because I felt so isolated. Many of the people that were in that class as well as the instructor himself I feel like I don’t even know. I ran into the instructor and had to introduce myself. The social ability to connect with others and feel part of the community was totally missing. My eyes hurt from the strain, and I had headaches. However, the huge pro was that it enabled me to attend school and work toward my goal of getting a degree. It also kept me and my family safe. In my close circle was an individual going through cancer treatments, so we were extremely careful. One of my classes was Math. I dropped it 3 weeks in, but I did love how I could replay the material over and over and over. That was helpful! In short, online learning was a necessity and definitely not the best option.
I would always choose a face-to-face option I find I’m way more efficient with my time and I thrive off learning with others. I would advocate for the use of tech in classes to aid learning, but I would not choose a distance learning course unless it was a necessity.
To prepare for a similar situation, and something I am hoping to do as an inquiry project for another class, I would like to create short instructional videos for students to watch prior to coming to class. I think this can accelerate learning, be compatible with the UDL strategy and easily help an emergency situation like the covid 19 pandemic transition to online learning!
Here is a sample of the apps that we were shown today. I chose to explore FigJam and I’m loving it! These images were taken from the class slides, and I used the snipping tool to copy them and add them to my FigJam. I used a template but it my outcome has barely any resemblance to the original template.
This post has minimal text with the image to show the effectiveness of dual-coding. 🙂
Today we learned how to use Screencastify! I was a little nervous about the permissions it required, but I do think it is an important tool for teaching! I can use it to make a video on anything! Screencastify captures your screen as well as records you both with audio and video.
Click on this QR code to find my Screencastify video or follow this link.
Today we learned that you could take almost any tech platform and use it across all the SAMR principles. We could take Slido as an example.
Substitution – you could use Slido to substitute for your own notetaking.
Augmentation – you could use it to augment your classes by improving participation. (Students are more likely to share their thoughts in this manner rather than raising their hands. It’s a good way to hear from a variety of participants rather than the same ones all the time.
Modification – you can use the input the participants generate to implement discussions.
Redefinition – re-define learning by making the class collaborative rather than lecture based. You could even target higher- order learning according to Bloom’s taxonomy by having the student’s group and lead their own discussion facilitations based on the information they initially provided through the first Slido!
This was a good exercise to see how these multimedia tools can transform learning, increase engagement, and meet learning outcomes in a creative way. For me, SAMR will be a good way of receiving a new tech tool. It will make me more intentional about how I use it.
Today I learned about FIPPA. If I use something for educational purposes, it is okay to use it. I just must quote quote quote. Sometimes I have wondered why my instructors wouldn’t share their slides. Now I know that they may be unsure about the permissions they needed or may be afraid of someone else monetizing their work.
In my work I’ve been frustrated about having to use the Microsoft Suite rather than google, but now I understand that the information I’m storing will be kept in BC rather than the United States.
Open Educational Resources is also something that I’m excited to explore. I knew about Unsplash and Pexels but not about the plethora of resources we were shown today!
