My Learning Portfolio

Our last class was bittersweet. I was happy to be done with one of our classes, but I knew I would miss the environment the class provides. The topic of the class was review and the future. One activity we did in class that I found interesting had to do with the future. We were first given a piece of paper and asked to write our vision of the future of schooling on it. I chose to write my perfect future, which was to have all assignments done on paper (unless digital was needed) in cursive and having phones allowed during work blocks to listen to music. We then wandered the room, trading our papers around until we were asked to rate the paper in our hands out of 5. I am not sure what rating my classmates gave my paper, but I am sure it was on the higher end. I really enjoyed the activity because it was anonymous, so we were able to rate each other’s ideas of the future without any bias.

I think I would definitely implement an activity like this in my classroom, it was a nice way to see everyone’s opinions without seeing who it was from, making it easier to share what you really think. It’s a fun activity that could be easily done with any age group, as long as they can write out their thoughts with a pencil, and you could easily adapt it to fit the needs of students who may not be able to write with a pencil on paper.

Today’s lesson was a little different from our usual setting, as we spent the first bit inside before moving to Finnerty Gardens to explore. I really enjoyed both portions of class but definitely preferred it when we went outside, as the fresh air was refreshing and needed this late in the term.

To start, we were in the classroom receiving a lecture from Kirsten Pierce on integrating outdoor education into our classrooms in more than just PHE class. I found this lecture very informative, and Kirsten gave us a lot of apps we can use in our day to day lives that are educational and have to do with the outdoors. I only recognized one of the apps she showed us, SkyView, as I was shown it in grade 10 science during our unit on the solar system, and although I used it for a bit after that class was over, I found myself quick to delete it when I needed more space on my phone. It’s a fun app that can show you the location of the constellations and planets using AR technology to show you where everything is in relation to you, but it doesn’t have many uses once the solar system unit is over unless you love space.

Once we moved out of the classroom to Finnerty Gardens, I had a lot of fun walking around. Even if my group found the “hidden” QR Codes right away, we were still enjoying our time surrounded by nature and watching the wildlife. There is a lot of biodiversity around Finnerty Gardens, and most, if not all, of the plant life has signs in front of it telling what it is and some facts about it. I found this super interesting because I see a lot of those plants around in my life, but before then I hadn’t known the names of most of them. We also saw some ducks and got some pictures as they approached us, making sure not to disturb them if they chose to walk away.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class, both the inside and outside portions, and it has encouraged me to try and include outdoor education as much as I can into my future classroom.

Todays class was more discussion based than lecture, with an Ed camp allowing us to join any of the mini discussions scattered around the class area. I chose to join the discussion based around AI in classrooms, and what sort of place we believed it should have in all classroom levels.

I took the point of view that although AI can have a use in classrooms, it should only be done in a way that makes virtually misuse impossible. In my Link 2 Practice classroom I saw one use of AI that I thought could be useful in many classrooms, as well as allowed no ability for misuse. The only way AI was used in that classroom was through a specific website they used for research (not Google) that had a button at the top of the screen to adjust the wording to simplify the article if needed, with the use of AI. I saw many students who struggled to understand the articles prior to the adjustments, have a much easier time researching for their projects.

A common theme that came up when talking about using AI, wasn’t just the environmental impact, because I have talked about it a lot, but how to most of us it was ingrained in our heads that AI is cheating. I personally don’t see AI as cheating unless you are using it to write your entire essay, but I do see it as a lazier way of doing things, and I don’t believe we should encourage students to use it in place of doing their own research or drawing their own pictures.

In todays lecture, the main focus was AI and its use in the classroom. I am not a big fan of AI as a whole, so although I tried to keep an open mind, I still found myself looking at all the resources offered to us with a negative point of view. But I was glad that this class wasn’t just influencing us to use AI more, and was instead giving us information on the pros and cons of AI.

Although I found the class informative, I personally don’t use AI if I can, and if we are instructed to use it in a class I will see what others have gotten and retype it myself. My main issue with AI is the environmental impact, and I find it hard to use something unnecessary if it has a negative impact on the environment. I am the type of person to turn off the shower when lathering shampoo or conditioner to conserve water, so I am not comfortable using technology that uses a significant amount of water with no remedy in the near future.

I try and cite my sources when I talk about the impacts of AI, so here, and here, are two articles I found on the impacts AI has on the environment.

I think eventually AI may have a different impact on the environment, hopefully more neutral, but for now I will do my best to avoid use of it when possible. And although I avoid it when I can, I can still see why others may use it, and I will still educate my students on proper and improper use.

Today we had a guest speaker, Rich McCue help us learn how to edit videos using iMovie or Clipchamp, two free video editing software’s installed on most peoples computers. I had never previously used these software’s as I use Davinci Resolve to edit my videos, but I found that iMovie was simple to understand.

I wouldn’t say that I am inexperienced making and editing videos, but I liked to learn more about the process on different types of computers, as I usually use a windows computer to edit my videos. It was also nice to edit a video that was easier to blend together, and had less obvious jump cuts, as the videos I am usually editing are of a playthrough of the Sims 4, where any cuts I make are very obvious.

It was fun getting to mess around with video editing, as well as seeing the different ways to use videos in your classroom. Although I chose a more creative approach when we were allowed to edit our own videos, I still found myself thinking about how I could use this skill in my classroom to either edit a video for the class or allow them to edit their own videos for a project.

For the second half of todays lecture we talked about internet safety and FIPPA, or the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. The main theme of the presentation was proper use of technology and social media in the classroom.

One thing that we went over was social media use by teachers; it is recommended that teachers, especially of the middle school age, have private social media accounts to protect their privacy as well as their students. The digital footprint of a teacher is closely monitored by both their schools, students, and their student’s parents. I found talking about this very informative, as I currently have public social media accounts, and I was curious as to why most teachers have private accounts. After talking about how photos posted when you were younger, before becoming a teacher, could still be viewed as inappropriate if they are intended for older audiences (alcohol is in view of camera).

It was a very informative class and I will defiantly keep the information shared in my mind as I post on my public social media pages, as well as consider making most of my accounts private, as I wouldn’t want to limit my opportunities with posts on social media.