Weekly Reflection #8
Coming into this course I really didnāt know what I would be learning and how useful any of it would be. Despite my lack of accountability for submitting reflections in a timely manner, I learned so much in this class. From the start of the course we learn about safety online, specifically when it comes to our students. This amounted to making a bit of emoji as our profile picture or putting a filter on a real photo so that if you know who I am, I am identifiable, but otherwise it won’t be just recognized from the profile. Another that I use regularly is a resource we learned from our visit to the free inquiry school by the name of Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation (PSII). It is called trello, a website and app where you can make lists for anything you want and move the items between lists. It can start in one titled āto do laterā than moved to ādo this weekā or if you have stuff listed for a specific course, the possibilities for the lists are endless. The last thing that I found super cool and will be utilizing a future class of mine is the coding website scratch. I wonāt go crazy in depth as i just raved about it in my last reflection, but i will definitely be spending more time with it so that when i do use it in the future i will be able to aid my students in the basics of how to use it, but making sure i donāt show any exact ways of doing things. This site is so incredible for discovering how there are limitless ways of doing things and there is no one right way.
Through my reflections I made sure to talk about the resources I liked and how I would use them in the future. I didnāt demonstrate all of them, however if you look at #1,7 & and at the end of this one, there are examples of my use of a few of the resources we were shown.
Learning digital literacy is very important in the digital age we now live in. I feel the benefits of using technology, specifical computers, chromebooks, ipads, etc., outweigh the drawbacks. With the amount of technology in the world today itās so important that kids learn how to use all of this technology effectively and appropriately. Now this doesnāt mean we should use tech at all times. We know from the endless amount of studies that excess screen time isnāt good for you or your students. Again as I am not a teacher my opinion may change but I feel like kindergarten and grade one only requires very little to no personal screen time via computer, ipads and so on. I feel that at those ages it’s more important to learn how to do things without tech before using tech to aid in learning. There are exemptions to this rule as some students will need an ipad to allow them to read and write, but these would be a case by case basis and not the standard. Waiting till they are a little older will work better for safety online as they are more likely to understand when you talk about safety concerns. Younger kids are more likely to click on something because itās flashy and not know what the danger is. Grade 2s are still young enough to do this but have just enough common sense to hopefully resist this urge. Again a naive student teacher, I could be fully off the mark and I will find out over the few years of practicums and eventually teaching my own class.
Last little thing, what my trello board looks like. Empty now but you can get an idea of the categories you can make.