Today, guest speakers Tracy Humphreys and Kaori Lau spoke with a class about the importance of providing equitable access to education to students with disabilities and to complex learners. Tracy gave us an example using sticky notes, where the colour of the sticky note we were given determined whether or not we would be able to be accommodated in the class or not. students with sticky notes that were not pink were less accommodated. I think this was a really good example to show how often, the pressures of the school system cause students needs to be overlooked.

We talked about how education is a colonial system at its heart, and that it is important that we as teachers are ensuring that the classrooms we teach do not perpetuate any discrimination against students based on their race, gender, native language or ability.

One thing that I found really interesting was Tracy’s use of a Zoom microphone which provided close captions for her as she spoke which we could read on the projector screen. This was something i hadn’t seen before and I was really intrigued by it and would be interested in being able to implement the same technology in my classrooms. I am wondering if this could also have a translation function for international students or students without a strong handle on the English language, because this is something that I have been very interested in recently.

Photo from Unicef

We talked about the importance of removing barriers to education and how technology can play a part in making education more accessible to students of different abilities as well as the importance of reading students IEPs and getting to know them and their needs on a personal level.

My take-away from this discussion is that all though there are many pressures placed on teachers that can make it easy to overlook the needs of some students, it is important that we remain committed to making our lessons accessible to all students by incorporating elements of a universal design for learning (UDL) and by paying specific attention to the needs of all students. Technology can help to facilitate this and there are various strategies that can be implemented in order to support teachers as they work to dismantle barriers to education.

Today we participated in EDCamps. Students in our class presented ideas for potential EDCamp topics and we broke up into groups to have valuable and engaging discussions about various topics. For example, one group talked about implementing student presentations in classrooms and using them for formative assessments. This included discussions about the purpose of presentations in the classroom and the different mediums that can be used for student presentations. Other groups discussed topics such as how to implement outdoor education into classrooms.

The idea of EDCamps was interesting to me because I had never heard of these before so I decided to look into them some more to learn a little bit more about them. I learned that they are open access events, often called unconferences. They are participant-driven, and little to no planning is required for them because topics are chosen on the day of the unconference based on common themes or topics that attendees would like to explore. It encourages discussions between fellow educators which can be very important because our colleagues in education often are able to share their experiences in order to provide new strategies and valuable information that other teachers can find to be extremely valuable.

Photo from Edutopia

I also learned from the EDCamp website that up to 70% of EDCamp attendees report learning at least 4 or more ideas that they can implement into their classrooms, and nearly 97% of attendees say that they developed beneficial contacts with other professionals in the field. I thought this spoke to the usefulness of this type of discussion format.

Overall, I think EDCamps are a really interesting, cost-effective, and easy way for teachers and educators to be able to support their professional development and I hope to be able to engage in more EDCamps in the future!

In this class we focused heavily on the benefits of incorporating educational videos and screen-casting in classrooms.

Educational Videos

I have replied on education videos to support my learning since I was a high school student. Although both of my parents received formal post-secondary education, I was primarily interested in the sciences which my parents had no experience in. This meant that when I did homework at home, I was not able to ask my parents for help and I often ended up using YouTube videos to help me with my homework. The problem with this is that these videos often included extraneous information that my teacher didn’t expect me to know because these videos weren’t assigned by my teachers. I would often end up going down rabbit-holes that, while interesting, were not always relevant to what we were learning in class. I think if more of my teachers had based their lessons around education videos or assigned relevant videos that they knew for a fact would support the information they wanted me to understand, this may have been less of a problem for me.

I think educational videos are extremely helpful as a learning support. The instructors of the Biochemistry and Microbiology (BCMB) labs that were required for my degree consistently made use of videos to teach us procedures ahead of lab times, saving us time and providing visual instructions without requiring the instructor to be present. These could be slowed down or sped up depending on the students needs and were overall a very useful tool used in these labs.

This is a video that was assigned to me during my undergrad. I think it’s a good example of how videos can be used in the sciences to teach important procedure in advance of labs.

Screen casting

I don’t know much about screen casting but I plan to do this as a tutorial because I learned in this discussion that this is a really useful technology to include in the classroom. I think this a technology that can be very useful because it provides opportunities for absent students to catch up on missed content without requiring the teacher to take on extra work. I have also recently been very interested on using the recording features on Powerpoint, which can allow the teacher to turn on captions/subtitles which can also be translated into different languages. I think that these technologies can be used to prioritize UDL and to include diverse learners, including learners with exceptionalities and international students who might not understand English very well.

In this discussion, we talked a little bit about what makes PSII different from most high schools in British Columbia. I was really interested when I learned that this school prioritizes personal learning paths and allows students to co-create their own curriculum based on their own interests. I think this is a school that I would have really enjoyed when I was in high school. I think one of the main issues with the current education system is that students are not always able to follow their own interests, and sometimes it seems as though the traditional education system sometimes “beats” the curiosity out of students as they learn to prioritize achievement over exploration, learning, and their own personal passions and interests.

In high school, I often felt extremely disinterested in the content I was learning and found it very hard or unpleasant to engage with. Photo from the University of Queensland.

I walk past this school almost every day on my way to work, and I have often wondered what the school is actually about. I always thought that it was a “special education” school for learners with exceptionalities or learning disabilities. After this discussion, I now understand that this is not true and that the school is designed for all kinds of learners. I was especially interested to learn that the school is actually more-so designed for students who love learning. As someone who always enjoyed learning for the sake of learning, I felt a bit disappointed that there was no school like this available in my hometown because I think I would have really enjoyed it. I wish that my school had had the resources available to provide a personalized learning experience for me in my adolescence because I think it would have allowed for a lot of self discovery. I think this school would be really great for students with ADHD or autism who tend to be very invested in their learning and very excited by new learning opportunities without some of the more tedious aspects of traditional education systems that made high school feel unapproachable or uninteresting to me at various points throughout my time there.

Here is a link to a youtube video that describes inquiry-based learning

Ideally I would love to see more personalized education plans put in place in school districts, but I understand that there are various limitations that make this a challenge. My take away from this discussion is that students do well when they are allowed to pursue their own interests and I would really like to be able to create a classroom environment where students can feel encouraged and supported in their own personal learning endeavours.

Today we had the pleasure of listening to another guest speaker, Trevor MacKenzie, who talked about the importance of curiosity and inquiry in the classroom, something that I am quite passionate about! I believe that children/adolescents are, in most cases, naturally driven to curiosity and that teachers should try to take advantage of this curiosity to encourage inquiry and self-driven discovery. I was not surprised at all to learn that higher self-reported curiosity scores were correlated to higher achievement and attendance, but it was something I was happy to hear and that will motivate me to try my best to engage my future students.

Image from Mayo Clinic Health System

I thought it was interesting to learn that even something as simple as standing by the door and greeting students as they enter could have such a profound effect on the quality of their education. To me, this emphasized the importance of making an effort for my future students. I realized that I want to be the kind of teacher who connects with and encourages their students, and who brings a true love for learning into the classroom.

This lecture was the first time I had ever heard of the term “vertical learning” and I thought this was an interesting teaching strategy. I have always struggled to sit still and pay attention for long periods of time and this is something that I had to work hard to deal with in high school and college. As someone who is quite passionate about supporting students with ADHD and autism, I was excited to learn about more strategies to support different learning needs.

Photo from wipebook.com

One other valuable thing that I learned during this discussion was the importance of feedback and the characteristics of good feedback. It was really helpful to learn that, when giving feedback, I should be careful to make sure my comments are kind, specific, and helpful, and I am excited to implement this into my own teaching practice.

Last week, a guest speaker, Jesse Miller, came to speak with us about mobile technology in the classroom, its uses and challenges, and the boundaries that come with it. I was especially interested in our conversations about balancing cell phone usage in the class, and the complexities that come with this. We know that cell phones are useful search engines, help students connect with others, and encourage participation in educational activities online, but we also talked about the dangers that can be exacerbated by the use of cell phones in schools, including distraction, cyber-bullying, and sexualized violence.

As teacher candidates preparing to enter schools, I think it is important for us to be very intentional and considerate about how we teach, which tools we make use of, and how we enforce appropriate boundaries to facilitate the proper use of these tools. In my opinion, applications such as Kahoot! and Mentimeter allow teachers to incorporate elements such as gamification and group discussion into their lessons, which I believe are great ways to increase student engagement and stimulate curiosity. I also understand that many students may have questions that they want to answered but may not feel comfortable asking, whether out of a fear of judgement or out of shyness. I am the type of person to immediately want to Google the questions that I have, and I understand that many students may have similar approaches when it comes to their own education.

Photo from kahoot.com

On the other hand, while visiting classrooms in my Link 2 Practice, I have seen first hand that students can easily fall into distraction when they are using their phones, even if the cell phone usage is innocent and well-intentioned at first. Notifications, social media, and the endless amount of information to be found online are factors that can easily lead to distraction in the classroom and that can result in students not paying attention in class and failing to learn what they are expected to.

The cell phone debate is further complicated by the impacts of social media and cell phone usage on the safety of adolescents. I think it will be increasingly important for students to be well-informed on subjects such as cyber-bullying, sexting, interacting safely with strangers online, and protecting personal information.

Image from blog.securly.com

In short, I am still grappling with the conflicting advantages and disadvantages of mobile technology in the classroom and am still deliberating and comparing the pros and cons of cell phone use as I work towards forming my own opinions on this subject. I am still undecided as to how open I will be to cell phone usage in my own classes (if schools permit cell phone usage at all) and/or how I will enforce appropriate boundaries in terms of mobile technology. It is comforting to know that school districts are beginning to enforce cell phone policies because I have seen how distracting they can be, however, I have also seen how many students continue to use their phones inappropriately despite these new policies. In contrast, another part of me fears that a zero-tolerance policy against mobile technology could result in the loss of helpful learning technologies in the classroom which could limit access to interactive tools that students seem to respond well to.

I was very intrigued by the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed”; I thought the film offered a lot of interesting commentary and things to think about. I started school with a love of learning but gradually felt that I had gotten burned out by the time I had reached grade 12. I really resonated with a lot of the documentary’s criticisms of the modern education system and the dangers of viewing education as an exercise in character building and resilience, rather than taking advantage of the potential to get students involved and active in their own learning. I have always been the type to really enjoy self-directed learning; it has never felt like work to learn about the things that interest me. I think there are a lot of opportunities for teachers to give students the freedom to explore their own interests and I think that in many cases, doing this can help students to invest in themselves and take ownership of their learning.

I also found it interesting to learn that most of the American education curriculum was decided on by one small group of men, and that it generally hasn’t changed much since then, even though it is clear that the changing times may call for some modernization of curriculum. It made me feel grateful for some of the changes we have seen in the BC curriculum and made me wonder how we should go about deciding who designs our education curriculum (which topics are included and which are left out). It also brought up questions about whether or not the traditional curriculum truly prepares students for the “real world”, or whether the traditional path that schools often push students to follow (from high school to university to career) gives students the skills they need to compete in a world where the number of qualified, educated individuals greatly surpasses the number of job openings available to them.

Image from Adobe Stock

While the documentary made a lot of points that I think were valid and interesting, I was taken by surprise by just how different the High Tech High school was compared to schools that I have experienced. Above all, I was surprised by the fact that the school did not have a set curriculum. While I agreed with some of the arguments that were made against traditional education, I feel that an established curriculum, even if it quite flexible, is essential to ensure equity in education. Students rely on schools to give them a good education so they can be prepared for what society will expect from them. If teachers are given the freedom to teach whatever they want, I worry that there is a danger that students will receive a less complete education compared to students at other schools. I think it would also be unfair to students of other schools if the education that students at High Tech High were receiving was far more advanced. In my opinion, because students are generally assigned to schools based on proximity to their place of residence (which is likely also tied to socioeconomic status), they should at least be given the assurance that they will receive the same quality of education as students would at other schools, and I don’t think this is possible without a standardized curriculum. I also think that the lack of curriculum at High Tech High could cause teachers stress if they expect students to have learned a set of foundational skills in previous years, only to learn that the past teacher taught their students something else instead. I think it would require a great degree of collaboration and effort in order to keep all teachers in the know about what the students in the school have and have not learned, all of which could be avoided by following some type of set curriculum.

Photo from iStock

Instead of getting rid of curriculum, I think it would be better to focus on updating our current curriculum (like BC has done to incorporate indigenous perspectives into education) in order to meet the demands of changing times, rather than relying on the discretion of individual teachers to decide what they will and will not teach to their students. I think the BC curriculum works well by focusing more on competencies rather than content, as it ensures for some form of standardization while also allowing for some flexibility. That said, I would like to see more emphasis on the development of “soft skills” like collaboration, building confidence, and problem-solving in the BC curriculum because I do think that those skills are just as important for emerging adults.