Category: Weekly Reflections

This week, we explored EdCamp. I had never heard of this concept before and even after watching the pre-class videos I was feeling a bit skeptical about the idea of “unconferences.” How is effective learning supposed to happen in such an unstructured way with such little planning? I was pleasantly surprised though when my EdCamp group had a meaningful and productive hour-long conversation about incorporating outdoor learning in diverse subject areas. Liz was our “chair” and prompted some really great discussion about challenges associated with outdoor learning, how it can be incorporated into humanities-based classes, and how to approach outdoor learning for different ages and grade levels. It was great to hear from a wide variety of teacher candidates sharing their personal experiences with outdoor learning in their own subject area and also providing ideas for colleagues in other areas. I liked noticing that despite all going through the same program, everyone’s experiences and takeaways are different enough to allow for really meaningful co-teaching. Hearing from other EdCamp groups, it sounded like everyone else had pretty good success as well in their discussions. Had I not experienced an EdCamp firsthand in this class, I’d most likely continue to be skeptical of them going forward.

I think that computational thinking is an incredibly important skill for students to learn. It’s applicable to so many subjects and aspects of life in general. It feels like with the way things are going with mainstream AI, computational thinking is one of the skills that human brains are beginning to neglect in favour of asking ChatGPT. Things like “I have _____, ______, and ______ in the fridge, what can I make with them?” or “I want to go on a road trip around Vancouver Island for ____ days and do lots of _____ and _____. Where should I go?” There’s so much personal gratification to be felt when you sit down and work through a complex problem using computational thinking, it’s the reason I almost like planning trips better than going on the actual trips! Computational thinking is especially important in math. It can mean the difference between conceptual and procedural understanding of concepts and algorithms which is a gap that many high school students never bridge.

In terms of educational gameplay, I’ve seen and experienced a lot of success with games like Kahoot in the classroom. This is actually what my group inquiry project is about. I think that the key considerations of introducing a game into the classroom are: Is it meaningful? Is it accessible? And is it engaging? What I mean by meaningful is that the game serves some kind of purpose in the classroom space. Even if it isn’t directly related to content, the game could work on problem-solving skills, help strengthen connections between classmates, or act as a transition between bigger activities.

Using Google Gemini, I was able to code this simple Flappy-bird-inspired game with a black-tip reef shard swimming through a coral reef! This would be a fun game for any Biology class during a Marine Biology or Food Chain unit. I’d like to alter the game a bit so the shark can collect points by eating little fish.

I tried out the GetBadNews game and got a score of 18. I thought this game was really well laid out and very insightful. I can understand why some people in my class felt bad about playing it, but I think that’s the point. You’re supposed to be disgusted and angry, that’s what’s going to help the message stick, especially for teenagers and young adults who are even more susceptible to misleading media content.

This week I got to tour the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry and hear from the founder about the school’s structure and pedagogy. I found PSII really interesting, it’s obviously extremely different from my own small-town public high school experience and I can see how the independent inquiry-based structure can really align with some student’s learning styles. Personally, I don’t think teenage Annika would’ve thrived in a learning environment like this; I’ve always done well with well-defined structure and assignments. As a teacher, I feel similarly about the importance of routine and structure, for my own style and needs at least and I left the tour still feeling unsure as to what exactly a teacher’s day-to-day looks like at PSII, but I suppose that’s the point.

Some things I noticed missing from PSII’s structure were regular student collaboration and physical activity. Two components of traditional school that students often don’t actively seek out but are absolutely integral to adolescent development. I believe it’s important for students to experience productively challenging situations, like working with people they don’t naturally work well with or pushing themselves physically even when they don’t necessarily want to in the moment.

Additionally, I can’t help but consider how the aspect of tuition affects the school’s success. The founder mentioned that PSII experiences very few student behavioural issues and he attributes this to the school’s structure and environment. But I think it’s important to consider that the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students implies that they likely have more than just financial support from their families and this certainly contributes to a more regulated and peaceful school environment. In this way, PSII’s student population is not a mirror of the average public school student population so fair comparisons between the two are hard to make.

I used ChatGPT to “create a lesson plan for a one-hour lesson about fermentation and its real-world applications, including a 30-minute activity to help students remember what they learned and sources.”  ChaptGPT provided an in-depth overview of a lesson plan that met all the requested parameters. Including learning objectives, assessment ideas, and a wrap-up activity. The sources it listed were mainly from Britannica, Wikipedia, and Chemistry LibreTexts, and from my general understanding of fermentation processes, the science described is accurate. The classroom activity involved setting up station for students to rotate through, each station focuses on a specific type and application of fermentation (Bread and alcoholic fermentation; yogurt and lactic acid fermentation; and ethanol as biofuel). I would need to do some research into the validity of these topics but they feel like solid jumping-off points at least.

I asked perplexity.ai to outline the differences between resident, Biggs, and off-shore killer whales. The response included accurate information from verifiable sources and even summarized the information into a really concise overview in a table format for easy comparison. I noticed, that many of the sources were relatively old (2+ years) and very few  were peer-reviewed research articles. When I asked the AI to only use peer-reviewed sources, it responded saying it wouldn’t be able to do so reliably.

I created an infographic of my Week 1 Reflection blog post using NotebookLM. I specifically asked for it to “use neutral, earthy colours and a watercolour style, and focus the infographic on the currency of learning concept.” I haven’t spotted any glaring spelling errors in the graphic and I think the overall summarization and organization is pretty decent.

As a science teacher, I personally plan on using AI to help create rubrics (I’ve been recommended magicschool.ai) and for brainstorming engaging in-class activities and demonstrations.

In my own education experience, I’ve mainly used AI to help summarize long articles and create study guides for exams.

Multimedia Learning

From my perspective, multimedia learning is a framework that sounds simple and intuitive but is much harder than expected to execute effectively. Watching and listening to Dr. Pastore, I reflected on the countless zoom classes, educational videos, and in-person presentations I’ve experienced in which the presenter misused multimedia learning tools. Of course, good intention was always there, I think the general understanding is that if you throw as many different modalities into your lesson as possible it’ll be beneficial to students of all learning types because every possible method of information delivery is present. I remember getting frustrated with myself for losing focus or failing to process the lesson. It was all right in front of me, in text, visual and audio format, why wasn’t any of it actually engaging me? Now I understand that there’s a lot more to consider when designing a multimedia lesson. It has as much to do with learning psychology as it does with technology. I think this goes to show that less is more sometimes, although students do appreciate opportunities to process information through diverse modalities, bombarding their senses with excess information is incredibly counterproductive. Looking forward into my future role as an educator, I’m going to be mindful of the way I design my lesson so that multimedia learning tools are incorporated mindfully and logically.

Here’s an article from PBS with some suggestions for multimedia learning in science classrooms: https://www.pbs.org/kqed/oceanadventures/educators/sciencemedia/

iNaturalist Observation Upload Tutorial

This is a tutorial I created for iNaturalist using screen record on my iPad. I incorporated some interactive elements including a multiple choice question, a true/false question, and a summary question.

Thinking of how I might incorporate H5P tools into secondary science classrooms, I like the idea of creating interactive videos to be posted on a platform like Google Classroom in case a student misses an in-person lesson. Compared to just passively watching a video of a lesson, having interactive elements like multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks provide opportunities for meaningful student engagement. I’m sure there are more H5P tools that are applicable for a science classrooms, but I’ll need to spend some more time exploring these tools first.

The film “Most Likely to Succeed” is about High Tech High and its alternative education model that focuses on developing soft skills and cross-curricular student-led projects as opposed to teaching curricular content in a traditional classroom setting. I appreciated the brief history lesson on the creation of the modern education system because I think that it’s a topic that we don’t formally address in this program despite it being so indicative as to why education is currently structured the way it is and as a reminder that this structure is not set in stone and isn’t a sacred rule by any means.

I believe that education does need to be reimagined. Like the documentary describes, the “role” of the human has changed drastically since our current education model was introduced and the way children and adolescents prepare to enter professional society should change as well. I appreciate High Tech High’s focus on developing soft skills like collaboration, time management, and creativity that are much more universally applicable to the “real world” than rote memorization and regurgitation of facts.

While watching the documentary and listening to class discussion, I’ve been comparing education to currency. From my understanding, modern currency systems are based on collective trust in the value of a particular token or symbol. This collective trust isn’t easy to establish because it requires a significant amount of confidence and acceptance across a large group of people. Education works similarly in that there is long established collective trust in the current system. Regardless of how intrinsically valuable the actual education is for its students, post-secondary institutions and employers continue to perpetuate a certain value for this education system. Therefore, similar to how hard it is to introduce a brand new currency into an already-established economy, it’s extremely difficult for alternative education models to gain traction when the majority of universities and employers are still backing the traditional system.

High Tech High’s education model is inspiring, but can’t necessarily be the blueprint that all schools aspire to become. It just isn’t feasible. And with High Tech High still being relatively new, there is very little information available with regard to the system’s long term sustainability and alumni success. Until more data becomes available and more collective trust can be established, smaller shifts can be made within the current model in order to better prepare students for the current age. As a science teacher, I’m excited by the prospect of developing holistic, project-based assignments for my students that incorporate a blend of hard and soft skills (similar to High Tech High’s projects), and address post-secondary science expectations as well as real world applications.

Learning Plans are a set of individualized, learner-centred goals and strategies used to reach a desired learning outcome. In contrast to a Lesson Plan (a teacher-led script designed for an entire class to follow), Learning Plans provide an opportunity for students to engage with their learning on a deeper level as they have agency in the creation of their personalized goals and desired outcomes. I found this info sheet created for the UBC Med program. Although some of the information and the activity on the second page is specific to medical students, I think the overall description and advice is applicable to high school teachers as well. This speaks to the versatility of a Learning Plan. They can be just as effective for kindergarteners as they are for medical students and the essence stays consistent. Co-created Learning Plans allow students to take an active role in their educational goal-setting and these goals can be incredibly specific to that student’s interests, needs, and potential.