Month: January 2023 (page 1 of 1)

Hey everyone! This week was the the topic I have been most engaged in thus far in the course. I think accessibility is super important in all realms of education. Through elementary and high school I had many friends with diverse needs and abilities and I often wished our classes were more catered to their needs. Through creating subtitles for a YouTube video I discovered the time and care it takes to make media accessible but it is always worth the extra effort!

Accessibility for All

Although many educators are now making effort to accommodate those who need accessibility, many means of accessibility are not being reached for all. For example, I have come to know over the years that I am not a strong reader. Often I have tried to copy and paste textbooks into a program that will read it to me however, because of the page formatting it will not allow me to copy the text which is very frustrating. I think accessibility has much to improve on in regards to mental health accessibility such as having lectures recorded so those who need a mental health day or differing circumstances can stay on top of their work. In my opinion, accessibility in post-secondary education has a long way to go yet I am encouraged by the studies it is already taking.

YouTube Subtitle Thoughts

Prior to this class, I had never made, edited, or added subtitles to a YouTube video before. Boy, it was much harder than I had initially perceived. About 3 months ago I had started making a YouTube video of funny moments that happened within the staff at the camp I worked at last summer. Very quickly, I got stuck, frustrated, and eventually fully gave up. When being asked to make a video more accessible, I took it as the perfect excuse to finish it. Although it took me 90 mins to create a 1.5 min video it was so worth it in the end! The computer-generated subtitles through YouTube did not work for me by any means unfortunately, I think it was because I had background music playing in the video. None the less, I added the subtitles by hand and was very happy how the video turned out for my first try! I would like to work on improving my video editing skills in the future and consider how I can further use them in classroom instruction.

This Week’s Take Aways:

• Accessibility has a long ways to go so that everyone is accommodated
• Adding subtitles takes a LONG time, but I will improve overtime
• I love video editing! It is so fulfilling when I get a good finished product
• I should always Struve to make my blog and media as accessible as possible

Until next week!

This week was a challenge for me! H5P was very difficult for me to get the hang of and I felt like my mom trying to use her iPhone. Every few minutes I had to ask my peers “How do I do that?” I think H5P is an awesome resource however, based on where my personal abilities stand, I cannot see myself using this in my classroom. I feel as though it would take me too long to set up although maybe my opinion will change over time. If COVID and online learning were to happen again, I think this would be a wonderful way to engage students.

I hope to teach middle school and I think that if I were to assign a creative assignment where students need to make a video I could ask them to make a quiz at the end (using H5P) for their own peer feedback. This would be an excellent method of implementing technology into students learning. As I plan lessons in the future, I will keep H5P in mind as a means of integrating tech into the assessment of other subjects in middle school. I do however think that H5P is quite advanced so I would have it as a minimal aspect of the project but encourage students to be creative and to emerge their peers in their project.

Although this class was challenging I am encouraged to know that I can always improve. H5P is something I will have to practice and improve on before I would implement it in my future classroom. My lesson from this week is: challenge brings growth!

Hey, y’all! Welcome to my first official inquiry post. For my inquiry project, I will be reviewing a new romantic comedy each week. I am passionate about this project as two of my favourite things are watching movies and analyzing and discussing content. I love being able to recommend things I love to my friends and family. I also believe this project and taking the time to watch a movie each week will be a form of self-care in the midst of the busy school season.

The first step of this project is getting inspiration for what movies I want to watch. Additionally, I will be researching and exploring by what means I can review and critique each movie. I am interested to explore what criteria I will discover works best to determine how I feel about the given movie. I have already been brainstorming what are some of the best movies to watch and getting some inspiration. Below I have made a short video taking about a Vanity Fair article about the top 33 rom com movies.

Help me with my research! I want your input about what movies I should watch! Feel free to scan the QR code and complete the survey to share your favourites with me!

Hello everyone! The free inquiry topic I am considering is reviewing romantic comedies. I have recently had a peaked interested in movies and for a few years, I have kept records of a few movies I have seen and my ratings of them (see picture below).

Through this inquiry project I am excited to develop my informal writing abilities. Additionally, I am looking forward to creating a reviewing scheme and determining what the best romantic comedy is at the end of this semester. I hope to review one movie each week. The movies will be rated out of 50. 10 points will be given to plot, 10 points for comedy value, 10 points for acting, 10 points for entertainment value, and 10 points for overall vibes. The next steps for this inquiry project sis to have my meeting to confirm my topic as well as compile 10 movies I will watch throughout the semester. I am planning to determine what movies I should watch based on reccomendations from peers as well as my personal interest. I am excited to have some pracrtice creating a blog and being creative with these reveiws!!!

Today we talked about the topics including the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” and AI generator Chat GPT.

The documentary I viewed made me consider my perspective and opinion on the education system as a whole. I think that the education system needs to be reimagined if we as a society are in true pursuit of students being well equipped for the future. I often feel trapped in the “game” of getting good grades to that I can progress to the next step of education (ex: university, career, personal academic accomplishments). However, this comes at the sacrifice of my actual learning. In my experience as a student, I do not feel that high school prepared me for the challenge of university and I struggled significantly in my first year. The documentary highlights that as students, we are conditioned to memorize material and forget it soon after assessment. I believe this is not the most valuable way to learn. I hope that in the future of education the focus will shift to meaningful assessment such as project based learning. Through methods such as project-based learning, students will be able to find deeper understanding in specific area of materials which, in my opinion, is more valuable than a broad understanding in a multitude of areas.

I also think, with the emergence of sites such as ChatGPT, which will inevitably alter the future of education, that there must me a shift in what we ask students to do. To explain what ChatGTP is, I will allow the function define itself: “ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It uses deep learning techniques to generate natural-sounding human-like text. It can be fine-tuned for a variety of language tasks such as question answering, language translation, and text summarization. It is trained on a massive dataset of internet text, allowing it to generate a wide range of responses and continue conversations based on the context provided (Chat GPT, 2022).” As I reflect on the diverse abilities of this site, I am faced with a few concerns. The first being the privacy concerns that were discussed in class. The fact that this technology is new and it is unclear of the personal information it uses and what it does with it, I would not be comfortable using this in a classroom setting. The second is a concern as a future educator, this function virtually erases the possibility to ask students to write original essays on topics or reflections. This will reduce the amount of thinking and thus, learning that is done in school classrooms. Which presents the future question – if students can use ChatGTP for all of their work, why are we teaching them skills such as essay writing? In a certain sense, I think tis resource will make educators be substantially more creative with the work they assign students. I believe that in future years we will see in increase in project based learning and personal application of information. Perhaps ChatGPT is the push the education needed to move away from traditional assessment of learning.

Here is a picture taken by a very talented photographer, Rich McCue.

Photo by Rich McCue on Unsplash

netflix… flicks on the net… the name makes sense… right? leave a comment!

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Welcome to my blog!! This is my first blog post. Setting up this site was challenging, but I am excited to expand and explore how I can use this site well! I second guess myself when it comes to technology and question if I have followed the proper steps. I learned today to trust the process and don’t be afraid to ask for help!

I had some initial difficulty setting up the site as I found the information load overwhelming. I enjoy the creative part of designing and writing the blog but as far as waiting for emails… I didn’t enjoy it that much. I think in my role as a future teacher blogging can be useful in communicating homework and announcements to a class in a cyber-safe way. I can imagine that blogging would be useful to curate subject matter for students at a young age to engage in research without giving them access to the whole internet. Overall, blogging can be immensely useful and used in a multitude of areas.

Welcome to OpenETC WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!