Tech Task #7 - Infographics

I think infographics could be very useful in the classroom. I never really thought about using them in the classroom before this tech task, but I think they are something that I will use for sure. I think it would be cool to print off a couple every week and place them in the classroom for the students to read. They don't have to relate to what we are doing during class that day, but could be something motivational or something interesting. I think they also could be very useful to use in lessons. It is a different way to show information and they typically don't require much reading which the students probably would like. 

I think Piktochart is really cool. I definitely need some practice with it, but it is something I could see myself using in the future.

Tech Task #10 - Comment of a Blog Post

I have comment on a blog from Ms. Cassidy's Blog.

Tech Task #12 - The Future!!

When talking about the future of education I barely know where to begin (I haven't even begun teaching yet and you want me to talk about the future!). The obvious answer will be that it will be more tech based and the traditional classroom will be no more. We were actually talking about this in Shelley's Student Literacy class last week. Shelley asked us what we think the classroom will look like in 25-30 years near the end of our careers. Shelley mentioned somewhere along the lines of (not a direct quote) that she wouldn't be surprised if there were any permanent classrooms left by that time. What she meant was, that she thinks a lot of the learning might take place on the internet through online based learning. Obviously there will still be school, but not how they look now. Next she asked us what about something like libraries in the school, what will happen to those? There is no doubt that by the end of our careers everything you need in a library will be online and everyone will have a device to access these resources. As a class we came to the conclusion that libraries will probably still be there because they are already there so they probably won't just get rid of them, but the amount of use they get will drop dramatically.

In the Horizon Report it talks about coding becoming a literacy. It mentions that this is part of the short-term plan. I think this is something that will be in high-schools in the next 3-5 years probably. As technology grows being able to code becomes more and more important. Also being able to code will open the doors to many future employment opportunities. It also talks about Virtual Reality in the next 3-5 years. This is something that I can foresee happening as well. Daniel already talked about how he is using it in his classroom and I think it will be used more and more as the years go on.

Overall, I am super excited about the future of education and I am even more excited that I get to play a vital role in it.

Tech Tasks #9

The video that I have decided to show you is one called "If the World Were a Village". I assume most of you have probably seen a video like these or seen pictures that represent "If a World Were a Village", but I have always thought these were really cool. Also this video or idea fits really well with the Grade 7 Social Studies curriculum. It fits well with the first three clusters: World Geography, Global Quality of Life, Ways of Life in Asia Africa or Australasia. After watching the video I was thinking that you could adapt this type of video and get the students to make their own videos about different countries or continents. I think that I would allow the students to put their videos on YouTube or a website. I think that if the students knew that their videos were going to go public they would put more effort in and their final project has a better chance of being something that they are proud of!

Tech Task #8 - Podcasts

I frequently listen to three podcasts for my personal enjoyment. I probably started listening to them about 2 years ago and I love them. They are something that I listen to while doing homework or instead of listening to the same boring radio. None of these podcasts really apply to this assignment, so I had to do some research and find some that I would use in my teachings. If you are wondering which ones  I listen to for your own personal enjoyment they are: The Joe Rogan Experience - He is a frequent podcastor and puts of 2-3 a week and they vary in topics but i find them entertaining. I also listen to the Jay & Dan podcast which comes out weekly and they talk mostly about sports. The last one I listen to is the Monday Morning Podcast by Bill Burr. This is a comedy based podcast. I find all of these podcasts very enjoyable and very funny. Give them a listen if you are interested.

Now to the Podcast for this assignment. The Podcast that I am going to talk about is called "Today in Canadian History". These Podcasts come out almost daily and are hosted by professors, journalists, authors, or everyday historians. Each Podcast talks about something that happened in Canadian history on this day. A couple examples are: March 8th - International Women's Day Edition. This one talks about the history of women in Canada. March 3rd- First Official Indoor Game of Hockey. This talks about the first indoor hockey game in Canada. March 1st - The Great Winnipeg Gold Robbery of 1966. This talks about a gold heist in Winnipeg.

As you can see the Podcasts have a wide variety of what they are talking about, but they all deal with Canadian History. All of these Podcasts are around 10 minutes long. I think this something really cool that you could incorporate into your Social Studies or History classes.

Tech Task #4 - Follow an EduBlogger

I have been following Kirsten Foti who is an Grade 7 and 8 from Texas. Her blog name is Crazy Lady Teacher and she blogs about the different things that she does in her classroom. Lately she has been blogging about how she has been incorporating the AVID principle in her classroom. AVID is  a philosophy that trains students to use practices in order to prepare students for success in high school, college/university, and a career. Basically it teaches skills and behaviours for academic success. Kirsten blogs about twice a month. She has slowed down a bit recently, but I hope she starts to pick it up again because she has a lot of great ideas in her blogs.

The reason that I started following Kirsten is because her blog talks a lot of new teaching ideas and goes against the traditional way of teaching. This is something that this course has really made me think about with all of our guest speakers that have been doing this.

One of her blog posts that caught my eye was the one called "Stop stopping the violence: boys and violence". She talks about how she had a student write about violence acts in a short story and how this really concerned her. This happened many years ago and when she saw it she got the administrations attention. She talked about how the written wasn't a foreshadow of what was going to happen, but the student was just writing about what they knew. The student learnt this from video games which is something they had an interest in. She talks about how being able to write about something you know is huge and can be difficult for young writers. Kirsten mentioned that if she could go back she would have talked to the student about it and helped them with their writing. Obviously you have to be careful in situations like this, but if you don't think what the student is writing about is going to be a problem you should encourage it.

Another post that she talked about was a writing project called "Exploring our futures through our head, heart, hands, and feet". This was a writing assignment that had students writing about their future careers. This assignment allows students to write about something that interests them and it can also get them thinking about their future.

Tech Task #11 - Show and Tell

For my show and tell I am going to show you an application that a friend of my recommended to me called Scrumy. After taking a look at it I realized that it could be a great tool to use to manage your students projects. It also is a great way for the students to manage there own projects. If you follow this link to my Scrumy you can see an example of how it works.

How it works is each of your students will have to create their own page. This is a very easy process and your students will be able to do this by themselves with limited assistance. All they have to done is choose a username. After they have chosen their username all they have to do is in the search bar and type in www.scrumy.com/whatevertheirusernameis. After the / on the url the student puts in their username and it will create a page for them. Once there you can add multiple subjects which are called stories on this website. Then in the To Do list they can add all of the assignments that they currently have. Once they have started working on the assignment they can slide that assignment to the In Progress section. Then when the student has completed the assignment they slide it over to the Verify section. After putting it in the verify section the student can inform the teacher that they are done the assignment for the teacher to check. The teacher can then check the assignment and after they have determined that it is acceptable they can slide it into the Done section.

I think this is a great way for your students to keep track of what they are doing and it also gives them a sense of responsibility. Also if your students keep this up to date they have to be more accountable with their assignments because all they have to do is look at their website and everything that is due will be right there.

Hopefully you enjoyed my show and tell and maybe in your future teachings you can use it!

Tech Task #5 - Digital Footprint

Digital footprint is essentially what you are leaving behind on the internet. Pretty much everything you do online is being tracked and used whether you want it be or not. I googled my name to see what would pop up and nothing showed up that surprised me. I am pretty quiet when it comes to social media, so basically nothing showed up when I googled my name. My twitter account popped up, but that is private so people who don't follow me can't access my tweets. If you look at images there are no images on google (thankfully). Overall my digital footprint for the general public is very small and I am happy about this. Your digital footprint is very important. If you have a negative online footprint it can really come back to bite you. Potential employers are most likely going to do a quick google search of you and if something bad pops up it could affect if you get the job or not. It is important for us as teachers to teach our students about this and let them know how connected the online world and offline world are. In my opinion they aren't separate at all. This is something that we need to teach our students. We have to teach our students that we have to be smart about what we post online and we should protect our social media accounts. In my opinion your social media accounts should be semi private. My personal twitter account is private because I don't want students that I am teaching following me. Even though I rarely tweet and when I do it isn't bad things, but I cannot control what people tweet about me or what I am mentioned in.

Overall I am glad that when I was is High School social media wasn't that popular yet. Facebook was starting to get big, but I never used it. I think students nowadays document their entire lives on their social media for the world to see and I think they need to be careful about doing this and we need to educate them about some of the things that could happen to them by doing this.

Week 8

This week Bryce Rigden came and talked to our class about how he uses technology in his classroom. Bryce is the principal at Minnedosa school which is a 1:1 school. This means that every student in the school has a device with access to the internet. As a teacher this allows you to do a lot more things in the classroom. Bryce showed us a infographic called "101 ways to show what you know". He mentioned that he would use this in his class for projects as a different way for students to show that they understand. He showed us some examples of what some students have done in the past and they were awesome! I think this is a great idea and something I would really liked to implement in my classroom in the future. I think it is a great way to provide students with some freedom in their assignments and by allowing them to choice they will be more excited about doing the assignment. Students can also choose something that they are good at or passionate at and use that to complete their assignment. For example, if they play an instrument they could create a song to show they understand.

One thing that Bryce talked about that really stood out to me was to stop removing technology as a punishment. As teachers we have a tendency to take away phones or kick students off computers if they are being disruptive, but by taking away their technology we are taking away a valuable resource for that student. We shouldn't just think of technology as a reward for good behaviour, but have to think of it as a resource that students should have access to.

Week 7

This week we had the opportunity to listen to John Finch talk about technology and some of the impacts it has on our youth. The one topic that we had a discussion on that I found quite interesting was how a child reads nowadays. John mentioned how people today don't read the same way as people use to. People are getting lazy in the way they read. They are reading short blurbs or paragraphs that summarize the information instead of reading all the information to get the facts. Social Media apps like twitter only allow 140 characters per tweet which is changing how we want to receive our information. No one is willing to read more than a page any more. I for one am guilty of this. If I can find a summary of an article I will always just read that instead of reading the whole article. I think as teachers we need to encourage reading and provide our students with many opportunities to read many different type of texts.

Tech Task #6 My Personal Learning Network

My Personal Learning Network by Brook Mcgillivary

21st Century Student by Brook Mcgillivary

Week 6

This week we had the opportunity to two teachers who are relatively new to teaching. It was nice to listen to two teachers who are at the beginning stages of their teaching careers and have already achieved so much. Both of the teachers are pushing the limits on the way they are going about their teaching.

I really liked Kristen's "Canadian History Told By Us" assignment that she has her students do. I think this a great way to incorporate technology into the classroom and a nice way to introduce blogging in your classroom. While introducing this assignment would provide a great opportunity to talk about creating a positive digital footprint and talking about their digital literacy.

Tyler has a lot of really creative things that he does in his classroom. I think the "best word challenge" is a cool idea and is something that you could generate some good conversations in your classroom. I also like the Writers Workshop that he does in his class. I liked his idea of making a book on the stories that the students thought was their best work. His Romeo and Juliet assignment where he had the students use Instagram is an awesome way to get students excited about Shakespeare which isn't always the case.

Overall, both of these teachers have a great outlook on teaching and they both inspired me to try and push the limits with the type of assignments I create for my classroom.

Tech Task #3 Twitter

Twitter
I have had a personal twitter account for probably 6-7 years. I have never been an avid tweeter, but I am very comfortable using the app. During my last years ICT course we spent a decent amount of time discussing twitter and using for an educational purpose. We have followed that discussion up in this class and I really see the benefit of using on a professional level. I think the idea of having Manitoba Ed Talks every week is a really cool idea and a great way to broaden my professional network. I haven't done any tweeting since creating my account for this class, but I am going to start trying to. This course has already provided me with plenty of great people to follow on twitter and I hope it provides me with some more as the class goes on. Another part of twitter that will be very valuable will the "twitter lists". I knew what they were before I started the course but have never used them. I like how by following a certain list provides you access to a lot of other people who have similar interests as you do.

Follow me at @BMcGillivary27

Tech Task #2 Organizing your self online

What is Curation?
Curation is the assembling, managing, organizing and preserving some type of a collection. There are many different type of curators including curators of: art galleries, museums, scientists, or a collection of digital assets. For the sake of this tech task online curation is how we collect, organize, or present the online data that we access online.

How I Organize my online life?
The two main ways that I organize my online life is through my laptop and and iPhone. On my laptop I have all of the main websites that I use bookmarked so that I can access them easier. I have all of my email accounts, social media, school websites (Google Plus or Google Drive for example), and other websites that I frequently visit. Since I started bookmarking all of these websites last year I have felt that I am way more organized and on top of things. I also find that I visit these sites more often. On my iPhone I also have a lot of the same websites or apps on my phone. I would consider my primary online organizer. I have all of my social media on my phone as well as all of my emails on my phone. I enjoy following sports and fantasy sports so all of these are on my phone as well.

Curation and in my Future Classroom?
One app that I will try and use in my classroom is Google Drive. I think by being able to post assignments and resources online for my students to access will be an easy organizer. It makes it easy for me as a teacher to put them all in one spot that all of my students can access. Also, it will be very convenient for my students to be able to access this important information from any computer that has access to the internet. Another app that I will consider using in my classroom is a classroom blog. This is a nice way to have students submit assignments or keep journals.  

Week 5

Daniel who is a High School Teacher in Flin Flon zoomed in on to our class on Thursday. I found Daniel's outlook on teaching very inspiring. I liked how Daniel isn't afraid to go against the grain when planning his lessons. He mentioned many times throughout his presentation about how it is easy to plan your lessons in the conventional lecture style, but he encouraged us change it up and be creative when developing our lessons.

One thing that Daniel mentioned that really caught my interest was the 20 Time Project. I can't remember how long Daniel said he has been using the 20 Time Project in his classroom, but it sounds like an awesome project and something I would love to incorporate into my classroom.

Daniel also touched on his use of VR in his classroom. I think this would be something that would be very cool and something that the students would be very engaged in. He mentioned how that as a school in Flin Flon virtual reality is very useful because for them field trips are not a very viable option. Instead of going on a field trip you could use a VR app to experience it in the classroom.

Week 4

During our Tuesday's class we again talked about digital literacy and digital citizenship. We touched on these two terms in a previous class, but we went into more depth during this class. Digital literacy is a fundamental aspect of your digital citizenship. Digital literacy is being able to use technology whereas digital citizenship is being able to your technology in the way that it was meant to be used. I think as educators it is very important that we are encouraging our students to be good digital citizens. Most of our students will already have good digital literacy knowledge before stepping into our classroom, but they may not think about how important being a positive digital citizen is.

On Thursday we had John Evans attend our class for a presentation. John works for MAPLE (Manitoba Professional Learning Environment). I was not familiar with the MAPLE website, but John went through some of the groups that we can subscribe to and I think this website will be a great resource in my future. The fact that this is a private website and that you have to be accepted in makes the website that much better. Knowing that the information on the website is from fellow Manitoba Teachers and not some random on the internet verifies that this information is valid. I think this is a great idea to have a website like this and I am glad that we had the opportunity to listen to John tell us about how we can use it.

Week 3

On Tuesday we had two guest speakers Donald Girouard and Shannon Magee. They both work for Manitoba Education in the Webased department. Blackboard learn is the current application/website that is being used in Manitoba. Blackboard learning is a webased system that applies to the senior years curriculum in Manitoba. There are a total of 44 courses available on blackboard learn. Shannon and Donald talked about how blackboard learn works and how to apply for a course. They explained how you all you have to do is apply for a course and then you have access to it. Once you have access to the course you receive all of the lessons and corresponding resources with that lesson. I like how you are able to add videos or text right into the lesson that is already made up if you prefer a different video. As a new teacher I think having access to all of these resources would be very beneficial in your first couple years. They mentioned that even if you are not teaching a webased course you can still apply for access to a specific course.

I never had to take a webased course in high school, so I do not have a lot of experience with how they work, but  it seems to be pretty simple to organize. I have taken an online course in university and it had some of the same features that blackboard learn offers. One of the problems I could see arises in a webased course would be dealing with the students who are Skyping or Zooming in. You would have to make sure that you are in regular contact with theses students to make sure that they are doing their work and that they are understanding the material.

Overall, I think the presentation was well done and if I ever find myself teaching a senior years course I will try and use blackboard learn even if it is just for resources. I think this was a very beneficial presentation and I would be a lot more comfortable teaching a webased course after attending the presentation.

Week 2

On Tuesday we were introduced to the term personal learning networks or PLNs. Personal learning networks consists of the people an individual interacts with and gains knowledge from. When we were first introduced to this term I didn't really think that my PLN was very large, but after Mike talked about what a PLN was and showed us an example of his I realized that mine was probably larger than I initially thought. I first thought that mine would have mainly be comprised of my university contacts, but I hadn't taken into consideration all of my online and social media contacts. My PLN is still relatively small, but I am hoping throughout this course it will increase.

The next term we talked about was Echo Chamber. In terms of media content an echo chamber refers to following people or news outlets that supports our points of view. The problem with this is that you creating a bias for your opinion by only viewing news that supports your beliefs and not viewing as much news from the opposing views. I never really thought about this, but I think I am guilty of this. I am a frequent follower on Reddit and even though I use it for personal use a lot of the sub-reddits that I subscribe to all consist of groups with my viewpoint. I can see how this can be a problem because by following news outlets that support your thinking it creates a confirmation that your viewpoint is correct. After learning about this term it made me think back to my student teaching when we were talking about politics and how most of my students (grade 7) had negative opinions about Trump. I always assumed that these students were receiving their negative viewpoints from their parents and relayed these viewpoints in the classroom (even if most of their points were valid, but that's not the point). As educators I think it is important to educate our students about echo chambers and that even if the majority of our knowledge gained through the media has a viewpoint that we need to be cautious that we are not just validating our own opinion through the media.

On Thursday we had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Alec Couros for speak on technology. Alec is a professor at the university of Regina and is an expert in the field of education technology. Alec is a extremely knowledgeable man and did a great job of keeping my interest as well as providing a lot of valuable content during his presentation. I really enjoyed the conversation he had about his open learning projects. This is something that Alec says he does with his students where they choose a subject that they are interested in and research that subject using various medias. I really liked this idea and hope that it is something that I can incorporate into my teacher. In my last placement I conducted a project that was similar to this and my CT called it an inquiry based assignment. Basically students were allowed to pick a topic that related to the topic that we had been discussing in class. It wasn't quite as broad as what Alec had been talking about, but I think the students enjoyed the process. Alec also talked about how important internet security was and provided us with many examples of when his identity was used on the internet by someone else. As educators this is something that we will have to educate our students on as it could happen to them. It was also important to all of us because this type of thing can happen to anyone who uses the internet. I am looking forward to continue to follow Alec on his blog as well as twitter as I think he will make a great addition to my PLN.

Week 1

This week we were introduced to our Internet for Educators course. I was interested in taking this course to further my knowledge on how to use internet and technology in my teaching. I am looking forward to the resources that this course will offer me and I am excited to be introduced to resources that will be beneficial to me in my future endeavors.

The first resource that we were introduced to was Google Plus. Google Plus is a social network platform that everyone in our class is using as sort of a home base. I have never used Google Plus before but it seems like a useful platform to use if you are using any online platform in your classroom.

The next online resource that we were introduced to was Twitter. I have been using twitter for 5-6 years and I am pretty familiar with the application. I have been using twitter on a personal level not as on a professional level. I could see the benefit of using twitter to follow people in education and people in the world of technology.

The last resource we were introduced to was Feedly. Feedly is a RSS (Rich Site Summary) and is a content organizer. I have never used Feedly, but with the small amount of time that I have spent on Feedly this week I think it could be a very useful website and one that I plan on incorporating in my everyday life as well as in my teaching future. Feedly is a way to organize all of your online feeds on one website.

This first week made me excited for what this class is all about. I think this class will be an enjoyable experience. In the two classes that we have had so far we have generated valuable conversations and I am looking forward to what future classes hold.