This is my summary of learning for the course! I made mine on PowerPoint, with recorded audio - which is new to me! Unfortunately, the audio doesn't work on Scribd documents, so I had to add it as a downloadable file at the bottom. I learned so so much this semester that I will take into my classrooms everyday!
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As the semester ends, I would like to reflect on my course contribution this year! Firstly, in my other courses (specifically ECS 102), I often brought up topics that were discussed in this class. I found myself thinking a lot about online presence and literacy and talked about it a lot! Although this class was in person, so screenshots were not an options – I do remember specifically bringing up cyber vigilantism when talking about how teaching need to be professional all the time and realizing that teachers really need to be professional their entire lives, or something from the past can be brought up against them! I also taught my siblings more about digital literacy, as they often believe everything they see online! This helped them not be so gullible – or maybe they just don’t tell me all their weird new findings anymore! Throughout the semester, I also commented on other students’ blog posts and responded thoughtfully to what they posted about! I learned more sources and blogging styles through other blogs. This community of class blogs was very helpful through the semester, and I enjoyed supporting each other in our learning projects! In breakout rooms, I participated every time and often spoke for my group when the class came together to discuss various topics. I enjoyed meeting with other students in groups and face-to-face! Often, when these topics were talked through, we would discuss personal matters and how these topics relate to our real lives – which I loved! Overall, the course community was kind and responsive whenever I reached out! Thanks for a great semester! As the year comes to an end, it is time to wrap up my learning project. Learning how to crochet has been a very very fun assignment, and I am glad I got this experience to try learning more about one of my own passions and hobbies – and excuse it as homework LOL. I also feel like I have more confidence to show everyone what I have made and tell them about my hobby, instead of hiding it all in my room where no one will ever see it! This journey has definitely taught me a lot about crochet, but also a lot about art and how to celebrate the progress I make! In the beginning I chose to improve my crochet skills and knowledge because I wanted to make a baby blanket for my brothers baby that will be born in August. This assignment gave me time to work on that blanket guilt-free and allowed me to improve my skills and find tools to advance quickly. I used many different online tools to learn these skills including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and several other blogs from students. I also used many different tools to share my learning including Notability, iMovie, SpeedEditor, and Photos. Learning Project RecapWeek 1: Got Me Hooked: Introducing My Learning Project To start this project off, I wanted to set clear goals and reflect on why I was passionate about crochet in the first place. This was also my first attempt at blogging anything, or even being casual in an assignment at all!
Week 2: Learning Through Viewing The first step I took was finding a tutorial online to start off this baby blanket! I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to look like, but found this very cute tutorial online to follow!
Week 3: Learning Through Language This week, I tried to follow a typed pattern for a heart pillow, but after many attempts, I was unsuccessful. I wasn’t ready for the pattern reading I was working towards, so switched up my plan to an easier one.
Week 4: 'Directing' the Classroom This week was a combination week of our technology post with our learning project post! I tried out iMovie to update my learning project, which was not so bad!
Week 5: Crochet Away This post was made over our school break, which gave me lots of time to sit down and work on my projects! I completed many projects with help of motivation from online sources.
Week 6: Slowing Progress… This week went by slowly, as I had to get back to school and do homework and study (borrringgg). It felt very unproductive in comparison to my previous week, but I still worked on my pattern for my baby blanket!
Week 7: Crochet Bouquet!! This week I made something that I LOVE! Two of my favourite things, flowers and crochet came together (by me!) and now decorate my room beautifully!
Week 8: Growing Flowers and Minds This week has to be my favourite week, although I do love all the work I’ve done. This week was impactful, and changed my mind about the things that I make, and this realization really changed my assignment mindset back into an open and excited mindset!
Week 9: Hopping to the Finish Line This week I decided to make a pattern using all of my knowledge I’ve learned so far. This pattern is for something I am working on, but have no finished yet!
Week 10: Reusing Yarn, Reducing Sweaters and Recycling Ideas! This week I took apart an old sweater that did not fit, and used the yarn for new projects.
What I learnedThis past semester, I have really learned a lot about crochet! Through many different sources, I learned many different things. Looking back at my original goals, I think I reached them for the most part! Although I did not follow the timeline I had originally set, and ended up making way more items than I had planned – I think I surpassed my goals for this learning project, and am walking away with more knowledge than I even knew was possible! Online LearningThis Learning Project journey has really inspired me in many ways. I find myself using the internet for helpful things, like learning about everything that I can instead of mindless scrolling a lot more. Through these ten weeks, I have reflected greatly on my online presence and my use of the internet. Although I have often been one to hate on social media and our dependence on the internet, I have a new found appreciation for everything online. I am glad that I can see what other people are making, doing and excited about in their lives, and I am glad that people have this outlet to express themselves in many ways! Overall, for myself, I found that learning through videos with visual and verbal instructions were the best support for myself. Once I started to learn more, the written and chart patterns became easy to understand, but did not necessarily teach me anything new after my first time. With this understanding, as a future teacher and our use of technology – I know more about how I could help support students through the screen, instead of what I previously thought (I thought typing an email would suffice, and maybe it would for some students – but not all). I think I discovered that learning online is much easier than I expected! Perhaps, if I wanted to learn something more obscure and specific, it wouldn’t be as easy, but the amount of sources I found for crochet was insane! I preferred the videos, but there were many other forms of teaching that I didn’t like as much, like written patterns, chart patterns, audio only, visual only. And many different creators sharing these through social media, blogs, websites, or selling them! It seems that learning online has never been easier or more accessible than it is today! This week, we looked into AI generator tools and their relationship to education. Growing up, while AI was just becoming a reality, I was taught to be afraid of it and to stay away from using anything with AI. Today, AI is celebrated and brought into every social media and website for our use without us even knowing it, making it hard to avoid. ChatGPT is the tool that I heard of most within AI advancement and common use. I have used this site before, back in January when I was looking for advice on birthday gifts for family members. I remember being afraid to use it, and also confused at how accessible it was. I had always thought it was part of the dark web or a payment was required. I found myself not liking ChatGPT, as it gave me very boring and generic answers, nothing creative or helpful came from my conversation with this website. I felt like everything it was saying, was stuff I easily could’ve found online somewhere else, which I know is exactly what AI is doing but it still felt like a waste of time and effort me. This time around, I wanted to talk about education with the AI. My roommate is a teacher and has used ChatGPT to create lesson plays and write plays for her students to act out – making a large workload be very minimal. So first, I tried making a lesson plan. I asked it to create a lesson plan to teach grade 12 students the basics of calculus. The AI created this lesson plan fairly quickly and gave great detail into the work needed to be done. It listed the objective, materials needed, proper timeline with dates and breaking down the period into chunks of work including time for students to work alone and together, assessments and reviews, and extensions ideas. This AI really covered everything needed to plan my week of calculus. Then, I asked about the AIs ability to teach. It responded by saying it could definitely teach someone math, including daily lessons, quizzes and personalized feedback that students may not get in the classroom. However, it stated that AI would not be able to replace the human teacher as it has less emotional intelligence and cannot read people like another person is able to. Although I know that AI simply collects data from the internet and gives it to me quickly, it was interesting to see it’s opinions and abilities given the prompts. Overall, as teachers I can see ChatGPT being useful to get things done quickly or to find new ideas to present things in new ways to students, but I fear that it is simply stealing from other people, and not crediting them. If this source is just collecting data form online, how can we know where it is getting this information? I am worried about copying someone without even knowing I am doing so, and that is not fair to the person who put in the work to create these ideas or lesson plans. I do think it is a helpful and interesting tool, but I feel like I need more information to fully trust this new idea. In the future, I think I will rely on my own ideas first and push myself to be creative before I turn to the information provided by an artificial source. This week I worked on remaking a sweater I had made in the past. The original pattern of this sweater was from a TikTok (that has since been lost in the algorithm, but is similar to this tutorial by @savannah.stitches)I followed over a year ago, but it did not fit me. I made my sweater much too large, it fit my older brother pretty well but it wasn’t his style (LOL)! I wasn’t sure how to fix this sweater, especially because the yarn is not that soft, so I probably would not wear it very often. So, I searched online through YouTube and TikTok and even Google of what to do with my yarn now. I found MANY things I was inspired by, which is good because I have SO MUCH yarn! I specifically liked this book cover by Mahum, however, I wanted mine to look different, it was good for the inspiration! I tried to track my progress very heavily with this project, instead of just doing the beginning and end looks, so I took a lot of pictures and time lapsed the work I was doing! To do this I used iMovie again (first used in my previous post, 'Directing the Classroom') and a video speeder app called “Speed Editor.” I liked this app, but there were a lot of ads and the videos could only be sped up to 2x speed without paying, so I had to put my videos through the editor many times to get them fast enough. Here is my short video of my work!
Cyber presence is an interesting topic for me. On one hand, I think that people need access to the internet to keep up with the modern world, no matter the age or any factors of their personal life. On the other hand, I have concerns about young people having an online presence. Many people when they are young do not understand how the internet works or believe in its’ permanence. I remember when I was young, I posted things thinking they would never be found, or get erased eventually – however they are still there, which is embarrassing.
I worry about people, who do not understand what they are saying, being punished for life because of a mistake or misunderstanding they had when they were very young. For the most part, I like people being held accountable for things they have done in the past. Specifically famous people, I think it is important we entrust people we praise with similar values as our own. That being said, I am aware that many people have different values then my own, so it is impossible to say that one famous persons’ values are all around bad and unagreeable. It's also impossible to take recognition away from a person, if they have an established fame. Similar stories of people like Jeffree Star (online history of racism), J.K Rowling (Openly transphobic), Elon Musk (supporting antisemitic material) and many more. Many celebrities get away with horrible behaviour, despite there being online receipts of these actions. On the other hand, many people who are not making millions are being kicked out of school for past actions of similar manners. Taking away scholarships seems like a just consequence for racist, sexist, queer-phobic or other horrible actions, but I think not being allowed to go the university at all is something I am for, as well as against. I believe schools should allow students with similar beliefs as the school motto to attend the university, however I do not think that people’s actions that are kept online permanently should never be allowed to attend the university. Overall, I am conflicted about cyber presence, and I have a lot of questions. Specifically – how long is long enough to be forgiven for past actions (even when these actions are still online for all to see)? Or maybe a better question is, what can people do to prove they have grown or changed their opinions since their questionable post(s) were made? Also, who is to decide that we, as a group, forgive someone for their past actions? I would assume the people directly harmed by the actions of the perpetrator, but it is not like we can get everyone of a certain group into one big room and all agree on the appropriate actions to be taken surrounding the situation, right? When and who can we forgive, and when should we not forgive? I liked this video below to explain and discuss cancel culture through a more entertaining way than I can type to you guys! Check it out! |
AuthorMy name is Paige Belcourt and I am currently a student a the University of Regina. I am working towards a degree in Secondary Mathematics Education with a minor in French, as well as a certificate in inclusive Education. Archives
April 2024
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