Category: Weekly Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

For this weekly reflection I would like to dive deeper into the topic of AI, specifically in education.

Over the last few months I have gone back and forth with using AI, specifically Chat GPT. As a future teacher who plans to cultivate curiosity within each student I think Chat GPT is so wonderful; especially for inquiry. Its a great place to start and it teaches us to ask questions and then to fine tune those questions, which is a crucial skill when learning through inquiry.

While using this in the classroom, I would simply preface with what AI is and how it works. Hopefully with this front loading, my future students will use it as the tool that it is to guide our learning. I like to also do a google search and find a credible resource to double check the information from Chat GPT. Again, this double checking sparks and cultivates curiosity.

I personally used Chat GPT a few times this week. I spend about 3-5 hours a week studying yoga and ayurveda, and this week I used it to summarize my learning from a book called Yoga and Ayurveda by Dr. David Frawley

I asked Chat GPT to give me some benefits from an Abhyanga and it aligned with the information from the book. I also was looking deeper into the Bandhas and it guided my learning and sparked new learning. This is one of the reasons why I like it so much is because it can guide us to new questions.

Here is a screenshot from my brief conversation with Chat:

For this week’s blog post, I’ll be reflecting on my experience with Notion.

While playing around with this software I noticed how intuitive it was. Within moments of navigating the website, I found myself being able to locate things like the note-taking and project planning sections. I also thought it was easy to toggle back and forth between documents.

I also found a few YouTube videos that helped me dive into Notion a bit deeper. Here is one of the videos I liked:

Currently, I’m trying to figure out how to manage two different accounts under the same email. Since my email is linked to both my personal and work accounts, I am note sure if my colleagues at work have access to documents I add. I am guessing if I opt for the payment plan, this would resolve this issue.

Personally, I am a fan of the Notes app on my iPhone, and I saw a few similarities between the two. While Notes is great for quick jottings, Notion seems to be much more versatile. It has many more features that would allow me to organizes my thoughts/notes with ease. It feels like it’s a combination of Google Docs and iPhone Notes. At least this is how I would use it.

Another thing I like a lot about Notion is the easily customizable templates. I also like the ability to add images easily to the docs. This process seems to always take me to much time when working on Google Docs.

At one of my workplaces, we just began to use Notion as a place to organize our thoughts and communicate to co workers. During the Ayurvedic classes, for instance, I found it incredibly convenient to snap pictures of whiteboard notes and simply add them onto the doc. 

Overall, I could see how useful this would be while being a student. This could be a place where one could store all their class notes and collaborate with classmates.

Here is screenshot of my screen showing how I added an image of the white board into the notes on Ayurveda.

This week, I enjoyed Jesse Miller’s discussion on Digital Citizenship & Online Safety. He challenged my beliefs when discussing tech in the classroom. I tend to think of ideas on how to reduce screen time and rarely seek out information or research from the other side. So, Jesse shedding light on research that shows the importance of tech in the classroom was very interesting. However, I did not agree with his definition of addiction. He stated that kids are only addicted when they would commit a crime to give in to the addiction. I believe kids can be addicted to tech without the need to commit a crime. For me, it’s a simple habit that we train the mind to do. I look at it like this: whatever you are doing in the moment, the body and mind will want to do more of it.

When I start teaching on practicum, I will switch my social media accounts to private. I mostly post about yoga or nature connection, but it will be nice to keep those worlds separate.

I would like to use this weeks blog post to discuss and reflect on Live It Earth.

My initial reaction to the platform was that it was just increasing screen time for kids. That initial assumption was shut down quite early with the conversation with Dave Russell-Loewen. He described how LiveIt.Earth is more of a tool and a resource belt to give to teachers to to make their time with their kiddos more meaningful and impactful.

I appreciate how this platform can save teachers a lot of time. Most of my friends are currently teachers and this is something that I hear over and over and over again. That there is very little time so finding resources that actual feel good and are connected to the big ideas in our curriculum is amazing!

The focus on cross-curricular competencies,  the support with UDL, and the connection to Indigenous ways of learning make this platform stand out over other resource websites.

As a future teacher with a land-based teaching background, I found the resources to be creative and diverse. After going through some of the lesson ideas, it feels that most lessons follow the themes of place-based and guided inquiry.

I specifically like the challenges that are given with each resource. These can all be easily adapted to meet the level of where the student is at.

I would love to use the resource on Volcanoes if I were teaching science and the rock cycle. Igneous rock coming from Volcanoes being one of step in the rock cycle. 

https://app.liveit.earth/en/programs/earth-science-volcanoes

I showed this website to my partner who is an 8th grade teacher and we dove in deeper trying to find resources that he could use for his classroom. He noted how cross curricular the resources were.

I for sure see myself using these resources as a future teacher. 

Today’s class was insightful and offered more clarity to the structure of the course. We began with a talk about Ed Tools. I appreciated the section with Trevor Mackenzie. I am also very interested in inquiry and it’s how I naturally teach. I taught at Oak and Orca Bioregional School here in Victoria for a few years where we focus on student centred learning and inquiry style of learning. I liked Trevors picture of the pool related to inquiry. I actually never really thought about it in levels, but it makes sense!

The Most Likely To Succeed film was interesting and also inspiring. I think when teaching inquiry, you have to first cultivate curiosity and teach kids how to question. When kiddos would first start at Oak and Orca they all struggled quite a bit because they were used to having their learning dumped onto them rather than finding it themselves.

I was shocked to learn about how much data big tech companies have on students across Canada. I’m curious if this data will continue to pile up or does it get archived or deleted after so many years of just sitting in “storage”? Kev Yew offered so much insight into what goes on behind the scenes in the ed tech world. I appreciated his suggestions on what to do as new teachers, simply just read the policy so we are aware!

Overall, this class gave me more information on inquiry, helped me to solidify my inquiry project, and opened up my eyes to the amount of work it takes to protect student information and the steps needed to do so.