Category: Weekly Reflections

This week was all about the benefits of coding in the classroom.

Our class played around with the sorts of coding activities that we might engage our learners with; it’s generally a good idea for educators to try out any class activities they intend to introduce to their students, that you’ll have a better grasp on the sorts of questions or roadblocks your students might encounter along the way.

With that said, I chose to try out the “flappy code” game. I did get into the FlappyBird hype back when the game was first released, so this was more exciting for me than some of the other options available.

I appreciate that each drag-and-drop block used to “code” your game does, in fact, act as a functional representation for the actual code that your version of the game is running on. The blocks seemed to fit intuitively together thanks to their puzzle-like grooves, and I found it useful to be able to tab between the blocks and the code they represented to get an actual feel for what it all looked like underneath.

As a Flappy Bird fan, I was excited by the options to change the background, character and pipe assets. When I learned that I could randomize each asset each time upon successfully flying my character past an obstacle, I was genuinely floored. Take a peak at my fun creation (and the code used) in the GIF below:

Benefits of Computational Thinking in the Classroom

Another topic of import this week was computational thinking. Is this a new term to you? It was to me! Check out the infographic below for more information:

Based on the content of the infographic above, I think it’s pretty clear to see how computational thinking has some great cross-curricular benefits. Beyond math, even, students can using computational thinking to aid them in all sorts of projects. In fact, I would argue that decomposition, the breaking down of a problem into smaller parts, and algorithmic design, creating the steps to complete a task, are both integral aspects in planning and delegating for any school projects that students work on.

Really, computational thinking can help students to become better, more gritty learners. A huge part of computational thinking is establishing a clear course of action (based on careful assessment of the situation and planning carefully based on that), following through, and then assessing the outcome; was the result what your students intended? If not, back to the drawing board; what needs to change about the plan to get the result they’d like? Or perhaps do they need to go back even further, to re-assess the problem or situation itself? Perhaps the outcome was off-base, but might have useful applications for another project that students are working on.

This sort procedure process and willingness to revisit one’s process is not something that will come naturally to all students. Offering specific strategies to students, as well as many opportunities to try them out and maybe even fail (which, really, is just an opportunity to try again) are integral!

Have you ever thought about incorporating computational thinking into your classroom? Drop your thoughts or any tips to share below!

Discretion is Key for Educators in Online Spaces

This week, our class was honoured to have Jesse Miller of Mediated Reality come in as a guest speaker. He spoke on the importance of matters of privacy and safety online, and what this means for both educators and students alike.

Our digital footprint was, in particular, a key point of the conversation. As educators, our public image is often the subject of scrutiny by students, parents and our school administration alike —and digital spaces are no exception to this fact. I was grateful to already have some understanding of this fact, as well as a general understanding of the importance of discretion when sharing in online spaces; when we were asked to google ourselves on an incognito tab, I couldn’t find a single link about myself for several pages of google search results.

Looping Students into the Conversation

The importance of discretion and privacy in online spaces is something that took a lot of discussions with my parents and teachers growing up. I’m very grateful to have a host of adults who were fairly knowledgeable about the risks and concerns that came with the internet, even as intentionally spending time online was only growing in popularity. This understanding of how to appropriately navigate online spaces is not intuitive, after all, and as educators it is imperative that we do our best to instill a strong understanding of the rules of the internet, of polite discourse, discretion, privacy, and critical thinking.

While watching informative Youtube videos, like the informative TedTalk by Jesse Miller below, can serve as a strong jumping off point for an engaging discussion with your students on the subject, it is important to follow up such conversations with concrete practice of best practices online for privacy settings and communication.

What are your thoughts on how best to teach the importance of discretion and safe practices on online spaces? Shoot me a comment below to connect!

What constitutes digital accessibility?

Prior to this week’s EdTech class, I thought of digital accessibility as something garnered through supporting applications or devices (like screen readers). It was compelling (and slightly overwhelming) to learn about all the ways I can modify my blog from the backend to make it more accessible to others.

Some of these tasks were enjoyable to me. For example, I greatly enjoyed going through my previous blog entries (and this one) and inserting alt-text for the images in my posts so that folks using screen-readers will be able to engage with the content of these images, too. I didn’t know about alt-text beforehand, and considering how much fun I have picking out images for my blog, I’m glad to be able to share them with all my readers.

I was also surprised to learn about how properly formatted headers allow those with screen readers to more easily navigate through cohesive chunks of written work, as opposed to having to wade through a wall of text for a specific point. Additionally, I was interested to learn more about high-contrast elements and the ability to zoom into text across browser and mobile mode to make reading accessible for visually impaired readers.

What practices often get missed?

As soon as I learned about the importance of high-contrast elements for visually impaired site users, I instantly thought about the many ~aesthetic~ websites I’ve scrolled across (blogs, or even shop sites) that prioritize cute color schemes over accessibility. I think this also beckons a larger conversation about the lack of awareness around digital accessibility; what it means, how it functions, and how to get started.

Check out this great video we watched in class this week:

I wanted to share the above as it provides more specific examples of digital accessibility, and grounds these examples in the importance of their real-world contexts.

I also wanted to share this great website to check how accessible your blog (or a favorite website) is. I appreciate that it flags specific errors or concerns, and provides context for why these accessibility considerations matter.

An Accessible Return to a Past Multimedia Strategy

Last week, my reflection post featured a screencast video (utilizing H5P) that showcased how to search for just the right pattern on my favorite website, Ravelry. While I was very excited to create this video last week, I am now acutely aware of the fact that I created a video without captions. I have rectified the previous tutorial by uploading it to YouTube, and manually editing the auto-generated subtitles.

This process took considerably longer than I thought it would, and that is with auto-generated subtitles on a relatively short video. I believe this extra time was absolutely worth it, though it gives me much greater respect for longer-form video essays I have watched on YouTube (30+ mins) that use well-formatted subtitles.

What has your experience been with creating digitally accessible content? Was there anything you were surprised to learn about in this post? Drop me a comment below to check in.

This week was all about multimedia learning theory and screencasting. Multimedia learning theory is, in essence, the idea multimedia (aka media that uses both images and words) promotes greater retention of information than viewing media that uses only images or words. The term screencasting, then, refers to a video recording that is taken of your own computer screen or web browser. Screencasting is one way in which teachers can engage learners via multimedia learning theory. There is greater nuance to the applications and caveats of each, but for the sake of simplicity, I will offer the video links above for those who are interested in a more comprehensive explanation of both.

For an example of how screencasting might be used to teach learners how to navigate a website, please check out my video below, which shows viewers how to use some of the advanced search features on my favorite knitting website, Ravelry:

I can see there being many applications for screencasting in education, particularly in upper elementary and middle school, where students begin working more with technology. Screen casting could be used to offer the class a quick introduction to key features of a new website (like in my example video above), or to showcase a key skill that students need to learn for an upcoming assignment.

One of the fantastic things about screencasts is their replayability. During lab time, or even at home, students are able to review screencasts to ensure comprehension of content. This could be particularly helpful for ELL students, or learners who have less confidence and experience using digital technologies.

Possible drawbacks of screen sharing might occur when teachers overload students with too much information in a short amount of time (cognitive overload), or if they include a small video of themselves talking in the bottom corner of the screencast (which may distract learners from the key content being shared).

I could also see myself using digital media software (like video editing or screencasting) as an assignment for my students. Considering that digital videos are increasingly being used in educational, recreational, and home spaces alike, I think that teaching students how to create content themselves (alongside how to search for, as well as how to critically consume, assess and respond to online videos) is of growing importance. The cross-curricular possibilities are very appealing; students could create a video showcasing their latest science project, summing up its importance, and detailing its possible community impacts. These videos could all be watched as a class at the end of a unit. The ideas are endless!