Creating a podcast has never been so easy! Within 2 minutes I had a clip for a grade 3 science class on the exact topic that I wanted and in kid friendly language.
These are just a FEW of the MANY AI options out there for teachers (and anyone). I can absolutely see myself utilizing some of these tools at various points in my teaching career. I look forward to exploring more!
During our EdCamp class, I chose to be in the classroom budget discussion group. It was very interesting to discuss with my peers about how to make your future classroom feel like home without breaking the bank!
Some ideas that we formed as a group were:
Thrift
Yard Sales
Teacher Wish Lists
Teacher Shower (like a baby shower but prior to you getting your classroom)
Sharing with Peers – if you had a ‘rainbow’ theme one year, switch your materials with your peer who had an ‘animal’ theme the following year
When I left this discussion I was inspired to see what advice there is out there from practicing teachers. So… I took to the internet!
Here is a list of websites that I found insightful!
I then found a few videos. Here is one that offers quite a few ideas on how to transform your classroom to match your style!
Hope this will help provide you a few ideas on how you can create a classroom that makes you feel happy and excited to share with your students…. without going into debt.
In a traditional classroom, the teacher sets the agenda, delivers lessons, and structures discussions. But what if students had more voice and choice in their learning? EDCamp is an innovative and professional development model for educators, that could also be adapted to a classroom. The integration of this model could foster student:
Engagement
Collaboration
Critical thinking
Ownership over their learning
What is EdCamp?
EdCamp is an unconference-style approach to professional learning, where participants create the agenda and lead discussions based on their interests and expertise. Originally designed for educators, the EdCamp model provides open, organic conversations and peer-driven learning. Adapting this model for students could transform the classroom into a dynamic space where students explore topics they are passionate about while developing critical thinking, collaboration, and leadership skills.
Watch this video if you want to see the original model!
Benefits of Using EdCamp in the Classroom
Student Agency: EdCamp encourages students to take ownership of their learning by choosing discussion topics, leading sessions, and sharing ideas with their peers.
Collaboration & Communication: Students engage in meaningful discussions, practice active listening, and learn to articulate their thoughts effectively.
Cross-Curricular Learning: EdCamp sessions often lead to interdisciplinary discussions, helping students make connections between different subject areas.
Engagement & Motivation: Allowing students to explore topics they are genuinely interested in fosters intrinsic motivation and excitement for learning.
Equity & Inclusivity: Every student has a voice, regardless of their background or academic standing, promoting a more inclusive learning envrionment.
How Could you Implement this Model into the Classroom?
Set the Stage!: Introduce students to the concept of EdCamp and explain that they will be in charge of deciding what topics to discuss. Establish norms for respectful discussions and active participation.
Generate Topics: Allow students to brainstorm and vote on topics they find interesting. These can range from academic subjects to personal interests or social issues.
Generally in the classroom the teacher has a Big Idea they need to cover from the curriculum but are not curtailed to the exact ideas. This would be a great space to allow students to generate their topics within your desired broader idea.
Create a Schedule: Organize sessions based on student interest. This could mean multiple small-group discussions happening simultaneously or a rotation system where students can attend different sessions.
Facilitate Student-Led Discussion: Encourage students to lead discussions and collaborate with peers. Teachers should act like a facilitator rather than instructor. Guide your students where necessary but don’t take the mic!
Reflect & Share: After the EdCamp sessions, it would be great to have students reflect on what they learned, share their takeaways with larger groups, and discuss how they might apply their learning in real-world contexts. Reflection of learning is a key element of the curriculum!
Summary
Bringing the EdCamp model into a classroom fosters a more student-centered learning environment, where students feel empowered to explore their interests, collaborate with peers, and take charge of their education. By embracing this approach, educators can create a more engaging, equitable, and meaningful learning experience for all students.
Group size, advancement of topics, the amount of student-directedness can all be adapted to fit your grade and student needs in your class. Regardless of these factors, your students all have important things to say and desired topics they wish to learn more about! What a cool way to integrate their personal learning goals 🙂
On this Zoom class I really enjoyed our discussions around different forms of audio/visual curation.
We started the class with you showing us how to use AI for generated visuals. Here is my attempt!
I asked ChatGPT to create me a visual of an animal theme park in the snow where the animals are licking lollipops.
(Image generated from AI chatgpt.com)
As silly as the image is above, I think the ability to curate something like this would be so exciting for students! For students who struggle to express their ideas in an artistic way are provided with an alternative medium, where their creativity can come from the words they choose. The way that you can see your made up vision come to life through an image is so special. Students can play around with asking the programs to edit colour, facial expressions, the placement of the items. As someone who is not the best at drawing, I would have loved to of had the ability to play around with something like this. I always had a great vision for what I wanted but my execution typically fell short. This led to frustration on my part and a thought that I just wasn’t creative. In a way, AI programs like this lend itself nicely to UDL.
I could absolutely see myself bringing something like this into my future classroom. Teaching students how to properly use tools like these can expand their possibilities far beyond what I had access to.
My Science Podclass group used the skills we learned from this class and applied it to our podcast editing. See below for our attempt at using Audacity to create our podclass!
This week we delved into the creation of graphics and their role in education. We discussed the various uses that PowerPoint and Canva can provide for opportunities for graphic creations.
Although I had used Canva several times in my PDPP, I had never explored adding movement to my slides. See what I quickly created below for one of my classmates that adores Highland Cows.
One of the highlights of the class was getting to view other’s graphic designs. It was inspiring to see the variety of approaches and creative ways my peers used visuals to communicate their ideas. I particularly enjoyed the ones that people made that introduced themselves as a teacher. This activity reinforced how powerful graphics can. I think this will be so valuable to create for the first day of class for students to learn a little about me!
Additionally, this class had me reflecting on how I can incorporate graphics into my future teaching practice. Visuals are a great way to support diverse learning needs, whether through diagrams, infographics, or digital illustrations. They can help break down complex topics, provide alternative representations of information, and support students who benefit from multi-model learning approaches. I strongly believe that multi-model approaches strengthen all student (and adult) comprehension and understanding. It truly lends itself nicely to UDL!
Beyond using graphics myself, I also want to explore ways to engage studnets in creating their own visuals. Encouraging studnets to design their own graphics – whether mind maps, storyboards, or digital collages – can deepen their understanding while allowing a creative outlet. Graphics are a great way to allow for personalized expression of learning.
I’d like to continue exploring and practicing graphics so that I can regularly integrate it into my instructional practice. Who doesn’t love a fun graphic!
Jesse came and spoke to our class about the many significant roles technology plays in education. From virtual classrooms to online resources, teachers and students rely on digital tools to enhance learning. However, with this reliances comes the need for clear professional boundaries regarding digital usage. Maintaining those boundaries are essential to ensure you create a safe and respectful learning environment not only for the students but for educators too.
The Importance of Professional Boundaries
What I gained from Jesse’s chat is that maintaining professional boundaries particularly with digital communication is to help ensure the integrity of the teacher-student relationship. These boundaries prevent misunderstandings, protects privacy, and upholds those ethical standards that we all sign. Digital spaces can blur lines between personal and professional (they even happened today during our Zoom class where we are in our own homes!). Because those lines can be blurry it is crucial for educators to establish clear expectations regarding communication outside of school hours, the use of social media, and the use of online learning platforms.
How to Maintain Those Boundaries
Some of the thoughts that came from Jesse’s presentation were:
Use School-Approved Platforms: non-verbal communication to parents or students should only occur over school approved accounts like email. This ensures transparency while keeping records of these interactions.
Set Clear Expectations: at the beginning of the school year it is important to establish clear guidelines on how and when students can engage with you digitally. This forms a contract between your students and you and keeps you all on the same page! (obviously age dependent).
In my current line of work we always co-create a group contract and I think doing that as a class is really important to. One of the line items could be about digital communication!
Keep Professional Language & Tone: Since we are always texting or communicating casually on digital platforms, keeping a professional tone can be difficult sometimes. As a reminder, avoiding using slang and remembering that your email is just an extension of your workplace is important.
Avoid Social Media Interactions: Educators should refrain from adding students on ANY personal social media accounts!
Respect Privacy & Confidentiality: Educators must be mindful of sharing any student-related information online. Pictures of work, their faces, anything! These platforms are not secure and it is safer to not share that information. As well, you should gather photo and media consent from your students for posting on professional/school accounts.
Model Responsible Digital Citizenship: Educators serve as role models for learning and that should continue for digital etiquette. Demonstrating responsible online behaviour, including fact-checking sources, using respectful language, and promoting cyber safety, helps to instill those values in your students.
Upon reflection, although these guidelines/ideas seem straightforward, the reality is that digital boundaries can be tricky to enforce. Students can get really excited and want to add you on social media or get your number from a school trip and text you. Regardless, I think the best plan is to always redirect the conversation to an appropriate channel but doing so with compassion. Remembering that students are not necessarily trying to cross your boundary but are excited to talk to connect with you and just need to learn how to navigate those boundaries.
We were asked to watch the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” for class, which highlights High Tech High, an innovative school that replaces traditional instruction with project-based learning (PBL). The film contrasts their PBL framework with conventional education, positing the relevance of current methods in preparing students for their ever evolving futures.
The documentary was insightful in that it showcased the power of PBL to engage students deeply in their learning. In particular, the documentary followed around students who were developing essential skills like collaboration, problem-solving, and adaptability – qualities not always highlighted in traditional education.
I expected the documentary to critique the current education system but didn’t anticipate such a compelling example of an alternative approach that works for students and teachers alike. It was intriguing to see how invested the study body was in each of their project streams. In my mind, the goal of teaching is to have students invested in what they are learning, and you certainly saw that was the case with the students in this documentary.
I believe this all matters because the traditional education model, focused on standardized testing and content memorization, doesn’t necessarily align with the skills students need for their future. High Tech High’s success challenges us as the viewer to rethink what education can or even should be. The emphasis on autonomy and creativity was a stark contrast to the rigid structures of traditional school that was my own education experience. My belief that engagement is the sweet spot of education was only further reinforced while watching this documentary, in that I came to realize the limitations of conventional teaching methods. Maybe it is time for a systemic change?
While looking deeper into PBL, I stumbled across this Youtube video. High Tech High focused on highschoolers but I was curious about how PBL could look for the elementary classroom. The statistics recorded and teacher anecdotes shared from this video has furthered my interest in PBL. Take a watch if you’d like!
With all that being said, although inspired, I still am overwhelmed with the idea of PBL. I wonder how the PBL approach could be implemented in larger, more traditional school systems? Do the benefits and skills learn extend long-term? I still have a lot more to learn, however, maybe effectiveness doesn’t have to look like an entire revolutionized school like High Tech High, maybe there are benefits in sometihng liek the power of 10%? What could my 10% different look line in my classroom? Maybe I could design projects that allow my students to tackle real-world problems. Maybe I could advocate for educational approaches that value critical thinking and collaboration over indivdiaul, siloed work. Maybe I can foster a classroom environment where my students feel empowered to take ownership of their learning and help direct where the learning goes to support their life beyond the walls of school?
If the goal of education is to be transformative for students, why should eduation itself not be transformed too?
Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:
Do you want to be online vs. offline?
Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.
First tasks you might explore with your new blog:
Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “EdTech” category or sub-categories, Free Inquiry and EdTech Inquiry). We have also pre-loaded the Teacher Education competencies as categories should you wish to use them to document your learning. If you would like to add more course categories, please do so (e.g., add EDCI 306A with no space for Music Ed, etc.)
See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the course categories assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
Add pages
Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works)
Under Appearance,
Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, etc.)
Customize menus & navigation
Use widgets to customize blog content and features
Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep for reference)
Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to use the course topic as the category as opposed to the course number as those outside of your program would not be familiar with the number (e.g., we use “EdTech” instead of “edci336).
Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.
Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging:
