Spencer Wilson- educator in training

Some of peers recently presented their inquiry work about mindfulness and application that can guide one through different forms of meditation. I personally see value in meditation, regardless of whether or not it is viewed as a spiritual activity. Just taking a moment to breathe and reflect can be very calming and good way to center oneself.

I would like to incorporate mindfulness activities into the classroom, but I feel like it can be a tricky issue if all learners are not  on board. Some people are super apprehensive to any form of mediation due to associating it with a certain religion  or people in robes chanting “ohm”. The reality is that almost every religion practices meditation in some form. When broaching the topic of meditation to the class I would be sure to cover it’s history, application, and the peer-reviewed research behind it. I would then poll the class to see the amount of buy-in; if there was a significant amount of people interested I would try to implement an optional, brief period of time to allow learners to breathe and reflect. This could either be done in total silence or guided using an app like calm .

This past week a few of my peers presented their inquiry into data security and how that plays into our role as educators. Learners have massive amounts of interaction with the digital world, and educators are using online resources and activities more frequently year-by-year. As educators we need to think about what we are asking learners to do in relation to what data we are asking them to share online. I am eager to embrace technology in the classroom, but am concerned about putting learners’ data at risk as a result. When working with learners I am going to take extra care to consider what data I am asking learners to put online and how I can mitigate the safety of doing so.

The presenters showed the trailer for “The Great Hack”, which I watched this last weekend. It was a really interesting documentary that dove into the business of data exploitation, focusing on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. I highly recommend it to anyone remotely curious about what happens with all the data we create daily. I have attached a link to the trailer below.

I have been practicing the chain stitch(ch) in my spare time, and have recently moved onto the single crochet(sc). The single crochet is similar to the chain stitch, but it is adding another chain onto the side of the existing chain. This stitch added a layer of difficulty to crochet; I now need to count the number of loops I make in each chain and be able to find a certain part of each loop to bring my hook through. This challenge has changed the lens with which I assess my own work; instead of looking at the size of each loop I am now concerned with the number of loops and the tension in each chain.

As pictured to the right, I was not 100% accurate with my counting on this series of sc’s. The lack of accuracy is visible through the angle of the right side of the piece. I am now very careful to count each sc I produce to eliminate the issue.

Throughout learning the sc I have reflected on how this applies to learning. There would have been little value for me to have learned the sc before I could ch, it just wouldn’t have made sense. As a result, when I am teaching new concepts and skills I will need to ensure that they are built in a logical way, and that foundational skills have been established before moving past them.  If I do not do so learners may just end up feeling confused an discouraged, which is not a good learning outcome.

This week we were fortunate enough to be visited by 5 members of Spectrum Middle School. They came to UVic to tell us about their experiences in using Minecraft in education.  They helped guide us through a closed server they had created as a tutorial, which was really interesting.

I started playing Minecraft almost a decade ago, and it’s amazing to see what the game has been used for. In-game players can build gigantic musical machines, even going as far as being able to play a 2-D version of Minecraft from within a chest in the game. Check this link if you want to dive deeper into that.

Minecraft has wide application for educational as well. Apart from generally fostering spatial awareness, problem solving, and resource use, there have been a diversity of modifications and worlds made for specific content. There are worlds focusing on land use, extinction, and historical events.

I see Minecraft as having wide applicability to education, given that the learners are motivated to use the program, and that the educator is using the game in a meaningful way. I look forwards to trying to integrate Minecraft or similar technologies into my teaching habits.

Some would say jokes are as old as communication itself, but the way they have been told has changed throughout the ages. They have been relayed using a multitude of modalities, but largely through voice, text, and imagery. The emergence of digital platforms and communication has created new types of literacy, and in-turn, a new modality for expressing human ideas.

The digital expression of these ideas is often referred to as a meme. The term “meme” was developed by Richard Dawkins in 1976, and is generally defined as “a piece of culture, typically a joke,which gains influence through online transmission”. Memes are often jokes, but can also be reflections, statements about current events or perspectives, and even confessions.

Memes began as images with text superimposed over them, but the last decade has seen a proliferation of what is considered a meme. They now include videos with audio,video loops(gifs), only text, and even song-based memes. Memes can be found on just about all social media platforms, websites have even been made for the creation of memes. A popular resource for learning about different memes and creating them is knowyourmeme.com, I recommend checking it out if they seem like a foreign concept.

The most interesting thing about memes to me is that they really are a form of literacy; it takes time and exposure to understand the general format, and there are multiple “tiers” of memes that require deeper knowledge or familiarity with multiple types of memes. Depending on how deep you go, things can get pretty cryptic, but I guess that is true of many types of literacy. They are also constantly changing: new memes and meme formats are being constantly developed and broadened in their application. A good example would be Greta Thunberg’s recent speech at the UN, there were both image-based and video memes all over the place within 24 hours of the speech.

If we believe that educators should relate course content in meaningful ways to learners, would including memes in our practice be meaningful? Would it just be cringey? I think that these thoughts are frequent among educators in considering how much to relate to learners without losing face as an authority figure.

I have really enjoyed building connections with educators and learners during my two months of observations at Victoria High Secondary School. Repeatedly observing the same classrooms has helped me to see how educators manage the classroom environment, as well as some of the tools and strategies that educators frequently employ. I have also had the opportunity to visit central middle school,talk with school counsellors, and spend a block with the school Librarian. These activities have helped me to form a more complete idea of what school as a whole can be for learners. 

I was very classroom-centric initially, ranking other aspects of the school as secondary features. I now feel like a school is like the human body; the whole of what a school offers is, in a way, more than the sum of its parts. The supportive, learning, and social aspects of the school environment come together to form something that can be like a second home to some learners, or a place of safety. 

I have found my time in learning strategies to be very valuable; the class is designed as a space to allow learners to develop learning strategies to help them in areas where they are struggling, or just need a little guidance. Observing in this space has allowed me to take the time to not only diagnose where the learner is having difficulty, but why the difficulty arose in the first place. The “open” aspect of the class has also allowed the learner and I to fully discuss a given concept, as well as real-life examples and applications. Providing context and making the topic less abstract can help with comprehension, understanding, and increase interest in the subject matter.

One of my first experiences in the class was helping a learner with a chemistry assignment. The learner said they felt lost and that they had trouble following their educator; they felt that the educator was “scattered” and didn’t preface concepts, they just kind of hopped right in. I initially approached this by diagnosing what they knew about chemistry, then by talking our way through the questions and asking what they recognized and they felt confused about. Turns out the learner just felt plain lost, so I decided that we should start by looking at the periodic table and talking about what we see, eventually building up to approaching the questions. By “starting with the basics” and framing the concepts with questions I was able to effectively bring the learner up to speed. After a bit of guidance through the concepts the learner was able to effectively apply those concepts to complete their assignment. The following week another peer was working with the same learner and later told me that the learner said I really helped with understanding the topic and that they were now up to speed in that class.

This interaction reminded that learners issues don’t necessarily involve their ability to learn, but more-so how the educator approaches the subject and frames the concepts. I feel that proper scaffolding can really make things easier to comprehend and apply to other concepts. It seems that it would be hard for true learning to occur if learners are unable to contextualize the subject matter. In my high school experience there were definitely times that I asked myself “why exactly are we learning this?”. When working with learners I am going to strive to introduce concepts in meaningful ways, and build different forms of assessment into class discussions and activities as a way to check-in with learners and make sure they aren’t feeling lost or confused. 

My first few weeks of observation at Victoria High have been an immersive, introspective experience that has allowed me to engage with a diversity of learners while observing classroom dynamics. This experience has provided insight into how educators build relationships with learners, and has allowed me to gain insight into pedagogies and teaching philosophies of different educators.

During one of my observations  the educator of a math class allowed my fellow observer and I to assist learners with their activity. I had the opportunity to assist a learner that could not find where their mistake was for a certain question. By working through the question together we were able to realise that the issue was not with knowledge of content, but because the learner hadn’t broke the problem down into manageable tasks. We then talked about how the concept of breaking a problem down can be applied to many areas outside of math. This interaction reminded me that there are elements of problem solving outside of course-specific content, and reinforced my desire to incorporate techniques to rationalize problems or approaches to general problem solving into my teaching habits. This approach could help to prepare learners for tackling a diversity of complex problems outside of school..

Towards the end of another class I was fortunate to be able to engage in some small-talk with a learner(fret not, they had finished their assignment). They were wearing a surf brand from a place I had recently traveled through. As it turns out, they had spent time there as well, so we took the time to share our experiences. I believe interactions like this are incredibly important because they allow educators to gain insight into the interests and lifestyles of learners which, in-turn, can allow the educator to draw on themes that seem more relevant to their group’s interests and experiences. On the other hand, casual conversation can also allow learners to connect more with their educators in a more congenial way. If educators are relatable, learners may see them as people that lead diverse, meaningful lives. .

My observations at Victoria High have reinforced my belief that there is much more to education than content-based learning, and have incentivised me to incorporate different methods of problem solving into lesson plans.. As educators we need to pursue a variety of different strategies to facilitate learning in different ways. We should also seek to build relationships with learners to strengthen our understanding of them, and their ability to see educators as real and diverse people, potentially mentors. 

This week we had the pleasure of partaking in a guest lecture by Jesse Miller.  He was a very charismatic speaker, and brought up some really interesting points about learners and technology.

He began by broaching the concept that our normal is not the normal of learners; they have  different experiences and interact with the digital world in different ways and for different uses. For this reason educators need to think twice about how they regulate the use of technology for learners.

Jesse Miller also covered the controversial topic of video game-based learning. He spoke of games as an alternative learning method, and of how large the gaming  has grown in the last few. Jesse suggested a great way to work with uninterested learners:  starting with something that learner is interested in and then approaching content through that interest(i.e. gaming) can help to reform their perception of learning.

Overall Jesse offered a very pro-tech perspective. He really seemed to embrace the changes that technology brings, and believed that we alter our habits of time to use technology ethically. Many educators, and adults for that matter, seem to have a general aversion to new types of technology, maybe people are just just afraid of new things? Embodying this form of techno-phobia could affect the relationship between  educator and student, where the two people may have differing views due to the different uses of technology in their daily lives.

I will try to maintain a generally positive and open view of technology in education, and when I have concerns about it’s use I will talk with my learners to understand their perspective before making a decision to regulate it’s use.