Edtech – elissahalliday

QR Codes

December 4, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

A QR Code (Quick Response Code) is a barcode that is readable by an imaging device like a camera on phones, laptops, tablets, etc. and when you scan it, you gain information about the item that is attached to it. To scan one of these codes using an imaging device, you need to open up your camera and scan the code (you do not need to take a picture). This will then give you a link to the item or website, making it very easy to see the product. They were first created in Japan in 1994 for the automotive industry but quickly became more and more popular for various different uses, due to its fast readability and its large storage space. QR codes are made up of black squares that are arranged into a square shape on a white background. Below is a picture of a QR Code. QR_code_for_mobile_English_Wikipedia.svg.png

QR codes are used for many applications, such as tracking products, identifying items, managing documents, general marketing, and more! A lot of companies use it since it is easily scannable by smartphones, to promote their product and to link to their website. This makes it even easier for consumers to get access to the brand’s website, which is beneficial for the companies. I have scanned QR codes before to gain information about a product, and I found them easy to use and very straightforward, which for someone who is not super techy is a great way to find more information on a brand.

Distributed Learning

December 4, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

Distributed learning is a style of learning that is independent of the teacher and focuses on the use of technology for learning. It provides an opportunity for student independence and for flexibility by learning outside the normal classroom setting. Teachers who use this style of learning use a variety of electronic resources to communicate with their students, such as video conferencing, email, telephone calls and more.

Video conferencing is a great tool to use when choosing to do distributed learning. It is a way to communicate with your students and help guide them through their learning through the use of technology. Video conferencing allows for face-to-face interaction with others anywhere in the world. This can be used by the teacher to help a student one-on-one or help teach a group of students. Students can also use it to conference with their peers to help each other with their learning. One example of a popular app used for video conferencing is Skype. Skype allows users to video conference with up to 25 people and all you need is the app (which is free) and a wifi connection.

Throughout my high school years, I did not have a lot of experience with distributed learning. A lot of it was very teacher directed. It was not until this year that I really experienced distributed learning. I have had the opportunity to do multiple inquiry projects, which allowed me to choose topics that I am interested in and do my own research on these topics. Through this project, I learned how to use a blog, found many resources to back up my ideas, and gained more independence in my learning. My teacher of this class also introduced to us the idea of using video conferencing to stay in touch and to get any help we need on our own time (we did not have to be in class to get assistance). I really enjoyed this style of learning and found it very beneficial to my own learning. I would like to learn more about it and use it in my own classroom in my years to come.

Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality

November 20, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

Virtual Reality is an interactive experience that is computer-generated and it takes place in a simulated environment that is either similar to the real world or more of a fantasy. Its purpose is to immerse you in a fully virtual world. These experiences usually include both auditory and visual feedback, but can also incorporate other sensory feedback. The most common technology that is used to experience this reality is a headset. When you put on these headsets you are able to look around and move around in this virtual world. They generate realistic sounds, images, and other sensations that make the user feel as if you are in this virtual or imaginary world. The first headset was created in 2010 and it has evolved since then. Some more expensive headsets need to be connected to a computer so they can run apps and games, and some other less expensive ones use a cellphone clicked in the front of the headset. You can go to an app store specifically for virtual reality apps to download different ones, for example, a rollercoaster one which makes the user feel as if they are really on a rollercoaster. I have had the opportunity to try these headsets and I did the rollercoaster one. The realisticness of it amazed me. I truly felt as if I was on a rollercoaster; I felt the drop of my stomach when I went down a big hill.

There is also Augmented Reality, which is different from Virtual Reality as it uses the real world and adds to it (it adds digital elements to a real-life view usually using a smartphone). For example, you could be looking at your house, but include other characters to it. A popular example of Augmented Reality is the lenses available on Snapchat, which adds characters or an image into your picture. Another popular example is Pokemon GO, which shows you what is in front of you but adds in Pokemon GO characters.

pokemon-augmented-reality-ss-1920-800x450 — Augmented Reality showed in Pokemon Go (top) and Snapchat Lenses (bottom)

Augmented Reality showed in Pokemon Go (top) and Snapchat Lenses (bottom)

Both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have become more and more popular and used in the last several years. The main difference between the two is that Virtual Reality does not use any aspect of real life (it is a completely virtual world), where Augmented Reality uses the real world and just adds digital elements to it. I would recommend trying out Virtual Reality if you ever have the opportunity as it really is a unique experience unlike anything else.

Here is a helpful website explaining more about Virtual Reality:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/virtual-reality-guide-headsets-apps-games-vr

Twine and Google Classroom

November 6, 2018November 6, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

Today in class we talked about two tech tools, google classroom and twine.

Twine is a tool that allows its users to tell interactive non-linear stories. It was created in 2009 by Chris Klimas but it is now maintained by several people. Twine is free to use for any way you wish to use it, including for commercial use, and it publishes directly to HTML, which allows you to post your work almost everywhere. It is used by most of its users to develop hypertext narratives and games. It does not require any programming languages that most game development tools do. This makes it very desired for those who do not know any programming languages. It is a tool that can be used by anyone who is wanting to create interactive fiction. In class, we created our own one by an example given to us by our teacher. I have never been good with technology so it was interesting for me to see how Twine works. After some practice, I began to get the hang of it and learned about some basic coding for design elements. Within Twine, you do not have to code, but if you want to add certain design features, such as bold writing, underlining, background colors etc. you can code them into your writing. After you have finished creating your interactive story, you can play it and see it for your self which is a cool feature. You can also share what you have created with whoever you would like.

Screen Shot 2018-11-06 at 10.53.12 AM — This is what it looks like when you are creating your interactive story

The other tech tool we looked at was Google Classroom. Google Classroom is a web tool that was created by Google in 2014 specifically for schools but can be used by anyone who has a Google account. It a free to use and allows teachers and their students to connect with each other both inside and outside of school. Within Google Classroom you can create classes, distribute assignments, post materials, and announcements, communicate and stay organized. It is a great tool to use that saves you time, is easy to set up, and is affordable. Students can be added to a classroom by a private code or automatically through a school domain. Students can submit their assignments and post questions they have or add to discussions within the classroom.

I used Google Classroom a lot throughout my time in high school and I found it a really great tool. It makes it easy to see assignments that your teachers give you and various materials that are useful for the course. I like how you can ask a question or start a discussion on Google Classroom, this allows you to collaborate with your peers. In class today we created our own classroom to see how easy it is to create one. For someone not very tech-savvy it was very easy to set up and to add materials within your classroom. Google Classrooms is a great tool to stay connected with your students and is a paperless way to give assignments and materials. I am definitely going to use Google Classroom when I begin teaching.

Overall, both Twine and Google Classroom are great tech tools (for very different reasons).

Creative Commons

October 30, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

In today’s class, we learned about the non-profit organization called Creative Commons. This website gives users a large range of creative works that they can build upon legally and share. Creative Commons was founded in 2001 and is used by many different search engines such as Flickr and youtube.

To use Creative Commons you go to the CC Search part of it and type in what you are looking for. For example, if you wanted to search for sunflowers you would write that in the search bar and then choose the search engine you want to use. For my example I choose Flickr. You also have the choice of clicking off if you want it to use it for commercial purposes and/ or if you want to modify, adapt or build upon it (see picture below). Since I was not looking for an image I could use for commercial purposes, or a photo I could modify, adapt, or build upon, I did not click off either of these boxes.

Once you have decided what you are searching for and chose the categories you want, you can search for the image you are looking for. From here you get a large variety of photos from different authors. When you select a photo you can see who the publisher is, the views, when it was taken and the rights. The photo I chose has some rights reserved and with these rights, I can share and adapt the image, but cannot use it for commercial purposes. When you want to save the photo you can choose the size you want (square, small, medium, large, or original size). After I looked at how to properly save the image, I saved it by username@searchengine.copyrightcode. For my image, I saved it as Kristine@Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

Flickr by Kristine licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Here is a link to the Creative Commons search – https://search.creativecommons.org/

Curation – Diigo and Feedly

October 19, 2018October 22, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

In my Technology Innovation class, we talked about curation and a few resources that assist users in collaborating with others and organizing resources. Two specifically that we talked about were Diigo and Feedly.

Diigo is a social bookmarking website launched in 2006, standing for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups, and Other Stuff”. Diigo allows its users to tag and bookmark web pages. This is a helpful resource because it allows for you to get easy access to these saved pages. It helps you to stay organized and you can share these resources with others. Diigo designed their app so you can save bookmarks through tags, which makes it easier for you to find the resources you are looking for later. For example, if you are researching about travel tips you can create a tag named travel tips, so then when you are wanting to see these resources you can go to the tag instead of looking through all your bookmarks. The bookmarking tool helps you stay organized and allows you to easily find your resources.

Another useful tool of Diigo is the highlighting and sticky note tool. The highlighting tool allows you to highlight important parts of a text directly on the website. Highlighting is helpful for you to remember which parts of the text you thought were important and were wanting to remember, and also to share with others and show which parts you wanted them to see. The sticky notes tool lets you add notes, comments or reminders directly onto the webpage. This is another great feature that is very useful for both the user and for collaborating with colleagues, students, peers, etc. As a university student, both of these features would be extremely helpful to me for researching and collaborating with my peers.

Diigo is a great tool for curating, organizing bookmarks, highlighting text, adding sticky notes of information to web pages and collaborating with others.

The other web tool we discussed was Feedly. Feedly was released in 2008 and was created to be used as a news aggregator and to help you discover insightful sources. Meaning it finds similar news feeds from various online sources and groups them together for easy access and viewing. The user can then customize this and share their sources with others. Feedly has an app that is available on both iPhone and Android making it accessible for many people. It is a great tool to discover many useful online sources, such as news publications, blogs, and youtube videos. Feedly allows its users to organize their work and collaborate with others.

Feedly is another great curating tool that allows you to discover sources in an organized and customized way and to share with your teammates.

All in all, I learned a lot about curation and gained two great resources to help me organize sources and collaborate with my peers. These will be useful applications for me to use in the classroom.

Diigo’s website: https://www.diigo.com/

Feelys website: https://feedly.com/i/welcome

Video and Audio Editing with iMovie

October 16, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

In class this week we learned the basics in video editing using iMovie. iMovie is a video editing software created by apple available as an application for Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones.

With iMovie, you can create videos, movie trailers, and edit videos. It is easy to use and has many great features, including cool titles, special effects, filters, and soundtracks. To create a movie you import video footage or photos from your computer and drag it down to the iMovie screen, from there you can edit these clips. You can add titles, themes, music, backgrounds, and special effects. You can also add transitions between your video footage such as fades and blurs.

One of my favorite features is that you can trim down your video clips if you do not want the whole thing. To do this you select the video and drag the end of the video to the left to where you would like it to end. You can also do this to the beginning of the video if you want to cut out a part of the start. You can also split a clip if there is a part of the video you want but just in a different part of your video. To do this you place your cursor at the part of your clip you want to split. You then go to the toolbar click modify then split clip (or you can click command B). This is a great tool as sometimes you do not want the full video or you want it all but certain parts of it at different parts of your movie.

iMovie also allows you to do audio editing. You can add sound effects and music to your video. To add a sound effect you click on the audio tab, then click on sound effects, then type what sound effect you want into the search box. When you have found the sound you want, select it and drag it below your video clip. You can make the sound effect louder or quieter than the actual video. If you are wanting to add in music to your video it is a similar process but after you click audio instead of clicking sound effects you click on iTunes (if you have music on your iTunes) and then search for the song you want and drag it down beneath the video. Usually, it is longer than the video clip so you will have to trim it down (mentioned above).

When you have finished your movie you can export it in order to share it or upload it to Youtube etc. To export your video you press the upload button, which is located in the top right corner in the iMovie window. From here there are a few options, I recommend selecting the “File” icon and then you can change the name of your movie and choose which folder you want to keep it in (documents or desktop etc.). It usually takes a few minutes for it to export and the time it takes depends on the length of your video. Then you have successfully created and exported your movie!!

I have used iMovie quite a bit in High School and now in my music class. Speaking from someone who is not very knowledgeable when it comes to technology, iMove is easy to use. For my music class, I created a video of myself learning the ukulele. I had to import videos, trim my videos, add audio over top, add in titles throughout my video and fix my volume around so the audio was not as loud as my playing. This was a really good learning experience for me as I now feel a lot more confident in using iMovie for both video and audio editing.

All in all, iMovie is a great resource for video and audio editing. It is easy to use and iMovie contains many awesome features for you to create a video. The only downside of iMovie is that it is specific to Apple products, so in order to use this application you need either a Mac computer, an iPhone, or an iPad.

Twitter

October 15, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

Twitter is a very popular social media platform used to interact with others via messages called “tweets”. It was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006 and fastly gained popularity among young adults. It has now become popular for a wide variety of people to communicate about news, important issues, and their daily lives.

If you create a twitter account you have a “handle” which is your username. You create your own username and it can be whatever you want to make it. This is how other members search for you by searching @ and then your handle. You can customize your profile as much or as little as you would like. You have the choice to add in a profile picture and a bio or to leave it blank. You also have the option to make your profile public or private depending on the level of privacy you wish. If you have a private profile, people have to request to follow you and you have the choice to accept or decline. If you have a public account, then other users can see your profile and tweets without requesting to follow you.

A tweet is a 140-word message that is sent out to one’s followers. If you hashtag (#) something on your tweet and you do not have a private account others who are searching up that hashtag can see your message. If you do not want people being able to see your message then you can make your account private. When you have a private account only those who you have allowed to follow you can view your tweets. If your account is public then anyone can view your tweets and they also have the option to retweet your post, favorite/like it, or reply to it and create a conversation.

The hashtag that I briefly touched on earlier is a way of finding something that interests you or a way for you to start a conversation. You can search up a topic you want to see what other people have been saying about it by searching for example #dailynews. Another way to use the hashtag is on your own tweet. You can add hashtags to start a conversation and for other people to find your tweet. If people want to reply to your tweet they can also hashtag the same thing and add to the discussion. Hashtags are also used to create twitter chats. Twitter chats are conversations on a certain topic (a hashtag). They are a good way to connect people who have similar interests, questions, and/or beliefs. Many people participate in Twitter chats including educators.

Many educators are on twitter to get new teaching ideas, to see what other teachers are doing, and to stay connected with fellow co-workers. It is a great way to start a discussion with other educators and to see their opinions on certain topics such as technology in the classroom. It can also be used by teachers for their students to see what is happening in class, when things are due, and other important notes. Since technology is becoming more and more prevalent in classrooms, twitter is a good resource for teachers to use to stay connected and to learn more about education.

All in all, Twitter has many great features and allows people to share their interests and to keep up to date with what is going on. It is a useful tool for businesses, educators, and individuals looking to stay connected with others and share their opinions. It is good to know the privacy settings of Twitter before creating an account and posting tweets.

Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry School Visit

October 10, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

In my Technology Education class, we went on a school visit to observe Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. It is a newer high school in Victoria, that offers a personalized education. This school has been operating for six years and has 85 students attending. It is a private school, but the tuition is more affordable than most private schools. PSI does not want to create more schools, but wants to be a model to other schools and hopefully show them that they can do it too.

At this school, they focus on inquiry-based learning, where students are told they can ask anything. Their inquiry process is to find an initial question then do some research and from that research create a better inquiry question. These inquiries can be anywhere from a week long to a year long. The staff recommends doing three inquiry projects at one time, so students stay engaged and always have something to do. The inquiry process is a lot of build, make, try and experiment, not just research. The students have the opportunity to go work with the community and get hands-on experience. For example, one year a student wanted to learn about boat building, so they worked with a boat builder for one year. I think this is a really cool idea and allows the students to get a good hands-on experience, which is valuable to find your interests.

The learning design is much different than most high schools. They do not test at this school, they put learning in the student’s hands and their success is based on their engagement. The learning environment is meant for the students to succeed, they want there to be a joy in learning for the students. The students build there own daily schedules to be what they want to be working on and can include breaks to go get some exercise etc. A tablet is used to sign in and out that says where they are going and when they will be back. This allows students the freedom to leave when they want to better their learning process. They still have report cards, as it is needed to go onto university or college, so the teachers meet three times a year to put students inquiries into courses – subjects are integrated within each other and their inquiry questions.

I personally have never been to a school like this. It was a very cool experience to get to go observe it and it gave me, as an aspiring teacher, a different way of looking at learning. I really like how PSI puts learning in the student’s hands and allows them to research topics they want to know more about. I think this ensures the student’s engagement into school and is of value to them in their future. I am happy I got to experience this school as it gave me a lot of ideas that I could implement in my classroom to create an effective and engaging learning environment.

PSI’s Website: http://learningstorm.org/

Social Media Concerns/ Usage as an Aspiring Teacher

October 3, 2018October 4, 2018elissahallidayLeave a comment

With an increase in technology use over the past few years, social media has become more and more popular. Sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Snapchat are all being used for creating and sharing ideas/content and for communication. With the popularity of these websites come many safety and privacy concerns, which many people are unaware of.

In our Technology Innovation class, we had guest speaker Jesse Miller come in to talk to us about the concerns of social media with kids, social media and the workplace, and the best practices for privacy online.

A few current concerns of social media with kids is how it is continuing to get younger and younger, it makes them feel special, and there is increased affirmations. There has been an increase in the presence of primary aged students on social media platforms. Without proper knowledge of privacy and safety online this can be a huge issue for kids. Another concern is how it makes them feel special, this makes them want to keep using it and keep adding friends etc. Lastly, children see a lot of the positives of social media such as there favorite Youtube stars making tons of money from creating these videos and they think “I can do that too”, which has its pros and cons but it could lead to a decrease in their academic involvement.

Social media use is also related to the workplace. Social media can be used to search up future employers. This is why your privacy and what you post on social media is a big issue. It is important to balance your personal life with your professional expectations. Especially being a teacher, many students will be searching you up so you want to be cautious of what they will find.

One major focus of social media privacy is digital rights. Before posting pictures, videos, etc. you need the consent of anyone who is featured in that photo. As a teacher, it is important to note that if you are taking a picture of your class you need three levels of consent: the students, the parents, and the school. If a student does not want to be featured in the photo you can use image editing to, for example, put an emoji over their face to keep their privacy respected. To keep your own privacy you should be making sure to read the privacy statements of the platforms you are reading so you know what you are signing into and be aware of how you can make your account more private. You need to have an understanding of what the consequences of using these platforms are.

One topic that Jesse talked a bit about was gaming and the world around that. I did not know a lot about gaming as I am not a gamer myself so this was very informative for me. We learned about a streaming service called Twitch where there are live videos of people playing video games that others can join into and watch. I also learned that there are tons of gaming tournaments that go on around the world where the winner can make up to millions of dollars. This is relevant for me as a teacher candidate as elementary children love video games and gaming is very prevalent in their lives.

Overall social media has a very large presence in many peoples lives and needs to be used with caution and understanding. We should be open about these platforms and have open dialogues with employees, co-workers, friends, and family.