This week I have been thinking a lot about burnout. Not teacher burnout, which we often hear about, but student burnout. As adult learners and teaching candidates, many of us feel it. I tend to look for more than one reason for things. That is just how my brain works. Sometimes it helps me understand…
At first, the idea of coding in the classroom felt somewhat intimidating. I had never created a digital tool before, and my initial question was simple: what exactly is computational thinking, and how could it realistically connect to the subjects I plan to teach? I am familiar with the ideas of decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction,…
This morning, we had the opportunity to visit Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) in Victoria. PSII is a small, public high school that does things differently. Instead of organizing learning around traditional subjects and rigid schedules, the school is built around inquiry, projects, and real-world learning. Students design learning plans based on their…
Long before education became organized into curricula, textbooks, and exams, humans learned through stories. Storytelling was not entertainment or decoration; it was a way of passing on knowledge, values, history, identity, and relationships to the world. In many ancient cultures, especially within Indigenous ways of knowing, story is not simply a way of expressing knowledge,…
Today, instead of our regular class time, we were asked to take part in the BC wide professional development day. When I tried to register for the live Zoom sessions, they were already full. I was redirected to recorded materials, including a Digital Classroom Overview and Getting Started with AI in K-12 from Focused Educational…
In the psychology of adolescence, we learn about brain development and the biological changes in when adolescents naturally fall asleep and wake up. Early school start times create chronic sleep deprivation, which negatively affects learning, attention, and academic performance. Chronic sleep deprivation in adolescents has been linked to many negative outcomes, including: Because of this…
I sometimes find myself wondering how I used to remember everything before digital tools became such a big part of my life, tasks, phone numbers, schedules, appointments. I remember notebooks, folders, color coding, and loose papers everywhere. Today, my calendar, Google Drive, contact lists, and reminders hold so much of my daily information that it…
My introduction to AI goes back to the first time I heard Siri on my sisterās phone. I remember joking around with it and not taking it very seriously. At that time, it felt more like a novelty than anything meaningful. AI as a deeper and more serious concept came to me later through the…
This weekās class focused on multimedia learning theory, digital storytelling, Screencasting, and video editing, and on why multimedia can be such a powerful tool for communication, especially in teaching and learning. I appreciated that we spent time understanding why multimedia matters before jumping into the technical āhow-toā of making videos. One idea that stood out…
Before the first class even began, the course title brought up two very different feelings for me. On one hand, excitement: learning new things, creativity, freedom, and exploration. On the other, fear: what if I donāt get it? What if I canāt do it? That fear was stronger because the course is online. I am…
