The end is near SUMMARY OF LEARNING

It’s unimaginable to think that another semester has passed, and scarier yet another school year for all of us teachers. I love the flexibility and freedom that online courses have.  I will admit I don’t have a cat but being 7 months pregnant makes me want to be a home body, and I have no trouble getting cozy and doing my blogs or zooming in for class. I have taken four EC&I classes, and two of which have been with Alec and Katia. Being able to interact with other Grad students through Google+ and also with our blogs has been awesome.

 

Talk about learning, signing up for the first debate was a little scary but Kayla convinced me to get it out of the way, peer pressure I tell you!  Having Steve on our side of the debate was awesome.  When we first me up for our game plan, h mentioned being on the debate team in high school.  I figured I would post this picture in hope that someone may believe that Steve was the one holding the victory trophy. Of course Steve being way too honest admitted that he was not in the photo, but either way I had a good laugh.

Well now to sum up what I have learned over the semester

But first a flash back to last semester… Some of you may recall in EC&I 831 Kayla, Dallas and I attempted to use Nawmal to make an animated movie for our summary of learning.  For anyone who wasn’t in that class and needs a good laugh I suggest you read my summary of learning from last semester.  To make a long story short Nawmal left a bad taste in my mouth.  Kayla suggested that we give PowToon a shot.  PowToon appeared to be easier to use that the software that we had used prior. I figured we would go ahead and use it.  The software came with a 2 day free trial that allowed you to use all the customization options. If I needed to buy more time it would just cost $19.99 billed monthly.  Friday afternoon we began working on our project by selecting a some-what ready made layout .  With about 2 hours in we decided to call it a day.  Luckily we were able to save our project, I even opened it on another computer before I shut the browser window.

Saturday morning I decided to set my alarm and get up and attempt to work on it again. Little edits such as making sure the  color in each slide matched, there were 200 to choose from, and that green looks like the other 50 greens.  Another edit that took a long time was making sure the text boxes displayed in the right order. I must have spent 4 more hours just tweaking the presentation.  I did have a tough time attempting to get the spy song to loop through the whole presentation.  I fought the spy song battle for 2 days before I uploaded it to YouTube.  The 2 day trial came with a little timer that appeared in the corner of the screen that somehow just stressed me out.  Although, I was curious what 2 day trial really meant, I was going to look it up, before I got locked out and lost all our progress.  I think PowToon has many great features and would student and teacher presentations look awesome but I think the people would also feel the time crunch, if it was not a paid subscription.

Well folks for the moment you have been waiting more!!

Well I guess the time has come to thank everyone for their input, contributions and insights to my learning, and  a special thanks Alec and Katia for everything that they prepared, brought to the class, and for all of the fast paced discussions that they facilitated. Ohh yeah and I love the debate format, so much more engaging than straight forward presentations.

Putting a name to an online face

Hi everyone! My name is Chalyn Smith and I have been a Special Education classroom teacher at Kitchener Community School for the past 5 years. I have been teaching at Kitchener since I received my Bachelor of Education after degree from the First Nations University of Canada in 2011. The program that I facilitate is called a Structured Learning Classroom (SLC), which was a created to meet the needs of all learners within the public elementary system. My classroom focuses on providing a safe, nurturing and caring environment where my students feel comfortable building relationships with all team members and students. I strive to meet each student’s social, emotional, behavioral and educational needs. I encourage and focus on the strengths of our students.

I am blown away thinking that this is my sixth graduate class at the University of Regina in Curriculum and Instruction. I love the flexibility of the online courses offered by Alec, this is my second course with him and Katia as I took 831 last semester. Meeting in person last week allowed me to again see some familiar faces. I enjoy looking at different classmate blogs, and challenge myself to explore even more this semester. Luckily my wonderful co-teacher Kayla (who I share my classroom with), convinced me to jump into the debate with both feet, eeeekkk we present next week with Steve. Hopefully we can convice you all that technology does not actually improves learning. Wish us luck!!

I managed to create my 831 blog last semester and since beginning to blog and leaning more about technology I’ve tried to increase it in the classroom. I have attempted to do mini lessons on such things such as formatting, email, and all the other things little I had overlooked. Currently I share all sorts of cool articles and video’s off Facebook (wow I love the save link feature), I also have began to use Kahoot and the students love it. I am lucky to have 2 iPads, a student laptop, and 4 Chromebooks permanantly homed in my classroom. If anyone has any cool ideas or suggestion to add to my tech toolbox please share.

See everyone next week in the Zoom room!!