Teaching, Learning and Exploration

Category: EdTech (Page 2 of 2)

Tech Wisdom

Today Jesse Miller came in and spoke passionately about the possibilities available to us in terms of tech. FIPPA is a good resource to access, but I feel relatively aware of the risks and how to mitigate them. One important factor is to understand the network you are on, and that what you do on private networks can be seen by the operators of that network. Another thing to be vigilant about is your general impression in public and that people may be capturing your image and sharing it broadly. I think it is interesting to think about our relationship with technology, and I really appreciated Jesse’s very human approach; the issues that are uncovered and brought up thanks the the use of these networks.

Network citizenship means we have a proactive and meaningful engagement with the world through a media platform. It is important that we recognize that responsibility because the internet sometimes seems to make its own rules and we have to understand our moral approach to how we use it.

 

First Men’s Circle – Reflection

I had been anticipating this circle for a couple weeks and was feeling underprepared yesterday until I spoke with a good friend. After the session, I realized that I had been preparing for a long time – developing skills of facilitation through my camp called FACES. I had facilitated a couple “Small group” sessions with my “Camera crew” in order to allow student to process therefore strengthening their overall camp experience. I found it extremely rewarding and it empowered me to further explore this type of work.

I believe I have uncovered several key skills that are necessary to effectively lead a group. One of which is the objectification of experiences. Noticing things that are happening emotionally,  for example, and giving them a name can become a tool to communicate one’s experience without ambiguity, thus opening a door for introspection. Identifying  details and asking questions about them is an incredibly important part of the work. These details are revealing things about what the person is going through and when we ask specific questions about those details, we invite them to reveal themselves.

Another skill that I feel I did well in was empowering the group to engage in each-other’s share. For example, when it was one person’s time to share and they wrapped up a though and left a pause, I would ask the rest of the group if they had anything to say to the person. This would allow an opportunity for the group to validate the person sharing. It is important that as a facilitator, I steer the type of talk but I don’t need to control the whole talk; I want the group to run itself.

In summary, this first experience running my own circle has been very satisfying and I hope it can continue to be a staple of meaning in my weeks to come.

 

Over and Out!

 

Things I learned

Today in EdTech we learned how to use TweetDeck as a layout tool for twitter. We can add different entities and be able to see their activity seperately from all the other twitter happenings. We also learned about using Trello. It seems like a phenomenal tool for group collaboration.

Human Circle Work

I have decided to do my free inquiry project on circles. Circles are a way to come together as a community and interact with each other in a meaningful and honest way. I am interested in this concept because it opens an individual up to experiencing or processing things like emotions, relationships hardship, addiction and many other things. It is an inclusive setting which encourages group support and sharing. The idea comes from indigenous cultures; who create these circles to strengthen the community.

In specific, I will be facilitating a Men’s Circle throughout this term. On Monday evenings, I have 8 or 10 individuals who have agreed to meet and do this type of work. Our purpose in the dive into our personal stories- to learn more about who we are so we can be better, more embodied versions of ourselves.

Tonight (september 23rd) is the first group. I am slightly anxious about what to do in regards to the starting time – it was supposed to be at 7:00 but may have to be at 7:30. We will see how it goes!

 

 

Privacy Learning

Today, whilst setting up our wordpress accounts, we  learned how to attribute images in terms. We learned that we can’t just use images copy-pasted into our sites without sourcing a credit. Not having the rights to media you are using is not only unproffesional, it is illegal. It is best if we use open-sourced stock images and then try to find the original source of the images. Websites like creative commons https://creativecommons.org/, or pexels http://pexels.com. 

I intend to use some of my own photographs on my website, that way I have a personal connection to the photos, and I don’t have to worry about ownership!

Welcome and Introduction

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

  1. Do you want to be online vs. offline?
  2. Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
  3. 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)
  4. 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 “Music Ed” with space for EDCI 306A, 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.

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