Megan Long
As the end of the semester comes closer so does the end of my EDTC 300 journey. This class was filled with so much useful information. To show my Summary of Personal Learning I decided to make a slide show that demonstrates what I have learned from this course and my major take aways. I also touch on my favourite classes and my favourite assignments and why I found them so interesting.
Click Here for my presentation on my Summary of Personal Learning project.
The end of ETDC 300 has come however, that does not mean I am done learning about yoga. I have grown a passion for yoga and its components throughout this journey. I picked yoga because as a secondary teacher I would like to incorporate this into my teaching. I would like to take this opportunity to wrap up what I have learned.
Learning Resources: Jala Neti video and Ujjayi Breathing video on YouTube.
Learning Resource: Sun Salutations for beginners and How To: Sun Salute B on YouTube.
Learning Resources: Youtube video from Floating Yoga School.
Learning Resources: Edpuzzle and YouTube video for beginner yoga
Learning Resources: Travis Elliot Video on YouTube
Learning Resources: I found both of these poses from the athletic trainer on my hockey team.
Leaning Resources: Yoga for Lower Back and Hip Pain and Stretch Routine in Bed Youtube Videos
Learning Resources: Headspace Guide to Meditation show on Netflix
Learning Resources: Tik Tok video called Yoga to Help You Sleep by @angelicakeele
This learning project has kick started my journey to learning about yoga. I was so devoted to finding resources and fun ways to learn about yoga. I enjoyed learning about the fundamentals of yoga while still practicing some different styles.
I now have a basic understanding of types of breathing and how to use them in my practice. I can also perform bot sun salute A and sun salute B without video help. I have also stared incorporating meditation and morning yoga into my daily routine. I perform 10 minutes of each to start my day and it has significantly improved my productivity.
This is not the end of my yoga journey. I am going to continue to broaden my knowledge on yoga so that I can teach my students some components such as meditation to help them in their daily life.
Throughout my EDTC 300 class I have come to realize the importance of connecting with peers and creating a large support group. I have found my classmates feedback so beneficial. We had many platforms including twitter, slack, and our personal blogs. These different platforms allowed for so many helpful connections with classmates especially because we could not talk in person.
I used slack as a way to quickly connect with other students in my class. Slack is set up like a huge group text so whenever you send anything it allows all of the students to easily see your post and they can respond quickly. I liked using this if I had questions about our class material or if I had a specific question on how to use our blogs.
This was a good resource for me because I got notifications directly to my phone whenever something was posted so I found it easy to follow and help my classmates. I found this platform the best to help my classmates due to the fact that we could quickly bounce ideas off of each other.
Since the beginning of the class I have used this platform to connect with classmates. I also connected with mentors who were able to help with setting up and using my blog.
I used twitter along side Feedly as a great way to find helpful resources. I was able to create a twitter page with a great following base of teachers. I have followed other education students along with professors and professionals. This wide range of followers provides many resources that are helpful for all ages. My favourite thing about twitter is being able to share resources I find with my classmates.
During EDTC 300 we had the opportunity to try many tools and I used these experiences as a way to share the tools that we learned about with my followers.
All of the images above are screenshots of some of my interactions with classmates and followers on Twitter. As you can see twitter I was able to help classmates find resources by making suggestions in comments on others posts as well as making my own posts with resources I have tried. I also found it useful to make positive comments on others posts just to show that I have view the resources they have shared. Another thing that I did to help my classmates was sharing some of the pages that I follow that I find very helpful such as @teachertoteacher.
Along with posting resources I also used twitter to help connect my followers with my WordPress blog. I found this helpful to classmates because it was an easy way to connect with my blog where I went more in-depth about each resource and why I recommend them.
Personally I used the blog post to connect to other students in EDTC 300 the most. I believed that these posts gave the most details on what students have learned. I found that leaving comments on others posts was a great was to help students improve their post or even give them my opinion on their resource.
There is so many ways to connect with classmates. These three platforms were the ways that I found most effective to help my fellow EDTC 300 classmates by answering questions, supplying resources, and simply giving positive feedback.
Coding is becoming more and more relevant today. When most people think of coding they think of a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols rushing through a computer screen and this can be very overwhelming.
However, coding is not that complicated. There is a website called Hour of Code that makes coding easy to use and fun to test out. This website has so many positive attributes:
This website allows students to learn patters and use their logical thinking to problem solve and work their way through problems that are engaging to them.
I decided to try an hour of code game for myself. I was able to find one that let me code a Flappy Bird game. This was fun because it was a game that I used to play and I was interested in learning how it was constructed.
I was able to set the code to tell the game when to make the bird flap and how fast to move the bird. I could also make the game change the sound that the bird made when you clicked the key pad.
This website is a great tool for teaching students how to code and it has many benefits. I would recommend using this tool in your classroom.
This week I have had a tough time sleeping. I have been staying up late studying for exams and getting up early to go to work. Because of my busy schedule my sleep patterns are suffering. I found myself getting up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. I tried everything from reading to going back to the basics and counting sheep. Except neither seemed to work.
Then I found a TikTok made by a @angelicakeele. She is a yogi who posts many videos related to the practice of yoga. She also posts about health in general.
I found one video that helped me fall back to sleep when I woke up. It was very relaxing and I often did not finish all of the poses because I would feel myself relax back into a sleeping state.
This video has many great poses and it is very beneficial to do before bed or if you are having troubles sleeping.
Click here to watch the TikTok
In high school many assignments that students are given have a research component to them. This means that students are being asked to find news that supports their work but more importantly they are being asked to decipher if it is real or fake. The problem with this is that most high school students do not know how to tell if an article or video they watch online is real and based of facts or fake and made up. Since I am becoming a high school teacher I believe that it is my responsibility to help students gain a better understanding of how to spot fake news online. I believe that there are three main ways to quickly check for fake news:
When looking at a site it is important to look at the details on the site because this can tell you quickly if the site is credible or not. I have made a checklist that is easy for students to use to see if there are any red flags on the sites they are using.
If you can confidently check off all of these boxes and rule out sites with bias, commercials, and false links then the site you are using is most likely credible.
If you find information on a website and you are not sure if it is fake news or factual, it is always a good idea to look for the same information on other sites. If many credible sites have the same information than you can be assured that the information in facts. However if you can not find the same information on any other sites then you probably should not use that source because it is likely fake news.
Most fake news sources will try to attack readers emotions by using false information that will cause readers to react. If you are reading a site and it is very biased and is directly left leaning or right leaning that is a big red flag. In these situations it is important to leave your emotions aside and use the other two tools that I listed above to determine the credibility of the site.
Have you ever felt like you have a million thoughts going through your head and you are just spinning trying to make any forward progress?
With finals right around the corner and final assignment due dates creeping up I have started to feel stressed. I feel like this is the case for most students whether they are in high school or post secondary. I have tried many strategies to help collect my thoughts like checklists, taking breaks periodically, and movement. All of these work great for a short amount of time but I was looking for something more useful. So I turned to meditation.
I watched a Netflix documentary called Headspace Guide to Meditation. It is a show that talks about the science and facts behind meditation and how it actually helps develop that parts of the brain associated with learning and shrinks the part of the brain associated with stress.
This series is only one season long. It has 8 episodes that are all about 20 minutes.
I highly recommend checking it out.
I practiced meditation this past week and I have noticed it helps me feel more productive when I am studying and I feel like I can get work done faster.
Pro Tip
If you are struggling to clear your mind when meditating light a candle and set it infant of you and focus on the flame.
Digital Identity is becoming more relevant and important in todays world. I learned this when I applied for a job this fall and the fist thing the employer said to me in the interview was, “I looked you up,” to me this was kind of a shock. I had to think about all of the things that would come up when you searched my name. Most of the links were hockey based and my social media accounts like Instagram and Twitter. This experience showed me how my online activity played such a huge role in my life. Employers everywhere use online profiles and personal activity to learn about their potential candidates and that is why your digital identity is important.
You have to be careful about what you post on your social media pages because you never know you is seeing your posts or where they are being seen or shared to. Jon Ronson talks about being careful online in his Ted Talk called “How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life“. He talks about a girl who posted a racist tweet before going on vacation and ended up being fired from her job a few hours later after the tweet blew up on line. This is a prime example of employers basing their decisions on hiring you from your online activity.
That being said not everything you do online has to be super professional. It is perfectly normal to use different social media to show your personal life. I read an article that talks about using different platforms for different purposes. Nicole Lee does a good job explaining this in her post “Having Multiple OnlineIdentities is More Normal Than You Think.” She says that it is normal to have professional and personal social media accounts. For example, twitter is more professional and instagram can be more personal or vice versa.
My EDTC 300 class was assigned the task to sleuth a classmate and try to find personal and professional information about them. I partnered up with Luke Kotz. I did not know much about Luke before this assignment but I was able to find a lot of information on his personal life and some information about his schooling and future goals.
Instagram and Twitter
I started by looking at his personal social media pages. I found out that his family consists of his mom, dad, and sister. I also was able to easy find his hobbies and interests through his posts and other accounts that he follows. Some of his hobbies are hockey, reffing, golf and baseball (more specifically the Blue Jays).
Just based on looking at his profile I could see that he is not overly active on his page.
Even though Luke is not very active on his personal social media pages it was still easy to find information on Luke. I was able to find his age through a birthday post that his mom shared.
Professional Accounts
With a little bit more digging I found his professional Twitter account and his blog. I was able to see some information on here but If I was an employer I would like to see some more information about his teaching philosophy and his beliefs as a teacher. However I was able to see that he has a very clean digital identity which is very professional.
Advice for Luke’s Digital Identity
Positives for Luke’s Digital Identity
I have been talking to some of my peers and they have expressed to me that the biggest thing stopping them from participating in yoga classes is TIME. And I completely agree. As a full time university student and a collegiate athlete time is a rare thing to come across. This week I decided to make it my task to find ways for people to incorporate yoga into their life even if its 5 minutes at a time.
I found a few videos on YouTube that are quick 5 and 10 minute morning stretches that you can perform in bed before you start your day. I found these easy to add to my day because it motivates me to get up and moving when my alarm goes off instead of closing my eyes again.
The first video is 6 minutes and it takes you through a series of 7 poses that you hold for 30 seconds. This was a fast and easy video to follow that stretches lots of different body parts. The video is called Stretch Routine in Bed.
I also found a video that stretches your lower back and hips. This video is a little bit longer but I did it while watching an episode of my Netflix show. I found this a good way to take my mind off of the discomfort from stretching as well.
This video uses yoga blocks as supports for some of the poses but if you do not have a yoga block I recommend using a towel and rolling it up or use a pillow. The video is Yin Yoga for Lower Back and Hip Pain.
The use of online resources and technology is becoming more and more prominent in classrooms of all age levels. Over the past few years we have seen a drastic leap towards making classrooms more electronic, for example switching white boards for smart boards and paper for computers. With the pandemic we have witnessed the benefits of online teaching and teachers can share assignments and lessons with students who are not at school. However, as more and more students have access to online resources and technology we need to acknowledge the importance of digital citizenship.
Digital Citizenship:
Confident and positive engagement with digital technologies.
As teachers we need to help students learn about good digital etiquette and how to responsibly use online resources in a positive way. One of the most serious areas of digital citizenship that we need to help students understand is digital law (copyright, proper citing, and terms of service). With younger students we can teach them how to find credible sites and pictures for assignments. With older students we can teach them how to cite their work properly with “work cited” pages.
Another part of digital citizenship that I believe is important in a classroom setting is digital etiquette. This looks at how much screen time we use and how effective we use our time online. This can be a problem in younger grades because students want to play games instead of doing their work. In older grades we have problems with games in class but we also see more social media and texting during class time. All of these games and social media apps act as major distractions. As teachers we need to find ways to limit the time spent on excess apps.
** The only way to enforce positive digital citizenship to students is by ** practicing digital citizenship as teachers.
