Mia's Tech Blog!

  Link to my Lesson Plan: Solar System Scratch Coding This week I learned about Scratch : an online student-friendly programming app that lets students create virtual stories, games, and other animations through coding! This app would be great to help introduce students of any grade and age to coding as the program can be adapted to their level of understanding and skill level. For this blog I decided to use Scratch to teach Grade 6 students about the order of the planets within the Solar System and the movement of their orbits. I hope you enjoy it! 

  Link to my lesson plan: Exploring Trees in our Community     This week's blog post focuses on how we can plan learning activities that encourage "digitally connecting with nature". This lesson is specific to the Grade 6 Trees and Forests outcome for Science, but I appreciate how the focus can be adapted to other outcomes relating to nature and community walks. This lesson is very open-ended and students are given the opportunity to engage in active exploration and discovery. The use of technology in the form of online visual journals also gives students the creative freedom to express their findings and new found learning in a way they best see fit!

Click here to take my virtual field trip to Machu Picchu! For this week's blog post, I learned how to create a "virtual field trip" using Google Tour Creator . I have always been interested in learning about ancient civilizations so I figured Machu Picchu would be the perfect place to create my field trip about. It would be great if I could use this "virtual tour" of Machu Picchu to teach students about the history of Peru, which is one of the outcomes for Grade 3 Social Studies. Creating virtual field trips would be a great way to engage students when teaching them about different places around the world. It provides students with amazing 360° visuals and allows them to "explore" using a click of a button! Virtual Field Trips are also a great way to integrate other subject areas such as Science, ELA, and Social Studies, within classroom technology. 

 Get started with Kahoot!      The highlight of teaching this online lesson was getting to play and demonstrate the app to my peers! It was so great to be able to share this resource and discuss how both students and teachers can use it within the classroom to enhance learning. Kahoot! is so engaging and easy-to-use. It's great for presentations, projects, surveys, and can be used creatively for other things as well.      One challenge that occurred was that our link to the mini activity/assessment was not initially live and accessible to the peers we were teaching.      A lesson that I have learned for next time would be to double check the materials and links needed for the lesson to ensure that all are ready for when I need to teach! Link to our lesson plan .

                       For this week's blog, I have created a digital story about the Tsuu T'ina Nation, Tsuu T'ina Middle School, and the lessons I have learned for my future teaching practice. Click here to watch my digital story!

A major part of teaching is connecting and engaging with the education community (which is also a learning outcome for third year Education students!). As a teacher candidate, I've learned that the "Twitter" app is a great way to begin doing that! Twitter is a great platform that I use to: connect with education experts, mentors, and peers. share and gain experiences, knowledge, resources, and tips for creating lessons and managing the classroom environment keep up to date with current news on what's happening globally, and within the education realm. I look forward to using Twitter as part of my teaching practice to help me communicate the "happenings" within my classroom with both the school community and parents/students.  My hope would be to use twitter posts as a quick way to: update parents on things such as field trips and school events, provide summaries of what students have learned during the week, and use it as a way to exhibit student work.  Twit...

 My specific goals for each of the 5 competencies:  Planning for Learning: P6 - Develops varied activities and assignments that are relevant, clearly aligned with learning goals, require deep thinking and support student engagement, collaboration, and choice (TQS 3a)   Facilitating Learning:  F7 - Engages in discussions and inquiry that invite high level thinking and engagement of all students (TQS 3b) Assessment: A3 - Develops learner understanding of learning goals and achievement expectations to promote self-monitoring Inclusive Environment: IE4 -  Creates a respectful and ethical learning community that encourages learners to take risks, build trust, embrace diversity, increase self-confidence, and show leadership Professional Responsibilities:  PR5 - Establishes professional and ethical relationships (TQS 1a, 1b) As of currently, I do not have much experience in educational technology. In previous field placement, I would struggle at times w...