Kirby's Education Journey

Hello there Pod 2 (Sullo, Zhenyu, and Junfeng) and thank you for sharing your resource with us! I was especially excited to review your interactive learning resource because it is surrounding a topic that I as a learner hope to one day be more proficient in. 

Blind learner review of PowerPoint: Overall first thoughts

While reviewing your learning resource I decided to begin by taking the standpoint of a learner attempting to complete your course. From the get-go, I really enjoyed the visually pleasing relevant slide deck you chose for your presentation. The slides, images, format, and bright colours allowed me as a learner to stay engaged throughout. Beginning with the first few slides including the table of contents and the two-course overview slides, I enjoyed your course overview description about drawing, however, a question I have is whether or not the course’s focus is on drawing or painting, as on both the PowerPoint and google docs you mention both. As a learner, I would have appreciated added detail about the series of topics and units that were to be taught in the course. I think that adding in the specific activities you have planned for the student will help them see the big picture and the end goal of their participation in the course. Moving on in the slide deck, as a viewer, I enjoyed that you used both images and text to explain the learning activities. I believe that using a larger font and bolding important information would also allow for clear expectations to be communicated to the learner. A suggestion for the learning activities would be to define what the student is learning about before their individual task. For example on slides 17 and 18, I did not know what a still life was but once given the definition I would be able to complete the tasks accordingly. I wonder if also having more descriptive detail for what the instructors are looking for in each activity would assist the learner in completing the tasks to the best of their abilities to showcase their best work.

Details of Google docs review: Overview, Content, Rationales, Assessment plan

The initial introduction overview of your topic Drawing/Painting (similar to the PowerPoint, it is a bit misleading the topic of the learning resource) was written and I enjoy that the writers included their own research into the overview to back up their reasoning for choosing this topic. I am curious about the chosen activities and planned future lessons that are described both in the PowerPoint and on the Google docs as the wording “long-term projects” is used. From my understanding the learning resource is required to take no more than 2 hours, I wonder if you could explain that this is the first part of a 3-4 part learning resource series? Moving on I wonder in your description of your chosen learning theory if you would reconsider your chosen rationale. Looking at your learning resource from a student’s perspective I see a course that leans more towards a constructivist approach. Throughout the learning process we, the learner, are exploring different means of drawing techniques, and are constructing our thoughts and opinions on this learning through our own reflections and artwork. How this differs from a behaviourist perspective is that in the behaviourism learning theory the learner is stimulated to learn through a prompt or response from an instructor and not motivated solely on their own. I agree and enjoyed your rationale for the learning design you chose. As you said, you do learning drawing through practicing and applying learned knowledge, exactly what experiential learning believes, However, I was wondering if adding in direct instruction would also be considered as a learning design used in this course, due to the instructional tone and mode used throughout the slide deck? I loved how your learning outcomes were so specific as well as contained descriptions of the learning to take place, I wonder if these outcomes could be listed somewhere in your PowerPoint to be even more clear.

I appreciate the thoughtful walkthrough explanation of every learning activity, I think that mentioning these details would really strengthen your PowerPoint as well as assist the learner in understanding what their goals were in the completion of each activity. I enjoyed the breakdown of each activity but am curious whether the final learning resource will contain all of the added activities and resources mentioned. In both the Google docs description and the actual learning resource slide deck, you did an incredible job creating your assessment plan using your created Google forms. The questions on the Google form quizzes require the students to participate and practice, which enhances both student engagement and achievement. As well as the second quiz, I appreciate how personal and self-reflective the questions are. My only concern would be what sort of criteria or rubric you would use to objectively grade the student’s final work. In your assessment plan, you mention “good drawing” and I believe that defining this as a specific rubric would allow students a clearer understanding of your expectations. I like your mentioning of how you will design for the inclusion of diverse learners and learning to take place, but am curious whether there are other ways in doing so. For your hearing impaired learners, providing more multimodal instruction through images and videos may assist them as well as assist your ELL learners in understanding what is expected of them in a visual format.

Overall thoughts

Overall I believe that the interactive resource has the potential to be such an engaging, informative and creative way of teaching learners about one of the most important elements of art. It is clear that both well-thought planning and discussion were made to create this resource and I am looking forward to seeing the final product! I would also like to mention that the artwork shown in the PowerPoint is beautiful and that you are all very talented artists!

Hello Josh! I chose to review your post about interaction because I wanted to see your perspective and ideas regarding our Interactive learning resource topic Brain Breaks. I really enjoyed the video you decided to share in your blog post, not only was it easily understandable, but it was interesting, informative, and engaging. Your explanation of our learners’ potential tasks throughout the video is both simple but entirely accurate in accordance with our learning design. I really appreciated your addition of the connectivity portion of the follow-up activity, as our biggest learning tool as teachers are other educators in our field. I agree that this video would be an essential aspect of our learning resource (I wonder if we should add it to our learning resource further reading page). Wonderful and insightful blog as always Josh! I will miss reading your blogs and being in the same class together!

Hey Kylie! I admire how you completed your blog post for this week’s prompt. You took the broad idea of “picking a resource” and instead chose to create and design your very own! While reading your blog post, I have chosen to see your ideas in accordance with our topic Brain Breaks and our interactive resource. I really appreciate your comment about how the chosen video is not meant for the learners to have to respond, but instead designed to take in information and evoke reflective thoughts. The simplicity of your chosen post and during video activities, goes to show how simple learning can be when done right. Your ideas for improvement of the educational video are reasonable enough that I believe they should have been included already! I know how much students adore it when the video looks like it is talking to them and asking questions! Thank you for another wonderful blog Kylie, I will miss our zoom staff meeting calls!

A well-designed media streaming source can lead to increased engagement and drive interactivity with students and people of all ages. Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook all have an inherent active and interactive component to them that push their learners to respond whether it be directly or indirectly (Bates, 2015). Although video streaming, swiping, and viewing on applications like the ones stated above may seem at times to be meaningless interactions, we are constantly making decisions, creating connections, and unawarely interacting with the content in front of us.

When googling “Brain Breaks” into my YouTube search bar I have to be conscious that the results that will be shown to me will be sorted and designed especially for myself based on my prior searches. A video that popped up and that I chose to analyze for this blog post is an example of a combination of a mental/physical activity brain break that could be used in a classroom during a transitional period to provide a stimulating break for students. I was recommended to watch this video by my previous research into Would You Rather physical activity brain break videos, where students are asked to choose between two options and then do the exercise provided for either choice.

The video I discovered “Can you guess the Disney’s voice? Sound trivia puzzle brain break” features ten segments, each of which starts with an audio clip of a Disney character and ends with three images of the possibly correct one.

As the three images appear, each character has a physical activity movement, in which the idea is for the students to perform the exercise of the voice character they think belongs to the audio clip.

After the exercise is completed, the correct character is revealed. This listen-guess-exercise-reveal format is repeated ten times with the finale being a breakdown of what level of Disney expert you are.

I would argue that this video provides its views with both user-generated interaction and designed interactivity. Though the video does not appear to be interactive inherently, it is intended to encourage interaction with the viewer through questions, answers, and physical participation (Bates, 2015). As well, the video allows viewers to voluntarily interact through a physical response (Bates, 2015). Because of the explicitness of the video and the viewers clearly stating follow-up tasks, the learner is able to respond to the video and participate as they please, while the instructor’s involvement is very minimal. In a sense, their only roles are to verbally ask the students the questions, potentially brainstorm answers with the students, and encourage students’ interaction and participation in the physical movements.

The video is designed very user-friendly with purposeful accessibility and inclusive design throughout. The video has both auditory and visual components that explain the learner’s tasks, including a countdown timer icon and audio, an explanation of each exercise for the instructor to read out, as well as a Giph of the physical activity for viewers to copy. The only addition to the video that I would suggest changing is an adaptation to the possible workout exercises based on a skill level.

In all, the video is very stimulating to watch and interact with, with colourful images, fun catchy music, and a variety of age-appropriate Disney references that were clearly thoughtfully designed to stimulate students and viewers. I am impressed with the design and will be using the video as a physical activity brain break in my future classrooms.

References

Bates, W. T. (2015). 9.6 Interaction. Teaching in a Digital Age. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/chapter/pedagogical-roles-for-text-audio-and-video/

Hey Sam! Nothing makes me smile more than knowing I am friends with someone who is such a strong advocate for celebrating diversity in the classroom, inclusive practices and accessibility for all. It is alarming yet reassuring reading your post, and visually seeing all of the elements of our learning design that I in my able state failed to see are inaccessible. We as a graduating class of COVID, understand more than others the difficulties of a virtual classroom can be, not only through a disadvantaging educational standpoint, but also from a lens regarding accessibility. You made so many important points about the privileged vantage point we have regarding technology, tools, and the internet. Reviewing your thought about our self-directed approach, I for one can raise my hand to share that this style of learning does not bid well for myself. Like many others, I require and thrive for the support of an instructor in my learning. I want to have the comfort of knowing that if there is ever a question I have, I will be able to get an answer. I acknowledge your solution to this barrier as holding zoom calls and strategizing peer/colleague relationships amongst the learners, however, I do believe the only real solution would be a face-to-face or synchronous instructor-student time.

Your last quote left me filled with hope for the future of the educational world with you in it …

With each read-through and critique we make a step toward improving our work and its inclusivity

Sam fry

Thank you as always for your wonderful ideas and wonderful words! I will miss all of our times shared together, but hey would love to see you again in another class soon 😉

A quote that stood out for me from a class blog titled National #AccessAbility week was:

We have the opportunity to do better with our learning designs. We can celebrate the individual strengths and value the diversity each learner brings to our learning environments and workplaces

EDCI 335 blog

Prologue: 

As an educator, I have always found myself in a pedagogical battle when it comes to the idea of equality and equity in the classroom. As an educator working in the 21st century, I recognize the inherent moral imperative to pursue equitable teaching practices that support students’ accessibility to learning. However, what frustrates me is when discussion of teacher-student attention is woven into the idea of an equitable classroom. In my heart, I wish for all students to receive an equal amount of attention from me as the teacher; unfortunately, this will never be the case. In an inquiry project, I completed in my final year of my teacher education program I asked the question: How can I as a teacher support the needs of all my students when certain individuals are requiring more specialized behavioural/developmental/emotional support? As fate would have it, I ended up standing in front of my peers and explaining that my inquiry question was not feasible. If I wish to be an educator with pedagogical ethics of equitable teaching practices, I must be willing to allocate my energy and attention to students who need it physically, mentally, emotionally, and visibly. 

Question: How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?

In the development of our interactive learning resources, dedicated to the topic of brain breaks, and how educators looking to develop professionally can integrate them into their classrooms, it was crucial to make the physical learning resource as accessible as possible. It is vital to remember when creating this learning resource, that we as educators can not design with one type of learner in mind. We must stay neutral to our very own learning preferences and instead design a resource that will provide the most effective and positive learning experience for all of our learners. All learners regardless of their age, gender, neurology, physical abilities, and status in society have the right to learn, as stated by Inclusive Education Canada:

Human rights law requires education providers to make their services accessible to persons with disabilities. This means that where a barrier is identified, accommodations must be provided to overcome that barrier unless to do so would cause an undue hardship

inclusive Education canada

In the process of designing our resource, we provided a multi-modal means of presenting our research and information and how our learners will respond to the content. In addition to providing an inclusive design based on the principles of scaffolded learning and creating a resource that can be accessed virtually and physically, we anchored our resource on the principles of personalized learning with an emphasis on visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learners. To emphasize a few of these accessible learning approaches, while we have been planning and redesigning our learning resource, we focused on seeing the learning design through a variety of lenses. From the vantage point of a learner with an exceptionality, we observed the barriers to completing the designated tasks and activities our learning resource required. From here, we built off of our original ideas of formative and summative assessment factors to seek a representation that every learner could both embody and display their progress as they learn.

Hello there Kylie! I wanted to start with WOW. This blog post is by far one of the most informative and put-together pieces I have ever seen in my WordPress career! Although the word inquiry and the practice of inquiry-based learning aren’t new to me, I found after reading your blog a new appreciation of the details behind the learning approach. I enjoyed your multi-modal approach to creating your blog post. Not only did you structure your blog with a mix of videos, images, and words, your detail to the reader’s eye was seen even more so in the various word formats you used, including bullet points, paragraphs, paraphrases, and quotes! I agree heartedly that this learning approach (inquiry-based) does not quite fit in with our vision of our learning resource, however, I wonder if an inquiry emphasis could work in introducing and implementing brain breaks in the classroom? My thoughts are that perhaps students could go on a personal inquiry to find the type of brain break that works best for them? Like I said before, fantastic blog, and looking forward to more ahead!

Hey Sam! I really enjoyed the layout of your blog post this week, you included not only the definition of what cooperative learning is, but you added details of how it would look in a classroom application, the educational history behind the learning approach, and also the beneficial impacts cooperative learning gives students. As you stated, the learning approach does not directly link to our learning resource’s topic of brain breaks, and that they are, on the whole, two inherently different topics. On the contrary, I do see a relation (like you said) in the topics if a teacher were to implement brain breaks within their cooperative learning classroom structure. I wonder if you could argue that during brain break transitions, if a teacher chose to do whole-class or small-group brain breaks if that would be considered cooperative learning pedagogy? As usual, Sam, a fantastic blog post. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!

Experiential learning stems from the influences of Dewey and Piaget and in its most simplistic form can be described as “learning by doing” (University of Western Governors, 2020). The experiential learning approach asserts that humans learn best through their experiences (University of Western Governors, 2020). In practice, this learning process takes place in the classroom when teachers create opportunities and environments that provide students with real-life, practical, meaningful, and engaging learning opportunities. The benefits seen from this learning approach are endless, including giving students the opportunity to immediately apply their learned knowledge, improving student learning motivation (students are excited to learn), allowing students the opportunity for reflection, and allowing students to see real-life applications of their learning (University of Western Governors, 2020).

My group chose the topic of brain breaks for our interactive learning resource. The reason we chose this topic is that we believe in the importance of meaningful and engaging learning for all of our students. The purpose of brain breaks in the classroom is to allow students to recharge, refocus and relax after spans of listening and concentrating on a learning task. Brain breaks can be grossly simplified into three categories; physical activities, mental activities, and breathing/relaxation activities. The purpose of brain breaks is to not halt learning but to take time to absorb and reflect on what has been taught. Here we can see a connection in the objectives made to experiential learning. In experiential learning, the goal is to create meaningful learning experiences that stick out in your mind to enable you to retain and remember the information, similarly to brain breaks where the aim is to ensure learning is taking place. We can see a correlation between brain breaks and experiential learning when we look at the four stages which constitute the experiential learning cycle. In the first two stages of the cycle, the student is required to participate in a learning experience and then reflect on this experience in regard to their prior knowledge. In the second two stages, the learner focuses on transforming the given learning experience into meaningful and practical worldly practices. Amongst these four stages, we can see that there is needed time for experience, reflection, and interpretation of the learning… insert the brain break. 

It is difficult to answer the question of whether I think the learning approach experiential learning belongs in our interactive learning design project about brain breaks. There is no doubt that brain breaks are integral to every learning approach/scenario to ensure meaningful and engaging learning will take place. However, to say that the two educational ideas (experiential learning and brain breaks) uniquely relate to one another is a little more abstract. An idea I can possibly envision is purposefully designing brain breaks and these transition times in a classroom to be focused on a given topic just learned… to rephrase the experiential learning could occur through an activity break based on the new learning. For example, a kindergarten class studying butterflies might undergo experiential learning by going on a field trip to Butterfly Gardens or by hatching chrysalises in the classroom. With the emphasis on the butterfly topic, a brain break activity could look like this:

• Physical break activity: Simon Says using the stages of a butterflies transformation as the questions/directions
• Mental break activity: A Kahoot butterfly life cycle challenge 
• Breathing/relaxation break activity: Butterfly themed yoga 

To conclude, and to decide whether or not the experiential learning approach has a place in our interactive learning design topic of brain breaks, I will say that it most definitely does, however, the idea of brain breaks also belongs and should have a place in every classroom and learning environment. 

References

University of Western Governors. (2020). Teaching & Education: Experiential Learning Theory. https://www.wgu.edu/blog/experiential-learning-theory2006.html#:~:text=Experiential%20learning%20focuses%20on%20the,retain%20information%20and%20remember%20facts.

Hey Josh! I am so excited to be back in the “classroom” with you and to collaborate and learn together once again! If you check out my first blog regarding the topic of Motivation and Learning theories, you will find that I too had trouble wrapping my head around definitions defined in the chapter 11, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism reading. The entire topic of learning theories and defining what learning is and is not agitates me. I agree with your idea about learning being an ever-changing process, unique to the individual and to the specific learning situation. I also found myself nodding along with your thought about the biased views of what is the most effective learning theory as stated by the article. As always in past courses, I love reading your opinions and thoughts in your blog posts! I look forward to more to come.

Hey Sam! Immediately upon reading “first-year math courses,” I knew exactly which wonderful, funny, special, kindly, and quirky mathematics professor you were referring to! As an educator, nothing brings me more joy than to see a student (you) realize a love for learning you thought had been lost forever, literally almost teared up a little reading your response. I have been thinking after reading your post about how we can adapt society’s way of thinking about defining and categorizing the way we teach as theories and methodologies and instead humanize the idea of teaching and learning with a focus on the teacher-student relationship? That class and our professor left such a lasting impact on you, myself, and countless others, and I truly believe that we can thank them for our own success as educators. I am so glad to be back in action with you Sam! I look forward to more zooms, blogs, and collaborating with you!

A duo response to the prompts of “What is one idea from the readings or videos that you disagree with and why? and “Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviourist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples?

Learning theories… why do they exist? Is it because of human nature to produce a reasoning/answer for every question? Or is it because we as a society are scared of what we do not understand? Rather, is the reason “we” have devised these theories because of our constant need to organize, sort, and label everything into neat categories? As someone who is strong-minded, opinionated, and an advocate for individualism, the idea of there being defined “divisions” of how one chooses to believe in how humans learn, irritates me. Understandably, the purpose of said “learning theories’ ‘ is to provide information about instructional components to provide specific technical and strategic suggestions to best meet the needs of the learner (Ertmer & Newby, 2018). That is logical. What is incomprehensible to me and my unique philosophies as an educator, is the need to simplify the complex, heavily individual-oriented task of teaching and organize it bluntly. 

Contrarily, I will give credit to a statement in our reading restating my thoughts on the faults of defining the ways people learn. We don’t have the luxury to restrict ourselves as educators to abide by the philosophy, techniques, approaches, and strategies of a singular learning theory (Ertmer & Newby, 2018). If we did, society would be producing very contrasting educated citizens. Instead, educators must select principles and conceptions based on the individual educational situation. Now hold up… this is sounding very similar to a few key buzzwords in our current educational field including personalized learning, differentiation in the classroom, student-centered learning, and learning principles taken from The First Peoples Principles of Learning… The creation of learning theories, in my understanding of their development, must have been to 

It is unrealistic to think that there are educators in the field who believe that they solely teach to one category of theory, I can tell you now that if that were the case, we would have a multitude of insufficient teachers in our educational communities. To teach effectively, following the idea that we believe in said “learning theories,” teachers must continuously adjust their teaching styles to meet the needs of their individual students and the need to stay relevant to current educational trends. With this in mind, teachers can not exclusively follow the methodologies of a singular learning theory, they must devote their careers to experimenting, searching, and even failing to find their own unique pedagogies that will give them success as an educator. 

Circling back to the above statement to “if we believe in said learning theories” I would like to leave with a comment about my thoughts on the given classification of learning theories alongside my own opinions to where I could fall in the three categories of a teaching teaching under the influence of behaviorism, cognitivisim, or constructivism. As I am putting thought into my answer I am puzzled of how easily my teaching philosophies can be lenient to each of the three learning theories. Continuously throughout a learning period (whether that be a day or a month) I find myself reflecting on the effectiveness of a learning experiences of each student, this including what form of learning mode (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic etc.) each student is drawn and motivated to, this relating to signs of behaviourism. I am also a teaching who believes in learning as a holistic, exploratory, and reflexive, process where the student should be at the centre of the learning, and their interests are factors in the creation of lessons, a cognitivist view point aligning with the idea of constructivism and its devotion to the learners participation in contextual real-world experiences. Like I said, through my teaching practice I show signs of all three learning theories and their defining “traits”.

On that note, I think a summary statement and conclusion are necessary. My chosen blog prompt was “what is one idea from the readings or videos that you disagree with and why? with a subtopic prompt being “based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviourist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples? The idea I chose to contradict was the entirety of creating the categorization of learning theories, and my argument for this chosen dispute can be summarized as learning theories being a gross simplification of the extremely complex practice of teaching, with margin notes stating that to be an effective teacher one’s teaching practice must stem from elements of all learning theories.

References

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018) Behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design persepctive. In R. E. West, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTechBooks. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism