Kirby's Education Journey

new to teaching but old to the love of learning

Page 7 of 10

Mine of the craft

Today we had a creative workshop all about Mindcraft. We had a couple of little Minecraft geniuses from Colquitz Middle School come with their teacher to teach us the basics of the computer game. We learned the different ways teachers use Minecraft as a cross-curriculum platform to teach. They use the creative modes to allow children to express their artistic vision and help children show their creativity in architecture, pictures, and designs. The teachers also use the game as a resource for science, physics, and social studies, using the environmental aspects and resourcefulness mindset of the game. Kids can learn about the ecosystem, conservation, what humans need to have and access to survive and overall can work on their teamwork skills with their classmates.

This was my first hands-on experience with Minecraft. On my Wednesday visits, I have watched my class in their schools MAClab using Minecraft as a fun educational tool where they all share one Minecraft world and create their own spaces. In our Minecraft workshop, we were allowed to experiment with the variety of different modes Minecraft has including the creative world and the survival world. I had no idea what I was doing the whole time so I required the help of the middle school children and Teya to maneuver me around the world of pixellated land.

 

Below are some screenshots of what I saw and experienced while gaming on Minecraft:

 

This is the first photo of me in Minecraft, my name is kirbabyteytey (hence the combination of Teya and I’s name)

This is my first super cool house made out of pink wool, the inspiration for my house was to be built around trees and also have a beautiful skylight (not purposeful since I didn’t know how to make a roof). The image on the left you can tell is filled with hundreds of animals, this was not my creative choice, however, it made my home feel more comforting and loving.

The highlight of my gaming today was when Teya made and showed me what “The Nether” is. It is a magical blue glowing portal that takes you into a firey, lava-filled world.

5th meal attempt

This wrap was by far the best creation I have made yet! The recipe was accurate when it stated that in total the meal process would only take 10 minutes as you literally only had to stuff everything in a wrap and call it a day! I had to be pretty creative when I made this wrap since I was missing many ingredients and only really had modified versions of what I needed. For instance, I was supposed to use iceberg lettuce for the lettuce portion of the wrap but all I had was a salad mix which also had a very questionable expiry date. As far as the Fritos I didn’t know if I would enjoy having the additional crunch in the wrap and also did not wish to buy a random chip flavour that I did not know about, however, I decided to attempt it out and instead used just crushed tortilla chips, and surprisingly enough it tasted pretty incredible!

Below are images of the process of my “wrapping”:


This image is the beginning of my wrap, the pinkish sauce is made up of salsa and sour cream mixed together and theĀ  first layers on top are the salad mix and cut up avocado

This image shows the same as the top however with the addition of my sauteed chicken and the crushed tortilla chips spread overtopped with more salsa, sour cream dressing

This final image shows my finished wrap that is rolled up and stuffed to the very max

 

I am so happy with how this meal turned out and I ended up engulfing the wrap in probably about 5 minutes, I will 100% recreate this recipe using proper ingredients to see if it tastes even better.

Tech inquiry post

We have chosen to do our tech inquiry project on gamification. I am excited to learn more about this topic because in this day and age technology is becoming a vital aspect of students learning. I hope that if I learn to appreciate gamification more by learning more about its capabilities,Ā  I will be more likely to want to implement this kind of learning style in my future classroom.

The questions I have chosen to research involve the impact of gamification on student learning, more specifically the advantages of gamification in the classroom and the disadvantages. I am going to start my research by finding sources that can teach me a little bit more about gamification since my knowledge at this moment is very little.

Music Blog #4 (legitimate)

My goal (according to my growth plan) for the next learning evaluation is to be able to play the intro to “Fast Car” by Tracy Champman. My ultimate goal for this aspiration is to be able to pick (this is a group of hand and finger techniques a string musician uses to set strings in motion to produce audible single notes) the intro to “Fast car” in a fluid, audible way and then to play and sing the rest of the song with the simple strumming chords and pattern. Today was one of our personal growth days where we were allowed to go off on our own to practice for our final evaluation. I decided that my ending goal for the day was going to be to very scarcely learn the chords and the picking pattern for the introduction. Today was also the day that I learned what picking even was! I had no idea that it required both chords being played and individual fingers both plucking by themselves and all together at the same time. I also was forced to learn how to read what a picking pattern sheet music looks like, however, I ended up still getting very confused by the numbering of the sheet music and usually ended up listening to my online youtube tutorials more instead of trying to read the music. I find that the video tutorials are the easiest way for me to learn how to play these songs, and the video I chose to use to learn Fast Car wasĀ  a YouTuber who went by the channel name “UkuleleĀ  Cheats” https://youtu.be/EEJQjs76qf8This YouTuber I found to be very helpful because they showed the tutorial firstly playing the entire song, then they introduced the chords breaking them down and then intro picking section and then playing them over and over again, and finally they ended with demonstrating the beginning and explaining how to pick each line. By the end of the free-play session (about 1 hour), I was able to play the intro to Fast Car while picking. The picking was in no way fluid and might have very much been only audible to me, however, it was a huge accomplishment in my ukulele playing and gave me confidence that I will not have a problem playing this in a little over a week in front of a screen. I feel this confidence because after I pick the intro to the song I am going to play the rest of the song just strumming the chords and singing, I chose this because It gives me the opportunity to match my voice to the instrument and to worry about my singing more. For the next few weeks, I hope to become more fluid in this intro bit and to get the confidence to play without looking at my notes.

Volleyball lesson plan

The next part of a lesson after the warm-up is called the “body” of a lesson. The body defines the portion of the lesson where the majority of instruction and learning of a specific task takes place. The task that is learned in this section is usually a skill from a bigger unit, for example in the lesson plan below the students were learning the skill setting for their volleyball unit.

Kinda feeling like a blueberry


Today in tech class was a mixture of free work time and a giant check-in session of our inquiries. I realized at my meeting with Val that my blog was lowkey breaking many plagiarisms laws and that if I wanted to avoid going to court I would have to give these websites the recognition they deserved. After finishing the citing of the pictures and recipes I began to start the process of my tech inquiry. I am in a group with Teya and Cass and our inquiry is about gamification in education. We all are amateurs when it comes to this type of learning and I look forward to researching more on this subject and one day when I am in the school system to use this type of learning in my classroom. We have decided to use the presenting medium Prezi to allow our presentation to be more visually engaging for the class. We have chosen to split the questions up between the three of us and the questions I have chosen to conquer all fall under the umbrella question “how does gamification impact student learning” and more specifically what are the advantages and disadvantages of using it in the classroom.

PSII

For this weeks tech class, we decide to relocate our classroom to 808 Douglas Street in downtown Victoria. It was at this location where we found our classroom to be located at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) This school is not like your usual highschool, yes there are teenagers everywhere and teachers, however, the similarities stop at that. When we walked in our first sight was a large open area covered in desks each fitting around five students. On these desks, there were cute little plants each with their own names and sitting around the desks were students from early to late teens working. The working was what surprised me at first, now I know that sounds bad but it is not unusual to see a classroom filled with students distracted and barely working, that was not the case for PSII. These kids were hard at work doing all sorts of different learning from reading, computer programming, sewing, and even crocheting! Seeing all of this was very overwhelming for me, I kept thinking “where are the classes? “where are the teachers? “who is watching these kids? It wasn’t until we had a talk with principal Jeff Hopkins that it all the pieces started to fit together. PSII is an inquiry-based school, this means this school is almost 100% personalized learning whereas the students are able to pick their own interdisciplinary learning pathway that ends up meeting all the same curriculum competencies as the B.C curriculum. This form of learning allows the students the chance to truly learn about what they’re passionate about, allowing children to be more obliged to their learning.

Now I am not gonna lie walking around this school freaked me out quite a bit, but that is only because my generation has been conditioned to gear towards a certain kind of learning, one that is structured. Inquiry-based learning requires a lot of self-regulation when it comes to monitoring and continuing work. This requires self-made assessments, self check-list and in all a lot of determination. I think this school is a school of the future, one where specialized learning is looked up upon and not down, sadly there are still so many stereotypes when it comes to private schools alike PSII. “They’re alternative schools” and “It is those kids last option to graduate” however this is notĀ the case, PSII is a school for the everyday student who wishes to explore their own learning andĀ delve deeper into their subjects that summon them.

4th meal attempt

So by far today marked an incredible milestone for me as this is the first recipe I made using more than just one type of spice… Ok so that may be a tad of a stretch but still, this fancy ramen recipe took me out of my comfort zone in the best way. The recipe implied that it would take in total around 30 minutes to complete and this was very accurate timing. I started with making the sauce and had to change some of the ingredients because of preferences for certain tastes. I was slightly concerned about the sauce at first but only because the ingredients were not mixing together and the consistency seemed to be very thin, the thinness may have been because of the absence of cornstarch. I had completely forgotten about the cornstarch and had already started mixing the ingredients together by the time I realized I needed it. After doing the research I learned that cornstarch is used as a binder and thickener and would have made the sauce be less of just a broth, however, the sauce did taste very good in the end. The cooking of the noodles, vegetables, and the chicken was just your usual boiling of water and sauteing however when mixed all together you could see the sauce marinating into the chicken and soaking into the veggies and noodles. The taste, in the end, was honestly the best part of my day, the fancy ramen tasted better than real ramen! I will for sure make this recipe again because of its simplicity, amazing taste and because I now have so many of the spices I need to make the noodles!

 

Music Blog #3 (legitimate)

It has now been a month since I started the ukulele and this marks my midterm evaluation. Since my last update on my ukulele playing, I have surpassed my initial goals that were seen on my musical growth plan and have memorized two more songs these being ā€œYouā€™re Beautifulā€ and ā€œHallelujahā€. As noted in my musical growth plan I also chose to attempt my extension goal of being able to sing the song lyrics as I play the ukulele. The only song I have attempted for this so far is ā€œRiptideā€ and I can honestly say it has now become easier for me to sing and play then for me to do each alone. When learning to sing while strumming you cannot attempt to match the strums to certain lyrics, now I know most ukulele videos attempt to teach this way however it makes it easier for the musician to instead adjust the tune of the lyrics to the pace of the strumming. My singing now comes across as more spoken poetry and it is pretty much impossible to match my pauses and starts with anyone who wants to sing along BUT to me, it is beautiful and makes my voice sound unique.

Along with completing my extension goal and learning two more songs I have also become proficient at holding a steady almost mistake-less strumming pattern throughout a song. This accomplishment has given me fluidity in playing and has also allowed me to worry more about my singing and proper chord techniques versus just trying to keep in rhythm. The technique is another point I should make about my musical journey. Upon our first-in-class practice session, I became aware that I have been playing the ukulele wrong this whole time, playing it too low on my body and with my left hand (chord hand) wrapped the wrong way around the neck of the ukulele. This was a shock to me and has honestly put a huge damper on my confidence and practicing since now including with just learning songs I now have to re-learn to hold the instrument. I have perplexing thoughts about relearning how to hold my instrument since I have practiced the way I have for so long and donā€™t feel any wish to hold it any other way. However, there is no use being stubborn about it and now I have had to add to my musical growth plan ā€œrelearning to hold the ukulele properlyā€.

 

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