Ally Gatey

Category: EdTech

Reflections – Week 8

December 3, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ll admit that I don’t really know that much about copyright and how it works.  Usually, I look for media that has clear rules around how you’re allowed to use it.  I get music from places with creative commons licences and I make sure to follow the posted rules about crediting.  I get images from Unsplash where they are clear about how their images can be used.  I think that there could probably whole courses about how copyright works and how to make sure that you are using everything correctly.  I will say that my favourite story about copyright is something that happened between two artists, Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple.

 

It all started with a pigment called Vantablack.  Nothing in the world is darker than Vantablack which was initially made by an English company, Surrey Nanosystems, for specialized use in aerospace and optics projects.  It is made with special nanotubes that mean it reflects back the tiniest fraction of light and when the human eyes look at it, they see nothing but a void.  When artists were made aware of the spraypaint-like version of this pigment many of them contacted the engineering company but ultimately they decided to work with sculptor Anish Kapoor.  They signed a contract and Anish Kapoor officially owned the rights to the pigment.  As a quick side note, probably know Anish Kapoor’s work even if you don’t know him by name.  He is the one who created this infamous Chicago Bean, or Cloud Gate, as it’s actually called.

 

The art world was, of course, not very happy about this development.  People didn’t believe that anyone should have the exclusive rights to a specific material since all kinds of different artists could use it to create all kinds of different pieces of artwork.  It also wasn’t as though Kapoor had made this pigment himself.  He had purchased it and locked it away.  The artist that became a champion of the opposition against Kapoor was an artist called Stuart Semple.  Stuart is primarily a painter, younger than Kapoor by 25 years and not as successful, but, he had an advantage that would truly make it possible to pull on over on Kapoor.  Stuart had been mixing his own pigments since his university days.  In retaliation to Kapoor’s exclusive licencing of Vantablack, Semple decided to release a pink pigment that he had made, called the pinkest pink, to everyone but Kapoor.  This included anyone purchasing the pigment with the intent of giving it to Kapoor.  Semple would also eventually go on to make a pigment called Black 2.0 that’s not quite to the level of Vantablack but it’s pretty close.  That, too, is available to everyone except for one person, Anish Kapoor.

 

If you want to read more about this whole debacle you can take a look at this article!

Reflections – Week 7

November 28, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ve always really enjoyed the video editing process.  I’m not incredible at it but I do know the basics and that’s usually enough for the things that I do.  It started in high school when I would film and edit my friend’s audition tapes for drama festivals and universities.  I also took a lot of digital media and photography classes during my undergrad so I have a considerable amount of experience editing photos as well.  In fact, the header photo for my last blog post is a compilation that I made on Photoshop using some photos from Unsplash.  It’s something that I really enjoy doing but don’t really have the opportunity to practise.  When I am given the opportunity I usually take it.

 

For the past couple of weeks, during my observation class, I have been going to the Film and TV class at Claremont which has been pretty enlightening.  It seems that this is the first year that the class had been available in a while and from what I have observed, the teacher responsible for teaching the class doesn’t seem to have very much experience with the actual production side of things.

 

First of all, he is asking the students to use Imovie, despite the fact that the school pays for the Adobe suite, meaning that they have Premiere Pro available to them.  Imovie is a serviceable program but there are a few things that become incredibly frustrating as you try and do more and more complicated things with it.  This includes the difficulties with editing audio.

 

In my experience, it is usually a good idea to record audio separately as best you can because not only is the audio that your camera or phone picks up not the best quality, but unlinking audio and video can be an arduous process.  Also, saving a backup file of just the audio becomes a lot more difficult.  Since the Film and TV program at Claremont is only in its first year, there isn’t a lot of money being thrown at the program and I’m not sure they even have access to simple audio recorders.  Still, they all have cell phones that they could record separate audio on.

 

It seems to me, even though I have only been observing for two days, that the students haven’t really been taught the basics of the programs that they are meant to be using and have largely been left to their own devices to figure it out.  This includes recording film and audio.  We were able to watch some of their finished projects during one of the classes and a lot of them had these audio issues where it was almost impossible to hear what they were saying.  This seemed to be a result of either not having enough time to actually review their work (they were only given a two-hour block of time to finish filming and edit their two-minute videos.  For reference, it took me around 6 hours to edit a five-minute video with a separate audio file and I at least have a little practise using the editing software.) or it was a result of them not getting sufficient instruction on how to avoid things like that and how to review their footage before they decide they’re done filming.

 

Ultimately, I’m really glad that there is a Film and TV class being taught in high school but it’s clear that the infrastructure isn’t quite there to make it a course that will be super useful in the long term.  These students will really only be able to carry forward the skills that they have learned on their own and not anything that was actually taught to them.

 

I’ve decided to attach the video I made for my free inquiry project in my EDCI 780 class.  I was curious about what different tools could be used to assess the arts since you can’t really assess them based on skill.  It’s not perfect and I would have liked to spend a little more time on it but, in this learning economy, I just didn’t have the time.

 

I hope you enjoy it!

Reflections – Week 6

November 14, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes I feel that during this semester, we, the students, have had a lot of excuses made for us.  These mostly come in the form of discussions around how hard it must be to do things over Zoom all the time.  However, that has not really been my experience.  There are certainly challenges that come with transitioning to a new form of learning for both students and teachers but there have also been some benefits, in my opinion.  For example, though it has been difficult to differentiate between classes since I do my classes from the same spot in my room for all of them, not having to drive to the school every day for class has saved me both time and money.  Staring at a computer screen for six to ten hours a day is certainly not good for my eyes, nor is sitting in the terrible office chair at my desk particularly good for my back.  However, being in my own home means I can step away from my computer during class to stretch and give my eyes a break in a way that is much more disruptive in a classroom setting.

 

I haven’t really been able to identify if I’m learning any better or worse than I would be within an actual classroom setting but I have felt a lot freer to fidget without worrying about disrupting other students and since I don’t have to dedicate part f my focus to not fidgeting, I feel I can focus better on the class at hand.  I imagine that this is not the case for everyone in the program.  That for some, the sacrifice of not being in a physical classroom with other students outweighs any of the potential benefits of online learning.

 

In terms of accessibility, Zoom seems to have a lot of different features to help out.  The ability to record lectures and allow students to watch them on their own time or watch them back to re-familiarize themselves with anything they might have missed the first time is incredible and something that I would have found helpful in high school and could still probably use now.  Additionally, the inclusion of closed captioning is wonderful.  Sometimes I have some difficulty processing what’s being said, especially in film and TV so I watch pretty much everything with subtitles and that can help me understand things faster.  I’m sure that having that for lectures would be helpful.  I think that these elements from Zoom could be used as either substitution or as augmentation within the classroom and would be helpful even outside of the pandemic for people with auditory processing disorders or anything that makes it difficult to sit for long periods of time in a classroom.

 

HERE is a curated list of assistive technologies if you’re interested in learning more about how to create an inclusive classroom

Reflections – Week 5

November 12, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I was a little nervous about the Ed-camp when it was first announced.  I didn’t really understand the structure and there is something about not having the anonymity of sitting in a big lecture hall that made me uneasy.  Luckily, for me at least, it ended up being really informative.  It was nice to be able to talk to a bunch of students from different schools about their perspectives and to get to talk a little bit with people who had a little more expertise.

 

I spent most of my time in the room discussing how to use group work effectively, which was actually the topic I put forth in the google doc! I felt like we had been talking quite negatively about group work, especially in that big meeting with both cohorts and the professors.  I figured that there must be some reason that we assign group work beyond the convenience of having less to mark as a teacher and while I had my ideas about why we use it, it was really nice to have some other perspectives on it from other people.

 

We talked about group work from the perspective of a student and from the perspectives of future teachers.  Most of us in the group agreed that we had been the kind of students to just shoulder the extra work when one student wasn’t pulling their weight and that brought us to a question about what to do as teachers to prevent that from happening.  We also talked about how to assess group work in ways that were not entirely reliant on the whole group.  Should students receive an individual grade and a group grade?  And if so, how should each segment be weighted?  We ended up settling on some kind of peer evaluation system that would allow students to comment honestly on the dynamics of the group as well as making sure to provide in-class work time so that, as a teacher, we would be able to observe how their group works together for ourselves.

 

We also talked a little about whether it’s better to allow students in high school to make their own groups or whether groups should be assigned to them.  The concern around allowing students to make their own groups is, of course, that some students who, perhaps, did not have any friends in the class or were less outgoing would have a difficult time asking to be included.  The issue with assigning groups is that it may make it difficult for less outgoing students to share their ideas if they aren’t with someone they feel comfortable with.  We didn’t really come to a concrete answer on this question but one of the suggestions was if you were making groups of four, to have students pair up and then put the pairs together in groups of four.  That way each student would have one person they feel comfortable with but they wouldn’t have the pressure of having to make a group of four.  Still, there are many things to consider with this solution.

 

As far as tools for monitoring group work go, we had someone introduce a product called Enlighten which, for looking through their webpage, works a little like Trello.  It allows you to categorize tasks and check them off when they are complete.  I hadn’t really thought about using those platforms to monitor group work but I think having each student have their own individual task list within a group Trello board or Enlighten board could be something that’s really helpful for ensuring that the tasks are distributed as evenly as possible.

 

I’m really glad that I got a chance to participate in this Ed-camp and I would definitely like to participate in something like this again!

Reflections – Week 4

October 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about inclusivity both within this new mode of learning we’ve developed and outside it.  I went to high school in a small town and although I have no idea whether these inclusivity discussions were happening behind the scenes, they didn’t seem to be coalescing into any visible changes within the school system.  Perhaps that is simply because these elements were not as much part of the discussion between 2010 and 2014 when I was in high school or perhaps it was because my school had about 600 students at a time.  Both explanations certainly make sense but the latter leaves me a little concerned that schools that don’t have as high of a budget will get left behind in the forward march of progress.

 

During one of our Wednesday observation visits, the Superintendent of Schools and CEO of the Saanich School District, Dave Eberwein, came and spoke to us.  One of the things he shared was a robot named Milo, a few of whom had been purchased for elementary schools within the district.  Milo is meant to help students with ASD learn better.  He never gets frustrated, distracted or tired and he delivers lessons consistently in a way that learners with ASD respond to.  However, Milo retails at $7,500 plus all of the software upgrades that need to be adapted semi-regularly.  A school system that already doesn’t have any money to spare might be hard-pressed to find the budget for a tool like this.

 

There is also the consideration that these technological tools are not cure-alls and while they can be extremely useful as supplements to a teacher or therapist the should not be seen as a way to deal with staffing constraints or something that will be a perfect teaching tool unsupported by any other forms of teaching and interaction.  There is, of course, also the fear that teachers will one day be replaced by automation or that technology will advance too quickly for them to keep up with training or the belief that there are much simpler solutions to accessibility and inclusivity issues.

 

I think these inclusivity tools are fascinating and have the potential to do a lot for our ability to be more inclusive instead of outsourcing students to specialty schools when we feel as though we are unequipped to manage them in a positive way.  However, I also think that there is a long way to go in our understanding of how to implement these tools and how to budget for them.

 

If you’re interested in reading more about Milo this link is a pretty good place to start!

Reflections – Week 3

October 11, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Listening to Jesse Miller’s talk about privacy in education was incredibly interesting and brought up ideas and lines of thinking that I really hadn’t thought about before.  There is certainly a need to strike a balance between being available to your students and keeping up clear boundaries.  I remember, in my high school, our drama teacher sometimes got really involved in students lives, especially those who were on the after school improv team.  His familiarity was never something insidious but I remember hearing about improv camp from my friends and being uncomfortable with how much of their personal lives they felt comfortable sharing with him.  It always seemed strange to me.

 

On the other hand, my art teacher was very personable while still having clear barriers around her personal life and also respecting the personal lives of her students.  The most we knew about her life outside of the school we found out from other people.  She would talk to us about art and about our pursuit of further education but she never asked us to reveal any thing about our personal lives and she never tried to connect with any of us on social media until after we graduated.

 

It was also interesting to be reminded that even if the contact that you have with your students outside of school is completely innocent it will be subject to speculation and suspicion around whether it’s above board or not.  Sometimes suspicion can be enough to ruin a reputation even if those suspicions are proven to be unfounded.  It is ever more important to keep your social media presence in check.

 

Additionally, as I was checking things off this weeks task list, I spent some time going through google to see what information could be found about me.  I don’t really have too much of an online presence beyond what seems necessary for communication with friends these days so other than an ancient twitter account that is now deleted there isn’t really much to find for which I am grateful.  This exercise was also a reminder that you can only control what you put out into the world on social media, less so with what other people post about you and even less what is published in news papers that get put online.  For example, several years ago my cousin was killed in a hit and run in Kamloops which obviously prompted an investigation which is often followed up by articles in the local news paper.  Because we share a last name, if you google me you can find those articles with ease.  It’s not something that will affect my job prospects or my future in this profession but it is interesting that, in this age of information, all it takes is a quick google for someone to find out something about you that is so personal.

 

It’s a very good thing to take whatever control you have over your presence online but I also think that it’s important to remember that you can’t control every aspect of it.

Reflections – Week 2

September 26, 2020 / / 2 Comments

For class this week we talked about the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” about a charter school in the United States that was using an inquiry based structure to allow students to learn soft skills like teamwork, adaptability and leadership.  The part that I found the most interesting was near the end when they were giving statistics about the success of the school.  They mention that, in all honesty, they don’t really know how successful that style of learning was going to be in the long term.  The vast majority of students from this particular school were going on to pursue a higher education beyond high school and were being accepted into universities, but there was simply not enough data to be able to tell whether students would excel in a standard higher education system.  I believe that it was my EDCI 780 seminar leader, Kim, who said that learning design is a pendulum.  This charter school is probably at one extreme end of that swing and our standard, test based school system is at the other and what we truly need is to be able to find a middle ground that works.  The pace of the world is picking up and, as people who lived through things like the digital revolution, I hope that we can recognize that and keep up.  I believe that there is a possibility that those of us who aren’t able to follow the swing of that pendulum are destined to be left behind.

 

On a lighter note, and expanding on evolving methods of teaching and learning, I was introduced to the program called Twine.  Twine is an open source tool to help users create branching, non-linear stories without necessarily needing to learn the in depth language of HTML coding.  Once you have the basics down, there is the option to add to your stories with images, CSS and so much more that I have only just begun to explore.  Rich McCue, our instructor for this demonstration shared a presentation that his daughter made that really helped me see this program as a tool that can be used quite effectively in the classroom.

 

Overall, I think that I have gained a little more insight into potential benefits of inquiry based learning design and I have been educated in some of its potential flaws.  With Twine, I feel I have gained another tool in my ever growing tool belt and I have some great examples for how to use this tool to better develop a space for project based learning in the future.  I have linked the story I made with Twine at the bottom of this post so check it out if that’s something you might be interested in!

 

Twine Story

Overwhelming Beginnings – Week 1

September 17, 2020 / / 0 Comments

California, Washington and Oregon are on fire, BLM protesters forge ahead despite lessening media attention while anti-mask protests steal the spotlight and we still find ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic.  Throughout all of this, there has been a push on social media to be productive, as though its some personal failure if you come out the other side of all this without having learned a new language, written a book and produced your greatest artistic masterpiece.

 

If you have been able to do any or all of those things then I applaud you.  I don’t mean to sound cynical because over all, I’ve got it pretty good.  However, I believe that coming to terms with the fact that it’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed right now is a huge step in being able to overcome it.  In all honesty, these first classes have had me confused and out of my depth more often than not.  I generally consider myself to be an educated person who is relatively tech savvy but  with the sheer number of new programs and apps to learn how to use in addition to new information and course material, I sometimes find myself unable to figure out what questions I should even be asking to get the information I need.

 

Admitting to my classmates that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and discovering that I’m not alone in that has been the first step to breaking things down into manageable tasks.  At the moment I’m still not sure what I want to focus on for my free inquiry project.  I hope that I can find some way to incorporate my love of film and analysis but, at the moment, I’m not really sure I know how to do that, whether it would be possible or if it’s even worthwhile.

 

Jeff Hopkins mentions in his TEDx talk from 2014, that we should be shifting the way that we teach from have student know about something to having them truly know it.  The difference being that something that is known can be recalled and used in everyday life, perhaps several years down the road.  Right at the beginning of the talk he shares a quote, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” and I feel as though that applies to the way that I have been feeling over these last couple weeks.  At this very moment, I feel more like and incredibly full bucket than a sparked fire but as I sit in more classes and participate in more discussions I’m finding that all this new information is becoming more exciting than daunting.

 

Hopefully, as the year progresses, I will continue to settle in and find my groove within this program.  Finishing this first blog post has checked off one more box on an incredibly long to do list and, although there is still a lot to do, I’m happy to say I’m feeling just a little less overwhelmed already.

 

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