My Journey to Teaching

Author: cwaddell (Page 2 of 3)

Google Sky, Mars, and Moon

Image result for google earth

Google Earth doesn’t only mean a user can trot around the Blue planet. The amazing application also lets us explore the sky, Mars, and the Moon! All you have to do is click on the icon that looks like Saturn (used here probably because it’s the most recognizable planet) on the top of the Google Earth page. See below for more information:

Image result for google sky

Google Sky shows the stars, planets, and galaxies from the perspective of Earth, and allows the user travel through the cosmos at their own pace. Sky was created by stitching together imagery from a variety of scientific third parties, such as the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). It can, for example, be used to view and navigate through hundreds of millions of individual stars and galaxies, and explore the planets. Imagery that is very high-resolution, paired with very cool and informative overlays, create a virtual experience that is a super engaging way to learn about space. Data on Sky is constructed in layers, such as “constellations” (shows the labels and patterns of constellation), “backyard astronomy” (shows a variety of place-marks and information on stars, galaxies, and nebulae), “our solar system” (shows images and info about the Sun, Moon, and planets), and “featured observatories” (shows images from a selection of the world’s most famous observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope). Sky also gives information on where certain stars or galaxies can be found. A great way to learn about Google Sky is by click on the “Touring Sky” box!

Image result for google mars

Google Mars takes users from the Blue planet straight to the Red planet! As with Google Earth, users can turn information layers on and off. This allows you to, for example, search for specific landmarks and leave place-marks. Users can also see: 3D images of terrain, images of the surface (including infra-red), and great quality orbital images, high-quality photos, and 360-degree panoramas taken by various Mars landers. To get a good overview of Google Mars and to learn more about what you are seeing, take a guided tour or check out “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars.” You can also click on “Live from Mars” to find, among other information, recent pictures and orbiting paths of spacecraft. In the best cases, users can see images that were taken mere hours before. Once you’re tired of seeing red, you can also visit the International Space Station, or other planets such as Saturn, Pluto, Venus, and Mercury.

Image result for google moon

Google Moon allows users to explore the most famous (and most visited) moon in the solar system. Like Google Earth, Moon has many layers for users to play around. One of the most noteworthy is the layer that allows you to learn more about Apollo missions 11-17 (includes history of missions, photos taken from EVA suits by astronauts from a given mission, and even tours of lunar sites narrated by Apollo astronauts!). Also included on the site are 3D models of rovers and landers, 360-degree photo panoramas, and footage of the Apollo missions. Another cool feature that might be especially relevant to a school setting is the “ruler”, which allows students to measure distances, diameters of craters, and follow paths taken by Lunar buggies.

All in all, Google Sky, Mars, and Moon offer great ways to provide students with engaging lessons on all things out of this world!

 

 

 

 

 

Google Earth vs Google Maps – What’s the Difference?

Image result for google earth

Before starting out my Tech inquiry on mapping I knew, of course, about Google Maps and was familiar to a small extent with Google Earth. However, I couldn’t really tell you what the difference was. As far as I could tell the applications were, to a large extent, redundant. But after digging a little deeper, I discovered that the two programs were both unique and practical in their own ways. So what’s the difference?

Google Maps is for routing and getting to places, and contains all the navigation, lightweight mapping power and points of interest. However, it possesses only low res, 2D satellite imagery so isn’t a great way to get a feel for where you’re heading. The street view feature is fine for close up images, but not if you want to zoom out a bit more. In essence, Maps favours utility over experience. Google Maps is most useful when a person is looking places to go and ways get there, with turn-for-turn navigation for biking, driving, walking, and bus-ing. The strong points of Maps are the maps themselves and points of interest (parks, schools, government buildings, etc). While Maps will cover the majority of what people need from a mapping app, if one is looking for the highest-detailed information, then Google Earth is where they will find it.

Google Earth is for exploring. It has complete high res 3D satellite data and only a little bit of information on places (and no point-to-point navigation). The point of Google Earth is visiting different places virtually in 3D – there aren’t many other features to distract the user. While not offering the rich data experience that Maps provides, if you want to really look around and see what things are like, Earth is the app for that. In essence, it favours experience over utility. The user can get guided fly-by tours of buildings and cities, or they can simply explore by zooming, scrolling, or panning. It can give you a great feel for the size of buildings and the topography of a given location. The combination of Street View with sophisticated satellite imaging  makes for a great way to look around almost anywhere in the world, whether zoomed in or out. Earth also has the Voyager feature. This feature is a showcase of guided tours, intended to curate or guide your experience with the platform. The tours are in the form of map-based stories. One part of Voyager is known as Earth View, which combines high-quality landscape images of random places. Lastly, Google Earth has the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. If you click on the button, you are taken to any random location across the globe. For any given place, Google Earth shows an information card which leads to a page dedicated to providing more information.

So, while Google Maps and Google Earth are similar in certain respects, they both have unique features and capabilities which provide teachers with interesting possibilities for introducing maps and technology into the classroom.

Inquiry-Based Teaching at George Jay

Yesterday our class was given the opportunity to visit Kindergarten teacher Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt at George Jay Elementary, where she has taught for 6 years. Mrs. Bathurst Hunt’s teaching philosophy is based around inquiry-based learning. She encourages her students to uncover what’s important to them by asking questions, and using tools and strategies that allow them to follow their passions. Because her students are Kindergarten-aged, she uses a very guided, scaffolded approach to inquiry-based learning. Rebecca stresses the importance of creating conditions that support questions and curiosity (humans are innately curious). She uses various materials and stations (such as the Wonder-wall) around her classroom, and books like Ada Twist Scientist to create these conditions, as without this curiosity, inquiry-based learning is very hard! Another thing she does is begin lessons/assessments/one-on-one check-ins with questions. For example, with a math lesson she might ask “If you walk outside, what patterns would you see?” She took us through the various types of inquiries, and expelled the myth that inquiry necessarily means that students have to pose all questions (as with a free inquiry).  She uses a gradual release approach, which starts with a very structured inquiry and progresses to give students more freedom – but only when they’re ready. She has only progressed to the free inquiry stage once in her 6 years at George Jay, spending most of her time in the “shallow” end of the pool (see pic above). This is because, without a strong base of literacy skills, it is hard to inquire freely. That said, a structured inquiry can still be very powerful. As for starter inquiry questions, she suggests questions like “Who am I?” or “Why am I me?” that are posed in a circular, rather than linear, sense (i.e. identify names, families, traditions, lands, etc.). After that, ways to honour questions include tactics called provocations – Wonder-walls, stations around the room, walking field trip, artifacts students bring in. She also explained that there are always 3 questions in provocations: what do you see. what do you know, and what do you wonder. I thought this was a valuable field trip, and I look forward to implementing some inquiry-based learning into my classroom!

P.S. Check out the “Kindness Ninjas” movement and the book “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deeds” to explore random acts of kindness and their effects with students!

More pictures from our visit:

Spin Class!

Today I had the pleasure of taking part in my first spin class, put on by one of my lovely classmates at UVic’s CARSA gym. I had always been curious about what a spin class would be like, but had put attending one off until now because I’d heard horror stories from my friends about how tough they were! However, because my free inquiry projected is directed towards finding time to remain active with a busy schedule, I have been doing a fair amount of bike riding lately. This meant I felt a little more confident that I would be physically up to it when the idea of having a cohort spin class came up. It was hard work, but I really enjoyed it. I liked how we were pushed to work hard, but that it wasn’t a competition and everyone was simply encouraged to do their best. The bikes, all very modern, were also very fun to work with. This is something I would definitely like to do again! The group aspect really convinced me to make time for this great activity on a day that I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and would in all likelihood have not made the time to exercise.

October 18th Class – Hello Trello

Today in class we had good discussions about guest speaker Jessie Miller and our visit to PSII. Afterwards, we got down to a topic that I had been avoiding until now: Trello. I have nothing against the digital tool, it’s just that I saw exploring it as one more thing to do when I already had a lot on my plate. That said, up to this point in school I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants when it came to assignments. I’ve constantly been surprised by due dates because I haven’t really been keeping track, and have done a fair bit of last-minute scrambling as a result. So looking at Trello in today’s class was timely. A busy November is approaching, so I’ve decided to finally make use of the tool. I’ve begun adding assignments to my lists and calendar. Another thing I did was add the app to my phone. This way, I can add inquiry ideas or assignments to my to-do list when I’m away from my computer, thereby staying up to date while avoiding having to spend big amounts of time updating it. I look forward to learning more about Trello, exploring and utilizing the built-in inquiry tools, and determining whether or not it will work for me! See below for a tutorial:

Today, we also looked at Photoshop and Illustrator, industry leaders in graphic software. Photoshop is a pixel-based software option (little dots make up the images) and Illustrator is a vector-based software option (images are based on mathematical models that can be manipulated on the screen). I didn’t get to spend any time with either software, as I need to download Photoshop onto my computer, but it looks like a user-friendly tool. We also looked at PowerPoint (and the related tool SmartArt), a tool that is great for creating slide shows. But that’s not all it’s good for! Everything you create on PowerPoint can be exported as a picture or, if you hit ‘save-as’, you can choose to convert files to a bunch of different types (jpeg, etc.). If you don’t want to pay for these tools, there are free options out there, such as GIMP (like Photoshop) and Pixler (like PowerPoint). Needless to say, I have a lot of useful teaching tools to explore. See below for Photoshop and PowerPoint tutorials:

Last, we looked at some cool apps for the phone, such as Prisma (uses AI to turn photos into works of art), MirroLab (applies kaleidoscope effect tp photo), comica (makes picture look like it’s from a comic book). We also looked at BryanMathers.com, a creative commons site with a lot of cool images to choose from! (https://bryanmmathers.com/)

 

PSII

I had a great time visiting the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry yesterday. The high school, which has just under 100 students, replaces the traditional model, wherein subjects are separated neatly into blocks, with an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based model. Essentially, on day one students arrive at the school and begin to generate questions they’d like to answer. What may start as a single question often branches into many. These questions then become the foundation of their curriculum over the course of a school year. There is no formal homework, though as school founder Jeff Hopkins notes, students end up doing more work out of school than the average high school-er because they are engaged in emergent learning that they are genuinely passionate and curious about, and that they possess a great deal of agency over. According to Hopkins, staff manage to cover about 85-90% of the BC curriculum with any given student. This is thanks in part to the fact that teachers “nudge” students. That is, if they have gaps in what they are learning (i.e. if they are killing it at mathematics but not reading much) a teacher might have a conversation with them about perhaps picking up a little more non-fiction. The learning is all very collaborative and conversational, rather than being based around conventional, lecture-based interactions between teacher and student. The daily school schedule is a rich one, with students being offered periods in jam band practice, Japanese, baking, or creativity, among many other topics. A student will, on average, attend around 2 seminars a day, with the rest of the day being dedicated to their inquiry-based learning. In the brief time I was there, students were working on math with instructors one on one or in small groups, playing video games they designed, creating art, baking muffins, working quietly or immersed in a din of noise, and practicing guitar. The variety of focus was impressive, and I enjoyed the unique atmosphere the school offered. Jeff Hopkins made a convincing case that the inquiry, emergent model is feasible province-wide, based on factors including the costs of running such a school, the teacher to student ratio, and the benefits/salary/pension options available to instructors. As for the students,  says Hopkins, the effectiveness of such a model for students is proven in the results. Students are clearly prepared for life and learning after high-school, he says. Former students have gone on to accelerated entry at UVic, careers in neuroscience, and business start-ups. Overall, I found the whole thing very inspiring, though one thing I didn’t quite agree with was the idea that this school model would work for all students. Sure, maybe it is working for all or most of the students attending PSII today, but perhaps this is because the school is drawing kids who already possess the characteristics necessary to functioning well within its structure (or lack thereof). I imagine that to thrive at a school like PSII, a student would need to have a healthy degree of self-regulation, curiosity, and drive to learn. For some students, more structure might be needed. That said, I’m with Jeff Hopkins when he says that the single-course approach to learning is (often, in my opinion) the end to inquiry-based earning. For many students, as soon as you say “here’s the course”, they say “OK, what do I need to do to pass/get an A this course.” I know this was, and still is to a large extent, the unfortunate way I thought about most of my learning (or lack thereof) at university. Nevertheless, I think the important thing is to realize that different people learn in different ways. It’s important to give learners options, and I think it is great that a school like PSII exists. I think more students and societies in BC and around the globe would benefit greatly if more schools like this existed.

Below: I wish someone had asked me this when I was in high-school!

 

Re-imagining the Run

As I’ve continued with my goal to incorporate fitness into my busy school and family life, I’ve had to re-imagine the way I look at working out, specifically running. In the past I’ve been of the mindset that, in order to “count”, a run had to be at least 45 minutes. When you factor in preparing for the run, stretching, and other factors, this meant that a workout would inevitably clock in at a little over an hour. This may not seem like a large amount of time, but with a finite amount of precious time per day do any number of things, it is a fairly significant chunk for me. This has become especially true since I’ve become a father, as I need (and want) to be around the house more in order to help out. In previous years, if I didn’t have an hour to dedicate to exercise I would forgo it entirely. This led to me losing motivation because of a deteriorating level of fitness, which would predictably result in me abandoning exercise until my next heart-felt (and ultimately doomed) resolution. This time around, however, necessity has pushed me to look at running from a new perspective. Every run doesn’t need to be a long one – it’s just not possible. It’s all about finding the little windows of time available to at least work up a bit of a sweat. What matters is getting out there to get the heart rate up and to keep your body used to the idea that it is a physical machine. Using this perspective, I’m not allowing myself to go long enough between runs that the idea of running begins to seem like a foreign concept.  Even with a 20-30 minute run, I feel healthier both mentally and physically, and that’s proof enough for me that a “micro-workout” is still valuable. The American College of Sports Medicine would agree, as they recommend that adults should accumulate at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity 5 days per week OR engage in 20-minutes of vigorous activity 3 days per week. In order to integrate fitness into a busy life, sometimes what’s required is a change in perspective. If this change is one that enables you to meet your goals – even if those goals are not as lofty as in the past – I see nothing wrong with that. 

Below: a Strava snapshot from one of my runs around Beacon Hill Park

A Bathroom with Glass Doors

This past Friday we had a guest speaker come into class by the name of Jessie Miller.  Jessie, who has a fascinating background with the Vancouver PD in both their bait car and sex crimes units, now runs his own company, Mediated Reality. He travels around the world educating people on how to safely, and not so safely, navigate the world of social media and the internet. What I as a future teacher took most from his talk was the fact that educators are professionals who face a great amount of responsibility (and pressure) when it comes to our presence on social media and the internet in general. We cannot afford to forget a very important point that Jessie made: every product on the internet has a bi-product. That “private” video you tagged some friends in and sent out on Instagram? Yeah, someone used a third party app to share it. Now it’s out for everyone to see. That Snapchat account you “deleted”? Yeah, that still exists…and Snapchat still has all your videos – even the ones you deleted because they weren’t up to par. As teachers, it is important for us to carefully monitor our networked connections. That is, we must be very aware of who we let in to our social networks (think of the story of the guy with the bad back who live-streamed his day of skiing…his insurance guy saw that, and he was fined $200,000 and charged with fraud). It’s so easy to contaminate our security of self because we neglect to maintain our social channels. The point is not to make sure you can get away with cheating or lying. The point is that, as teachers, people (parents, employers,etc) will inevitably be looking into our internet presence and social media accounts to suss us out. It only takes one look  Google search of “teacher fired social media” to become very acutely aware of what can go wrong in this line of work. So we must be mindful of what we put out on the internet, and of who we let into our online worlds. One initial step I have personally taken to protect myself is to set my Instagram account to ‘private’. I know this provides minimal protection, but at least now I have some control over who sees what I post. It is also important to stay informed. As teachers, we must understand the school expectations and policies of the employers surrounding social media, balance our personal lives with professional expectations, facilitate an open dialogue of usage with students and colleagues, understand social media culture, develop empathetic and ethical users, and understand the value of information. Taking it upon ourselves to stay informed on these issues is so important because, as Jessie Miller put it, the internet is like a bathroom with glass doors: the privacy found within is largely an illusion.

I Get In The Zone, Thanks To My Phone

Above: an example of my route to UVic, as seen on the Strava App

Getting motivated to exercise has always been a problem for me. If I had a dollar for every excuse I’ve ever made to ditch a workout, I’d be moderately wealthy.  So, when I made the resolution to integrate fitness into my busy life, I knew I’d need help. Enter Strava. Although I’d used one or two fitness apps in the past , I wanted a fresh start. So, I did a bit of Googling and found that a lot of people who run or bike to stay fit are using Strava. The first, and most important feature: it’s free. Yes, there is a membership you can purchase for $6/month that gives you extra features, but for my purposes the free version is more than enough. The second most important feature of Strava (and most fitness apps) is that it allows you to track your times, routes, and various activities, thereby giving you the opportunity to compete not only against yourself, but against other like-minded people in your area over time. It is these features that really motivate someone like me – I want to see how many km overall I can cover in a month, or how much quicker I can get to school or around Beacon Hill Park. Being able to actually see my progress  and attempt to build on it is, for me, what pushes me out the door, away from all those convenient excuses. Here are some other great characteristics of Strava:

  • You can use it on your phone or laptop
  • Shows map images of your routes
  • It’s basically social media for athletes – for example, you can follow people and vice versa, and give ‘kudos’ (Strava’s version of ‘likes’) and comments to posts on a person’s timeline
  • Record and create routes, broken up into segments with fun names like “Oh, That Hill”, on which you compete against yourself or up to thousands of others who have completed that route or segment – sometimes famous athletes. And if you get a personal best or overall record on a route you get ‘awards’)
  • On runs or bikes, elevation is measured, as are splits (broken up into miles or kilometers), distance covered, average speed, max speed, moving time, and max elevation
  • Join online or local clubs, such as the UVic Cycling Club or Greater Victoria Trail Runners
  • Enter Challenges, such as October 5k (see how fast you can run a 5k this month) or October Cycling Distance Challenge (see how far can you bike this month)
  • Set weekly or yearly goals, and view weekly or yearly statistics
  • Track what gear you used.  as well as the amount of wear and tear on that gear so you know when it’s time to replace old gear
  • Has an auto-pause setting, so you don’t get timed when your stuck at pesky traffic lights
  • You can run it on your smart watch, which can then sync to your phone later on

So far I’ve really enjoyed using Strava, and feel it has helped me stick to my goal of integrating fitness into my busy life. Its intuitive design makes it easy to use, and I love seeing my routes and having the opportunity to try to best myself on bikes or runs!  See below for a couple tutorials I find on Youtube:

 

Ditch the Car, It’s Not That Far

 

I’ve been attending the University of Victoria to various degrees since 2005. Yes, writing that does make me feel old. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as someone who has lived in the Beacon Hill area for most of my life, I’ve always thought of UVic as being somewhere that I could get to quickest from home by driving a car. So when I decided to start biking more as a means of integrating fitness into my daily life, I decided to see if driving to UVic really was the quickest option. From my house, it takes about 20 minutes, give or take, to get to UVic. Once I added the time it took to find parking, pay ($9 a day currently), and walk to whatever building my class is in, the total commute time from door to door was approximately 30 minutes. During the first week of class this year, I timed how long it took to bike to school and the result surprised me: door to door – and with no charge for ‘parking’ my bike – the commute took me 23 minutes. The point of all this is that not only is biking to school good exercise (thanks largely to that damn hill on Foul Bay Rd.), but that it is actually much quicker than driving – by about 7 minutes! A car might often seem like the quickest option, but with a bike you get to bypass a lot of traffic and congestion, especially in towns like Victoria where there is a huge amount of construction going on. And you generally go just about as fast as car, at least in the city or on downhill sections. So, I can now kill two birds with one stone: I can take the quickest, and cheapest, means of transportation to school, all while getting in a decent workout. What a fun, practical, cost-effect, and ‘green’ way to integrate fitness into a busy life!

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