Perris Ed

We were asked to sketch note some highlights from the course. These are my highlights as seen below.

As you can see I focused on the positives, except for AI. My highlights were the Games and Inquiry based learning from PSII, which I found as the most important takeaways from this course. The major benefits of Games is the enjoyment of the students, it is an easy way to get the students engaged and interested in the topics. For Inquiry Based Learning I found that this was also the case, for students to get the most out of school they guide themselves and engage with what they want to do.

Today’s blog post is around online citizenship & digital footprints

What Are Online Citizenship & Digital Footprints

Online Citizenship is the concept of being identifiable as a citizen of the internet, or of the modern age. Some people are actively engaged in this, and create online profiles using social media or other apps, but others are online citizens simply by being famous or noteworthy. This ties in to a digital footprint, which is a record of your actions, pictures, and opinions online that is permanent. Some of this is stored in metadata, but some is stored on live websites that you can see at any time. For example this is a list of sd63 teachers at Parkland secondary school.

A screenshot of the Parkland Secondary school staff directory.

Reflection

At this point, almost all of us are online citizens whether we like it or not, there are too many socially expected things that almost require us to be online. We all have some kind of online presence, even by nature of taking this course, or in our future as teachers in the public system, our names will be online. This is positive, as it keeps us accountable to our words and actions. Modern “cancel culture” is actually a useful thing in my mind, it allows us to hold people accountable, and when they say things that are inappropriate it is not lost in the wind. That being said, I do also think that this is a major issue that will create a culture of extremely isolationist and homogeneous thought, some times there are good reasons to go against the status quo and having the ability to be wrong without any major consequence is a good thing for society generally. Additionally, the ability to search for any individual means that some things that people, even teachers, that they may not want seen by their students or the public means that we have no choice for certain subjects.

This week the topic we are reflecting on is Ed Camps.

What Are Ed Camps?

Ed Camps are participant led discussion forums, where individuals meet to discuss a topic under a general, educator provided, umbrella topic. These seem to be useful for generating ideas, having a blend of structure & inquiry approaches, and for online learning. They would be ideal for Pro D days or other inter-professional conferences.

Reflection

Ed Camps were an interesting idea, but the lack of structure seemed to be a limiting factor for the Ed Camp concept. I can see this being quite useful for professionals who do not have the time or ability to meet in person, however they do not seem good for working with younger students, or students who are not passionate about the subject. This may also work for grade 12’s who have elected to take the course.

Image from: https://digitalpromise.org/edcamp/

This week’s reflection blog post is on the subject of using coding and computational thinking, and gaming in the classroom.

Scratch & Coding

Above is a picture of the coding tool “Scratch” and my progress in a coding exercise. Using coding in the classroom seems to be an effective tool when it comes to presenting logical thinking. I can see the use in social studies as there are a lot of similar uses to computational thinking and historical thinking. Both have a lot of “if this than this” elements, and so there are many overlapping concepts and ideas.

I do think that there are also some major downsides to coding in the classroom. The use of coding is inherently one that can only be done with sufficient technology for the whole class, if you were to not have enough laptops it would be impossible for the whole class to complete the activity. In addition to the access, I’m not sure I think that encouraging students to code during a socials class really is the best use of the time, as students are spending more and more time on screens in other places, social studies is one of those times where it may be more beneficial to develop real social skills rather than online skills, such as coding.

Gaming In The Classroom

On the other hand, using board games or other kinds of serious games in the classroom, I think, can be a real benefit to both the teacher and students. Gaming can be a fantastic method of getting buy in from the students, as nowadays more students than ever play games as an outside of school hobby. Additionally, if serious games are used properly, the knowledge retained from learning through these games can increase dramatically,¹ with students having much more engagement with the ideas, and getting to actually play with the concepts.
For non serious games, board games can be a fantastic alternative to coding to try and teach different kinds of thinking. For example, this thread of teachers who used board games in the class to teach physics is full of great ideas and ways that several different board games were used in classes.

On the other hand, not everyone should use games, and there are downsides to using games. If learning targets are not clear, students may not retain much of the information. Additionally, there is always the risk that students will get bored, as with any class, and if you have a larger than normal proportion of students who dislike games, than perhaps using a game in the classroom is not for you.

1. Gundersen, Sindre & Lampropoulos, Georgios. (2025). Using Serious Games and Digital Games to Improve Students’ Computational Thinking and Programming Skills in K-12 Education: A Systematic Literature Review. Technologies. 13. 113. 10.3390/technologies13030113. ↩︎

Today’s blog post concerns the NFB presentation that I attended during the Pro D workshop day on Friday last week.

What is the NFB?

The NFB, otherwise known as the National Film Board, is a Canadian government organization dedicated to preserving Canadian culture and history through film, providing educational tools, and promoting indigenous and BIPOC voices.

Their presentation was on the use of digital tools that they have created in the classroom, they provide high quality pre-made educational plans for lessons on all kinds of topics.

Pros

There are many positive things to say about the NFB resources: They are high quality, they align with the curriculum, they are easily accessible and free, and they are a different kind of multimodal resource. All of these things are true, and I think that the NFB does a fantastic job at creating resources. I believe that using the NFB resources in the classroom would be a massive benefit for most teachers, as their lesson plans are easy to follow, and come with really easy to use guides for teachers.

Additionally, they have resources for students of all ages, there are blogs that are dedicated to walking teachers through what resources to use and when, to teach a subject that may be difficult. For example, this blog has a selection of resources to teach students about citizenship through animated films.

Cons

Unfortunately, there are some cons still. The first, and most prescient, is that if overused films can become the same as lecturing, students will only listen for short periods of time before zoning out and missing the point completely. Another risk is that the films may be seen as completely objective, regardless of who actually made them. If we are not careful in teaching media literacy, students may be at risk of blindly believing whatever is put in front of them.

Additionally, the use of technology is a problem, with students who have limited access to technology, assigning the NFB resources as homework may create equity problems. This may also be an issue for school districts in rural areas where there is limited funds available for technology.