Category: Third Year

EDTC 400 Mentoring

In EDTC 400 I was responsible fore mentoring a few students from EDTC 300.

Overall this experience was very interesting and gave me some insight of what it would be like to teach high school or university students. From this process I was given some insight on what it might be like to teach an online class and I found that it definitely could be challenging and isolating. I feel as though if I were able to meet my mentees in person it would have enabled me to help them more because I could ease my anxiety about talking to them or giving them pointers.

What was challenging?

The most challenging part of this experience was that I did not feel very qualified to help my mentees. I felt a lot of anxiety communicating with them because a part from already taking EDTC 300, my mentees were very capable and had a lot more general experience than I did. Despite this I was able to help a few of them in setting up their blog and giving them some ideas for potential blog posts.

You can view my interactions with them here.

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The Great EdTech Debate: Promoting Social Justice on Social Media & Cell Phones in Classrooms

For our fourth Great EdTech Debate we discussed two topics:

  1. Educators have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice and fight oppression.
  2. Cellphones should be banned in the classroom.

Here are some of my opinions:

Educators have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice and fight oppression

I agree that educators have a responsibility to use technology to promote social justice.

Why educators have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice and fight oppression

As educators, we shape the future of the world by the messages we send to our students and the community. Similarly, as the world progresses education is becoming a battleground for social justice and the fighting of oppression. As technology is becoming a very important detail of everyday life, it is argued that educators need to develop a digital identity that reflects who they are as a teacher. This idea is present in Torrey Trust’s article “Should all teachers have a professional social media presence? Yes”. A major part of a teachers job is to educate everyone in their community and this includes their digital community, therefore teachers do have a responsibility to fight for social justice on a digital platform.

Why educators may not have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice and fight oppression

An counterargument to this opinion is that not everyone has to be an activist over social media. Where this statement may be true in some cases, I believe there is an exception for teachers. When someone signs up to be a teacher they are also signing up to be a social justice warrior. As a teacher, your responsibility and loyalty is to your students and chances are the majority of your students will be directly affected by social justice issues and oppression. Therefore, it is your responsibility to stand up and educate in all contexts, including online.

Some interesting points from the debate

A point that brought up in the debate is that teachers are a teacher 24hrs a day and therefore have a responsibility to educate those around them on social justice issues and oppression at all times.

Cellphones should be banned in the classroom

I think that cellphones should be banned in Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 6 classrooms.

Why cellphones should be banned in some classrooms

I believe that cell phones should only be banned in early education classrooms because the purpose of early education is to teach children social skills and creativity. If cell phones were allowed in early years classrooms it would be extremely chaotic because children have trouble understanding and following basic rules and expectations.

However, in older classrooms cell phones can be a great resource for learning as seen in this article.

Some Interesting Points from the Debate

In the debate we discussed how there could be issues of inequity in the classroom when allowing students to use their personal devices. This could happen when it is made obvious to other students who does have and who does not have a device of their own. When talking about this issue we talked about the idea of learning who has devices in the classroom and making a decision based on this. If all students have a device, it is easy to integrate the use of cell phones in the classroom. However, if there are only a few students that do not have a device a possible option could be lending them a school device that they can take home and use as their own for the school year.

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Do you agree?

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The Great EdTech Debate: OERs Yay or Nay?

For our third Great EdTech Debate we discussed whether educators should share lessons, resources, and other materials that they have created openly online.

I agree that educators should share resources openly online and here is why:

The main argument for why Teacher’s should share the resources openly is that the foundation of Education is the principle of sharing knowledge. In David Wiley’s Ted Talk, he speaks about how sharing knowledge is not competitive, but it is courteous and provides space for innovation.

The purpose of knowledge is to share with others so that new knowledge and ideas can be created and once again shared. When knowledge is withheld, it stops society from moving forward. This same principle goes for the sharing of educational resources. If teachers were to not share their educational resources with each other there would be no growth or collaboration.

A counterargument to this statement is that Teachers are unbelievably underpaid and underappreciated. Therefore, they should be allowed and encouraged to make means in other ways such as, selling educational resources online. However, this argument is extremely flawed as this does not fix the problem of teachers being underpaid and it also damages the sense of community among teachers. If teachers look for ways to make more money for the things they should be getting paid to do (like creating resources) it gives those in charge an excuse to not pay teachers more since they make up their own means.

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Do you agree?

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Talking About Gender Diversity & Education

It is not often that I find a text book prescribed to me by the University to be super foundational to my learning and highlighting some biases I carry. However, in ECE 325 our textbook Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves has done this for me.

Recently in ECE 325, we were given the opportunity to explore a variety of social justice education issues over a course of a few weeks. Each week we were tasked with reading a chapter from Anti-Bias Education and exploring it as a group through a series of discussion questions.

For this blog post, I would like to shine a light on Chapter 9 of Anti-Bias Education – Learning About Gender Diversity and Fairness.

So, Let’s Make Some Connections…

Text to Self

When considering how I was taught about gender as a child, most of my experiences were implicit. It was implied to me that there were only two genders, that boys were strong, and that girls were kind. These things were implied to me by the adults in my life.

My experiences in being socialized to only know a gender binary is reflected in Chapter 9 of the text. The text talks about how teachers play a role in constructing children’s ideas about gender such as: organizing teams by gender or assigning roles/tasks based on gender. These are things that I experienced in my school years. Although the adults in my life may have not meant to teach me these things about gender their attitudes and actions were what helped me to construct my ideas about gender. It was not until my pre-teen years where I began to learn that gender is a spectrum and can be expressed in many different ways.

Text to Text

Batya Greenwald speaks about how she had to become more reflective about her own teaching and biases in her TED Talk “What kindergarteners taught me about gender”. These learnings came to her after a previous Kindergarten student came out to her as Transgender which inspired her to reflect and change her teaching practices to become more inclusive and not reinforce the binary gender model. Chapter 9 of the text highlights the ways that educators can do this. The text suggests to establish non-gendered routines and experiences, use teachable moments to have clarifying discussions about gender, discuss gender diversity on a regular basis and include representation in the classroom, design curriculum that encourages children to try things outside their comfort zone, acknowledge children’s gender expression that is not stereotypical, model behaviors that go beyond gender stereotypes and many other ways. Greenwald also speaks about the ways that she did this in her classroom and she found that the children in her classroom began t understand things on their own after they made a list of what only girls and boys do. The next day after analyzing their list the children began to go outside their original comfort zones: boys played dress-up and the girls played with trucks.

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