To Web 2.0 and Beyond

As I struggle to focus and do my coursework in the heat, in front of a fan, between misting myself, I thought... what a perfect time to reflect on a historical time for BC and how it relates to social media.  On Monday, British Columbia set multiple temperature records and reached record high temperatures for June. In some areas in BC, the temperatures were 90 ° F- 114.8° F. In my area, the temperature high on Monday was 90 ° F.   For those that may not know, it is uncommon to have air conditioning in homes, townhouses and apartments in BC. Few homes have built in AC because, it never gets hot enough to need it (until this June).  Fans and air conditioners are sold out or out of stock across BC. Any place that has AC like community centres, malls, larger restaurants, have been packed with people and hotels are sold out. People have been bringing towels and blankets and 'setting up camp' on mall floors across BC. Designated cooling centres have been advertis...

Completing ESL courses or an English Language Learners certificate does not always mean you are fully prepared to jump right in and be the best ESL teacher you can be (although that is the wish). Growing your pedagogical practices and learning how to meet the literacy needs of ELLs takes time, resources and collaboration. This blog is a response to someone reaching out to their fellow educators and online ESL teachers community and asking for help.  I have spent 3 years collecting resources and asking for help, because I have been there too: feeling unprepared, confused about the discrepancy between my training and the reality of my classroom and ELLs and discouraged. Don't worry, your feelings are valid and common. It will get better and that starts with reaching out and asking for help. Beginning ELLs (with little language acquisition) participate mainly in listening and viewing activities as they build comfort to explore oral and writ...

Reading "Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice" by Goodyear et al. made me reflect on my experiences of professional development and pedagogical change and how much has been in person and virtual in my experience (and also what I prefer). Professional Development Days I love professional development. In my district in BC, we have designated professional development days that are either self-directed, run by our district or school-wide. The professional development days, 'Pro-D days' for short, that are held by the district typically recruit presenters and other professionals and have been in person before the pandemic. I enjoyed being able to have a designated day and invest in myself as an educator. Since the pandemic, these Pro-D days have been hosted online.  Do I prefer online or in person? I believe because our Pro-D days were virtual, I attended more because I had the time to a...

After my first year of teaching, I realized I was unprepared to effectively support the large number of ELLs in my classroom and scaffold their language acquisition. The same year, I decided I needed to learn more about working with English Language Learners (ELLs) and a year later,  completed my post-bachelor certificate in English Language Learners. ELLs are individuals learning English in addition to their first or home language. ELLs enter our classrooms with unique cultural, linguistic and academic backgrounds. Some ELLs may be born inside or outside of the country, Canada in my context, and some ELLs may be refugees or immigrants that have had no prior schooling or interrupted schooling due to their past experiences. ELLs may be experiencing trauma, culture shock or going through an adjustment to a new country, school and learning environment.  ELLs require a culturally responsive educator who will help provide a safe and student-centered learning environment, meet their...

Put your phone down... log off... shut down... and remember your roots.   Today, I did a digital detox, not checking my phone, no social media and no logging onto Canvas. I stayed away from my computer and my phone, and this is how it went... Something's missing...  At first, it was like I was missing a part of my body! I kept going to pick up my phone and had to stop myself. Throughout the day (which was a busy one as I was teaching 22 little 8 year olds all day), it was easy not to be near my phone. Most days, I barely get a chance to check my phone, let alone, log onto Facebook or Instagram to see what I am missing. At work, I barely have time to remember to drink water. However, when I got home, it was a bit more challenging because after work is typically when I get caught up on social media and dig into my coursework!  FOMO or Freedom?  I didn't expect that I would feel FOMO, but I did. No one has ever suggested or invited me to do a digital deto...

This was my first exposure to Open Educational Resources (OERs), while I wished I had learned about OERs earlier, I am excited to dive into this new concept. So, let's talk OERs Open Educational Resources and Reaching Universal Education OERs include any kind or type  of educational materials that are in the public domain and free to learn from, use, share and remix. Educational resources are typically  published under open licenses (like Creative Commons) that determine how the materials can be used and modified for the user's needs.  The goal of OERs is to provide open access to high quality and digital educational materials.  The OER movement comes from the effort to achieve the universal right to education and to share educational resources  on a global level.  OERs have a broad range of participants that include universities, private organizations and many others.  The above video offers a brief overview of OERs and how OERs can be used to overcom...

One of our challenges this week was to create a vision board on Pinterest.  I am an active user of Pinterest for teaching and other inspiration, it is  an app that I would say I use the most. Pinterest is something I look forward to using and I use it weekly to gather ideas and inspiration as well as learn new things for everything in my life- my job, my outfits, my workouts, vacation planning, career goals and visions, recipes, DIY ideas, literally everything!  While some Pinterest boards function as idea and information boards, where I pin resources that link to important sites and further reading, I also have many boards that are vision boards that are meant to create aesthetic and visions of things.  I created a vision board for my Career Visions and what I want my work life and atmosphere to look like, check out this Career Visions board .  I believe vision boards can effectively help someone establish what they want an aspect of their life to loo...

This week, I participated in a live Twitter chat, where people tune in at the same time to discuss a topic or answer questions with rapid short responses. The topic of the Twitter chat #edchat, was:   "Is the decision made by many states to return to an in-school model of education only, while ignoring the online benefits a sound policy?"  What I enjoyed about the experience was the addition of a little adrenaline I felt. Because the chat moved fast and the chat only lasted for a short time (15 minutes), I was engaged and reading people's ideas and the debates the whole time.  Going into the live twitter chat, I had a goal to tweet once, but as discussions emerged, I wanted to contribute and respond more. My first tweet was the hardest to post, as I had doubts that my ideas would be worth sharing.  #edchat Our district offered a blended model, online in the morning and in person (optional) in the afternoons. One afternoon a week, teachers connect with f...

This week I participated in the Twitter Days of the Week Challenge. Each day had a themed tweet suggestion and of course to accompany it, a hashtag.  This week's challenge has been a special one for me because it helped me reach a person best, this was the most I have ever tweeted in a week before!  Here is my #SumitupSunday #MondayMeme:  Has this ever happened to you while working or learning online? #eme6414 #MondayMeme pic.twitter.com/czU6zvTswc — Melissa (@LissaMay21) May 31, 2021 #Toolbox Tuesday I don’t know what I would do without Pinterest. It keep my life organized! I like to think of it as a visual bookmarking tool or a digital vision board #eme6414 #ToolboxTuesday pic.twitter.com/b4gDBNahbf — Melissa (@LissaMay21) June 1, 2021 #WonderingWednesday  I wonder if we should be teaching students about social media and internet use at earlier ages so they are staying safe and learning how to be good digital citizens? Teaching them positive collabora...

I read two articles this week on crowdsourcing: Conducting behavioural research on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (Mason and Suri, 2012) and Wilson's Crowdsourcing and self-instruction: Turning the production of teaching materials into a learning objective (2018). I realized that this is a concept I needed more information on to fully understand crowdsourcing and its uses. Throughout this blog post, I highlight different definitions of crowdsourcing as it is used in different contexts and for different purposes. In its simplest terms, I understand crowdsourcing as a practice of gathering information into a task or project from a large group of people.  Mason and Suri defined crowdsourcing as "a job outsourced to an undefined group of people in the form of an open call" and discussed using crowdsourcing to conduct behavioural research by tapping into Amazon's Mechanical Turk (a marketplace for completion of virtual tasks that require...

This week will mark my second week of being a part of two online Succulent and Cacti communities.  I thought that joining these two communities would feel like something I needed to remember to do (and at first it was), but after a few days, I was almost...hooked.  Right now, my schedule is very busy: wake up early, work on my courses, go to work, work on my courses, eat dinner, more work on my courses, then my other work like end of the year assessments, planning year end activities for my little learners, and of course report cards, because report card season is upon us. However, remembering to check my communities,  scroll through threads, comment on some pictures and ask some questions has become a lovely part of my day that I look forward to. I am surprised at how quickly I became invested. I wanted to check first thing the next day to see if anyone replied to my post or to enjoy my first few sips of coffee and look at the gorgeous pictures of people's succ...