Twitter for Educational Purposes - TT3

I've been thinking a lot lately about how my twitter feed connects to my professional education aspirations. One of the connections I have managed to make is in regards to the constant sharing of ideas. There are so many great educators on twitter and as a pre-service teacher, it is an idea gold mine. Instead of sifting through instructional textbooks and online resources, I can just check my feed for resources that seasoned pros are sharing. It makes my life so much easier,with resources and when it comes to new pedagogical movements as well. What I mean by this is I can see the the changes on the front lines of education. For example, @CSCorganization is constantly posting modern information/resources on things like maker spaces, artificially intelligence, and inquiry or flipped based classrooms. Pedagogy is very dynamic enterprise in which I think twitter will keep me up to date.

Another important aspect of using Twitter as an educator involves constant improvement on becoming a better digital citizen. Our students grow up in a world and social media is just a part of their lives so I feel it is my duty to learn how to responsibly be a part of. I need to know what it means to socialize online and how to properly do so. As educators, we need to be active members of the community which includes the online aspect as well.

Manitoba Education

     This week in our Internet for Educators course Donald Girouard and Shannon Magee put on a presentation introducing Manitoba Blackboard Learn to us. From what I gathered, Manitoba Blackboard Learn is extensive, Manitoba curriculum aligned online classroom resource available to Manitoba educators. Upon navigating the site I was so impressed! The website offers a friendly user interface for so many great tools. Everything a person needs to run a classroom is there and the course doesn't have to be used exclusively for online classrooms and could be used in a face-to-face setting as well. I can definitely see myself using these courses in the future, especially if I have to teach a class outside of my comfort zone. Lots of the course (especially the newer ones) are interactive as well so this should help with classroom engagement. Of course I would let the website do the the teaching but it is a great resource for new teachers for sure. All students need to signup is their MET number too so there shouldn't be a huge issue with privacy.


I have to say that the fact that the Manitoba Government is willing to develop and provide such a powerful online resource really gets me excited to be a Manitoba teacher. This resource really shows that the government is behind us. It seems to be a good time to become a educator.

Presentation by Alec Couros

This past Thursday, Dr. Alec Couros put on a presentation through Zoom Video to our Internet for Educators class. I couldn't believe how engaged I was considering it as 2 hour slide-show presented over a laptop screen! The insight Dr. Couros brings forth towards educational tech is outstanding. The presentation was full of interesting perspectives that were mostly new to me, but there were two that stood out above the rest. The first was the power of the internet to allow students fingertip access to pretty much the entire data base of human knowledge and secondly, the open-learning style that accompanies it.

The implications to education in terms of ease for student access to information seems its changing the profession. I can't imagine teachers really being seen as the all encompassing knowledge keepers anymore especially when YouTube can pretty much teach a person anything they want to know. We need to adapt to this changing landscape.

This leads to the other point Dr. Couros brought up which is the concept of open-learning. Open-learning is a student centered approach to education where the students interests guide their own education. I could see myself using this in the class-room. The structure is a little looser than the traditional education system but I can imagine student engagement to be much higher. The main challenges I see that would arise though, especially at the senior years level, would be connection to curriculum and assessment. It would be very difficult to ensure that all students are meeting the curricular SLO's when student skills and interests could vary so widely! Not to mention trying to mark 100 assignments that are all different. I imagine the type of assigned work would have to be more project based as well, which in themselves take a lot longer to mark but if the students would benefit from them. I guess it's worth it.

Online Curation - TT2

     Online curation of resources is a concept that I have recently been introduced to. It is essentially the collection and organization of the all the websites one visits in a given week. I find the importance of it is it allows for a cognizant way of noticing the websites you love and the ones that are going stale. Prior to collecting in this way I found that I would lose websites or threads that I loved but forgot they existed since I hadn't visited them in so long. Now that I have them in one place, I can easily be reminded and keep connected to sites that feed my online article addiction.

I see online curation is somewhat like writing a research paper. When writing a research paper, there is mounds of documents,texts, and articles that contain a mountain or knowledge that needs to be sorted through. The sifting usually involves highlighting and paraphrasing the key concepts that are necessary additions for the paper. This is similar the cruising the internet for threads, blogs, articles, etc. The internet is the library, the websites are the resources, and the curation platform is the paper. This curation is a synthetic process that leads a neat and organized final product.

     There are many websites that help with this process but the ones that I have been using that seem to be organised and neat are Feedly and Symbaloo. Feedly is great for organizing blogs and websites that continually update material. Symbaloo I use for resources and tools that I use in my teacher toolkit. Symbaloo has a easy to read interface as well that is vastly customizable. I will continue to use these platforms and I'm sure others will get added to collection. Hopefully I don't get to a point where I need a curation platform for organizing my curation platforms 😒😒😒😒.

Directional Shift

The next few posts over the coming months are going to be a bit different from the previous flow. I would like to continue on with a weekly reflection on some of the aspects of the digital world educators and students are currently navigating. The first is social media for teachers and, digital identity and dualism.

From my very brief experience as an educator, I have seen many educators with social media accounts. It seems like a good idea to me since educators need to be up-to-date individuals with the worlds ever changing society in order to better connect with their students. Social media comes with responsibility though. It's no different in than a student seeing a educator outside the classroom, for example at any sporting event. As a societal role model, a teacher really needs to hold themselves up to a higher civilized standard, especially in a public whether it be a sporting event or through comments on Donald Trumps twitter posts. A persons digital presence is a direct reflection of who they are, when the posts come from themselves of course.

This digital singularity is one aspect that I have recently learned is so prevalent that it is being taught to students. People socialize online as well as in person, so digital civility must be practiced. The concept of digital dualism, where the digital identity is different than physical identity needs to be abolished. Any expression of thought or interaction with another person (whether online or in person) must be met with respect and our youth should have opportunities to learn how to do this.

Reflection on ICT

  Throughout the course, there is one aspect of infusion of ICT in the classroom that became glaringly evident. This aspect is the overwhelming amount of tools that are out there that can be incorporated into the classroom. For instance, within my blog post I have identified Khan Academy, Desmos, Nat-Geo Education, Classcraft, Socrative Teacher, Prezi, and Nova from PBS. These examples are only a drop of water in an ocean. All of these tools (and many others) can certainly enhance any lesson but require an extra effort for a teacher to learn. This can create a confusion and frustrating experience that can cause an aversion to educational technology. With any confusion on the educator’s part easily trickles down to the students so it is imperative that we as educators masters our tech! The solution I have decided to use to remedy this feeling is to pick a “core set” of apps, websites, etc. to master and share. To showcase my core set the website I prefer to use (introduced within this course) is Symbaloo. Symbaloo allows for a quick, image based, at-a-glance organizer that can easily be shared and navigated with students in the classroom.

   The inclusion of tech in the classroom is my opinion inevitable! One of the ideas Mr.Nantais shared within the class was that using tech needs to become second nature just like using a remote control, graphic organizer in notes, a new pen, etc. It’s shouldn’t be an event to use something like a Prezi presentation in class, it is just a different way to organize the information. I feel like the only way for an educator to be able to use tech fluently, they must use it in their everyday life, not just for the classroom. The world has changed and using tech is normal now so we, as educators, have a social responsibility to stay on the forefront and embrace new apps, websites, devices, etc.

   One of the largest changes that I have been noticed is due to Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. With one idea, Mark Zuckerberg had completely changed how the majority of the world interacts socially, all with a piece of tech! His creation has made a vessel for the private lives of people and to be made public to the entire world! Lots of people do not think twice about posting some of their most private moments on Facebook but this is just the norm now. I have seen a social revolution through social media! Social media websites are how people get to you know someone now so it is so important to become a digitally literate citizen. It’s an obvious statement that students look up to teachers as an “all-knowing being” and digital citizenship needs to be one of those aspects of life that teachers need to know all about.

Nova from PBS

Nova Website

The Nova website is an incredible site for teachers of science and math.The website is an extensions of PBS. On the website there is a massive collection of videos, activities, labs, and so much more. The website is constantly being updated as well to include to most recent science behind world events. The entire website is student friendly as well. The language is manageable and the navigation is very easy to do.

Not only is the science behind world events/issues included but there is an entire section for educational purposes. The education section of the website has an entire breakdown of lessons and notes for teachers on how to include these lessons into their classrooms including necessary handouts, all for free! The lesson also indicates appropriate grade levels. 

The topics that NOVA covers is endless. I have spent quite a bit of time exploring this site and there is no high school science class, in my opinion, that wouldn't benefit from this site.