Visit to Pacific Institute of Innovation and Inquiry

Our Visit to this school was truly inspiring. Before arriving I had not idea that a school like this existed in Victoria. I was blown away by the hard work and passion that went into the schools creation. Throughout the first few months of the PDP program I have found it inspiring to meet so many educators who truly go above and beyond in their practice. I still have many questions about the students productivity and ability to maintain focus in such a free environment, yet I am hoping to volunteer at an institution such as this and observe the answers to my questions.

I had two wonderful conversations with students. One was studying the difference between performance transmissions in race cars and regular transmission. They explained to me that they loved the way they educate themselves at this school because they felt they were a hands-on learner so didn’t desire to do the type of book learning that many regular schools facilitate regularly. The other student was writing a play and after explaining their ideas we had a great conversation about American politics. I was impressed with how knowledgable they were.

This visit inspired me to dive deeper into this type of learning. I am so excited to converse with my friends an family about it.

Today we watched an excellent presentation by Jesse Miller. He provided us with a world of information regarding technology and its place in the world today. More specifically, in elementary schools.  I was left with many answered questions and great interest going ahead.

The presentation made me eager to go through my digital footprint and and ensure that I do not have any needless loose ends such as abandoned social media accounts. I feel that in order to be a responsible internet user we should all be aware of our own footprint and all of the different impacts our online activities can have. If we are able to take ownership over our footprint we will not have to be concerned about interacting inappropriately  online unintentionally. Which I feel happens all too often.

I will continue my education in understanding the impacts of technology on elementary aged students by diving further into understanding  the relationship young people have with video games. Fortunately Jesse recommended a great book on this subject. I plan on buying it soon.

Today we explored video editing using imovie. It was exactly what I have wanted to learn. For our EdTech inquiry, Janel and I are going to be producing and editing a video, so taking time today in class to explore how to actually do that was very helpful. Furthermore because I use my Macbook in class I thought it was great to find out that I already had all of the editing tech needed to create our video. I created the first 30 seconds of our video which consisted of  very simple clips of us playing around with the program.

Midway through class many people, including myself, left to attend the Climate Strike at the legislature. I traveled to the protest on my bike in a bike brigade. Then once at the legislature I stood with some friends and observed the rally. At one point Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal NDP, walked by us and I got to meet him for the second time. I believe him to be a genuinely nice guy.

On this day in class I made a note to myself explaining the value in these blog posts.  I enjoy how much freedom and autonomy we get in our assignments and activities. It creates a stress free feeling both in and out of class. Yet these blog posts ensure that we stay engaged  in the material. They act as a gentle constant in a class that allows for so much free choice. Such engagement is necessary because we are also all sitting in front of computer screens where their is infinite potential for exploring and distracting ourselves from the tasks at hand.

In class on this day we took time to learn how to navigate twitter. One part of this website that I really enjoy is the column on the left hand side which provides all the most popular topics of the day. After seeing this I realize how people would use twitter to access daily news.  I would like to use this website more in the future as I have learned that it is an excellent resource for education information.

At the beginning of this class I attained an image that I don’t think will ever leave my mind. That is of Eliza’s face on a screen attached to a robot wheeling around the class. The reason I feel this will stay with me is because I believe technology will advance far beyond this educational tool that UVic owns, and one day I will look back and think that it is funny how amazed I was to see this technology in 2019. I do think it is great that she could be included in the class even though she was in Vancouver and that she could move around and put her focus anywhere in the room.  I feel for classroom purposed, that it would be effective for Eliza to be able to  indicate when she wanted to participate by signalling with some sort of bell or light on top of the robot.

I also very much enjoyed the information in Rich’s presentation. I was especially drawn to what he said about seminars he holds on video production and editing. For a long time I have wanted to learn how to properly edit videos I create so I decided to make it part of my Ed Tech inquiry. I look forward to exploring some of the programs Rich discussed and hopefully attending one of his seminars.