Final Networked Learning Post

Hey everyone! Below is the link to my word document which consists of screenshots I have taken over the semester on Slack, WordPress & Twitter. It has been a great aspect to the class being able to contribute and help the learnings of your peers and also receive contributions from them on your own work. I believe I have almost all of my contributions in the word document but may be missing a few that I forgot over the course of the semester. Thanks for an amazing semester everybody!

Final Networked Learning Post – Screenshots

Learning Project Wrap-Up!

Before working on this Learning Project, I did not know any French at all other than limited learning in elementary school. I now know common phrases on how to introduce myself and carry conversations as well as the knowledge to speak an entire biography on myself in the French Language. My autobiography voice recording is posted below for those who have not heard it yet:

wrap-up-post – Completed Autobiography Voice Recording

I used many tools and applications throughout this process that helped make it easier and understandable.The most useful one I used were:

Duolingo

YouTube

Google Translate

These tools were amazing in helping me learn how to read, write and pronounce words and sentences in the French language. Below is the progress I made throughout the semester in writing out my autobiography:

This project taught me how to research and use online technology and tools to learn a new skill. I now feel much more confident in my ability to learn any new skill with the assistance of online technology. This new knowledge will help me in my last two years of classes but as well when I become a teacher.

This project also allowed me to learn the basics of a new language. I can provide my entire biography in French and have learned how to speak and write common conversational phrases which will be helpful if I ever travel to French speaking communities or if I ever teach French students.

 

How To Start & Continue Conversations in French

I have altered my last goal from simply having a conversation in French to providing information on the tools and technology that I used to learn common beginner French phrases that would help start and continue a conversation in this language. Along with the tools and technology I will share, I also documented some common phrases along with the English meaning beside them.

FluentU

Duolingo

Google Translate

These sources were very beneficial to me throughout the semester and helped me achieve all of my goals. They all had their pros and cons though as some helped better with certain aspects. Google Translate was good for learning words, while Duolingo and the YouTube video helped more with learning the pronunciations.

I will now share with you 25 common beginner phrases in French that can help get you started if you are interested in learning this language. A benefit of learning French is that it expands your chances of finding a teaching job as you are now open and able to teach French classes and at French immersion schools. This is also beneficial to travelling and I believe it is nice to know your countries second language.

French	English
Bonjour	Hello
Salut	Hi
Salut, Commet Ca Va?	Hi, how are you?
Bonsoir	Good evening
Bonne nuit	Good night
Oui	Yes
Non	No
Je, m’appelle	My name is
S’il vous plait	Please
D’accord	Ok
Exusez moi	Excuse me
Merci	Thank you
De rien	You’re welcome
Il est quelle heure?	What time is it?
Qu sont let toilettes?	Where is the bathroom?
Enchante	Nice to meet you
A bientot	See you soon
A demain	See you tomorrow
Au revoir	Good bye
Bien sur	Of course
Je peux utiliser?	May I use?
Je suis desole	I am sorry
Pourquoi	Why
C’est vrai	Really
Je ne comprends pas	I don’t understand

Hope you all enjoyed, best of luck with the rest of the semester and finals! Au revoir.

Summary Of Learning Powerpoint Presentation!

Hey everyone! Below is the link to my Summary of Learning Presentation and the voice recording. Once you play the audio, you can view the slideshow and follow along with my recording, just remember to open up both PowerPoints and select play on the speaker then you will be able to follow along. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the recording on the same PowerPoint because it turned off when you went to a new slide. I hope everyone enjoys and thank you for a great semester!

You may have to click through the slides while following along instead of viewing it as a slideshow if the recording seems to be stopping. I also emailed Katia the voice recording if it is easier to follow along with that.

Summary Of Learning PP EDTC 300

Summary of Learning Voice Recording

My First Coding Experience

Hey everyone! For my first coding experience I participated and finished the Minecraft code. If you want to give it a try I will put the link here. It is for all ages and honestly, I struggled a bit near the end. I have never worked with code up until I took Computer Science my first year of University, so I had a little bit of experience. I had a ton of fun while doing this but unfortunately could not screencast my time doing it. I managed to capture some screenshots along the way to give you an idea of what my experience was like, enjoy!

Once I completed this activity, I received a certificate for my completion. I plan on exploring this website further and participating in more. As a future educator, I hope to implement activities like this in my classroom as it is a lot of fun for students and could tie in to the math curriculum.

 

Digital Poster (How to Write + Pronounce Numbers in French)

Hey everyone! After trying out a few digital poster websites, I found an awesome one to present my learning artefact for my learning project. The website and application I used was canva.

I dealt with numbers over the course of my learning project and thought it would be a good idea to present some of the most important numbers in the French language with everyone. I also gave a pronunciation of the number in French so you are able to sound it out as you read the poster. As you can see, the 10 numbers I chose are important in this language because they appear many times in the numbers 1-100 and once you memorize them, the rest becomes much easier. The picture on my poster shows this.

Hope you all enjoy and you gain some knowledge about numbers in the French language!

 

 

Increasing Our Collective Digital Literacy

Digital literacy continues to be more important every year and it is best to increase your digital literacy at a young age so that you are ready for a future that is becoming more technological every day. What is digital literacy? It is “an individual’s ability to find, evaluate, and compose clear information through writing and other mediums on various digital platforms”. This definition from wikipedia describes it perfectly.

I am studying in the middle year’s education program (Grade 6-8), which is a time in your life where technology seems to get more advanced and becomes a major part of your life in and out of school. You begin to start papers which need resources that you find online. Finding valid resources may seem easy to university students who have done many papers, but for middle-aged children who have just begun this step, it can be a big challenge and “fake news” can easily be believed as true. This is represented well in the article “Developing Critical Literacies: What We Need to Know in a “Fake News” World“, stating, “the line between real and fake seems increasingly blurred and uncertain. False stories are no longer relegated to tabloid publications but instead have infiltrated more mainstream media sources and social networking services”. As a teacher, I will try to present videos to my students which talk about “fake news” and also find examples on the internet of what the issues can be with believing and spreading fake news. As we talked about in my EDTC300 class, any website that has a lock beside the html is proven to be a reliable resource that only posts valid information.

A way that I may incorporate the goals of the NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment is by having my students practice with technology daily and having them become comfortable with finding resources and valid websites. This will help them develop fluency and proficiency with the tools and technology. Another goal that stood out to me that I will implement in my classroom is having students work in groups that allow them to create new knowledge and solve problems that cannot be done individually. Student-student learning is an important key to a functioning and comfortable classroom. Lastly, encouraging your students to ask as many questions as possible regarding technology and “fake news” is one of the best ways to help them learn about it.

Some great strategies that I read from the article, “How do we Teach Students to Identify Fake News?” that I will remember to implement in my classroom when teaching my students this topic are:

• Prioritize helping students develop investigative techniques
• Teach students to identify bias
• Bring real-world fake news examples that we encounter everyday into the classroom

By doing these things, we are increasing our students collective digital literacy and benefiting their future. A video that I enjoyed watching that should be taught at the beginning of this lesson is “Helping Students Identify Fake News With the Five C’s of Critical Consuming“. This video describes digital literacy perfectly and is easily understood so that elementary students would also be able to follow along. It contains tons of valuable information that helps open the student’s eyes to “fake news” in today’s world and shows how easy it is to get caught up in it.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading, have a great day!

Resources:

Digital Literacy – Wikipedia.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_literacy

Developing Critical Literacies: What We Need to Know in a “Fake News” World 

Developing Critical Literacies: What We Need to Know in a “Fake News” World

How do we Teach Students to Identify Fake News

https://www.edcan.ca/articles/teach-students-identify-fake-news/

Helping Students Identify Fake News With the Five C’s of Critical Consuming

 

Learning Project Progression – Powerpoint

For this week’s post, we were assigned to use an application or tool to track our progress through our Learning Project. My first idea was to use an application called Book Creator, where you track your progress in a book style form. Unfortunately I lost my progress 3/4 through and decided that I would use something more simple that I knew would work since I did not have much time left. I chose to use Powerpoint as I have not used it yet this semester and is a simple application that is organized professionally. I had no trouble using it and was able to upload pictures with no problems.

My powerpoint contains the dates of the beginning-end of my learning project, some struggles that I faced while doing it and pictures of my progress through completing my French biography.

Below, I will present screenshots of my PowerPoint. Hope you all enjoy!

Ma biographie est complète

Hey everyone! After lots of hard work this week, I have finally completed my voice recording of my completed biography in French. While listening, you will notice that I take pauses, this is due to the fact that I am still learning this language and had to take it slowly to make sure I pronounced all the words properly and made it sound fluent. I had a ton of fun while completing my learning project and am looking forward to finishing my other section of it, which is my oral conversation in French with my girlfriend who is bilingual. I will present a English script of what we are saying along with the voice recording so you are able to follow along to the best of your ability. Here is my recording! When you click into the word document, right click on the picture of the speaker and select play to listen.

Finished Biography

Some struggles I faced while finishing my biography section of my learning project were:

• Being able to pronounce the words properly and fluently without sounding like a robot
• Learning the structure of sentences in the French language
• Putting aside enough hours to complete the project weekly

Hope you guys enjoyed the recording and I hope to present my oral conversation in the upcoming weeks!

byronv2 Flickr via Compfight cc

Digital Sleuthing Activity

I partnered with Kayla and Andrea once again for this group activity. I was assigned to do the Digital Sleuthing Activity to Andrea. A person’s social profile does not explain and define everything about themselves, as we have learned from reading “Split Image” by Kate Fagan. Though I do not know Andrea on a personal level, I did learn a lot about her from looking through her social network profiles. She has a professional identity on all of her social network sites and presents herself properly and is destined to get a great teaching job in the future. After watching “One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life” by Jon Ronson, it opened my eyes that once something is posted on the internet, it will always be there for anyone to view. One inappropriate post can cost someone their future today and though it is very scary, it is something we have to deal with and that is why we must act professional  at all times both in person and on the internet. Andrea did not have one single post or picture that would put her future into jeopardy, instead her social identity portrays her as someone smart, caring and dedicated to becoming an amazing teacher for years to come! Below is my Digital Sleuthing Exercise that I performed on Andrea, as well as the link if you would rather visit that, hope everyone enjoys!

Digital Sleuthing Exercise

Biography Completed.. On to the Next Goal!

Hey everyone! I have completed my goal and my biography is now finished. I have enjoyed my experience so far and hope to further it after this class and continue to learn the French language, with my goal to become bilingual. Now that my written biography is completed, my final goal for it is to be able to speak it fluently and provide a voice recording for you all to hear. After I am done with this, I will present my conversation portion of my learning project with my girlfriend, who is bilingual. My goal is to come up with a topic that we can converse on for 3-5 minutes in French. I will provide the written script of our conversation in English as well so you can follow along when listening. I have continued to use my most reliable resource in duolingo while finishing my biography as I find it to be the most understanding and helpful one so far.

Below I will share my completed biography in French. I will also provide my biography translated to English.

My biography translated to English says:

My name is Parker McCormick, I am twenty years old. I am in the faculty of education at the University of Regina. My family consists of four people. My mother Shara who is 50, father Mark who is 50, sister Morgan who is 23 and my dog Bailey who is 10. I grew up playing hockey and football. I also enjoy watching my favourite teams, the Buffalo Sabres and Oakland Raiders. My hobbies are travelling, listening to music and playing video games. Some of the places I’d like to travel to are Hawaii, Switzerland and Alaska. Learning French has been a very great experience for me. I hope to further my studies in the language and become bilingual. I hope you all enjoyed my biography and I will present a voice recording next week for you all to hear.

Midway through my project when I presented my voice recording, I had to spend lots of time learning how to speak what I had written down as the words almost never sound the way that they look. I have been slowly practicing how to speak it all while doing my written portion so that I am able to present it for you guys next week.

I hope you all have enjoyed my progress so far while learning these words and writing out my biography along with the voice recording I shared. I am excited to share my voice recording of my completed biography with you guys next week and will do my best to learn to fluently speak it throughout the rest of this week and the weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Facebook Debate

My group members Andrea, Kayla and I role played a debate about the social media network, Facebook. Below is our scenario and roles that we played:

Scenario: Two students are having a conversation with their teacher about Facebook. One of the students is supportive of Facebook, while the teacher is not. The other student is curious about both of their opinions and concerns and encourages an investigative conversation between the three of them. Through a brief conversation, much is learned about the benefits and potential harms that come with the creation of a Facebook account.

Parker: Student (For Facebook)

Andrea: Student (Neutral)

Kayla: Teacher (Against)

We then gathered resources to back up our arguments for our conversation, the link to our google docs page and resources is here.

Below I will share our debate on Facebook and the conclusion we came to as a team:

Parker: I think facebook is necessary for everyone to have so they are able to share photographs with their friends and family members and stay connected with them.

Andrea: But is it necessary for school when we have other tools to use?

Parker: I believe it is a good tool to have for school as it can enhance our social skills, digital competence and educational development. It can be a great tool for our futures.

Kayla: However, there are already many social networks already available to you to use such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter that are being used. Overuse of social networks can lead to dependence on them and result in social consequences missing out on time with friends and family in real-life or even mental consequences such as depression.

Andrea: But those are all social media platforms, what makes facebook any better or worse than the others? Shouldn’t they all be used in moderation? How does this affect them being used in the classroom?

Kayla: Facebook is worse than others because of the kind of cyberbullying that can take place on the platform due to the lack of privacy and variety of content in it – one can post pictures, videos, or comments and for victims of bullying there is no escape. Even when bullied online, the impact can still turn up in the classroom.

Parker: There are privacy settings that can be adjusted so only the people you want as a friend are able to message, comment and post about you. It is also a great social media network in the way that we can meet new friends through mutual friends and common interests. You also have the ability to create group chats, this can be a huge positive for new students that may feel out of place in a new school and is a great opportunity for you to include them.

Andrea: I get that facebook leaves people easily bullied or harassed, but on instagram and twitter you still have comment sections, and snapchat has private and group chats, plus unless you save them snapchat messages disappear. Do you think facebook could just be more closely monitored to keep students safe? Or should it be avoided altogether since it’s kind of a jack of all trades with not enough security settings?   

Kayla: I think all social networks should be closely supervised, exactly for those reasons Andrea. I’ve seen how bullying through messengers can negatively impact students self-esteem and I would hate for that to happen to anyone else. Hence why Facebook and other social networks are important to monitor. However, there have been many occasions that Facebook has been caught leaking information and exploiting its users privacy over many years, not just recently.

Andrea: So facebook can be used as a positive tool, but must be monitored and a persons security settings should be understood and used to keep their information as private as possible. It is still  possible for it to be abused, but the possibility can be minimized if not stopped entirely. Facebook has had privacy leaks but that wasn’t due to peoples settings. If people practice safe internet security like using different passwords everywhere they go, the risk of damage from a hack or a leak can be minimized.

Parker: That is true Andrea, I believe there is no social media network that is 100% completely safe, but facebook has good privacy settings and gives you a good chance to stay safe online if you follow safe internet security procedures. It can be a positive tool to help us stay engaged with our family and friends, and also benefit our futures. We must know that strangers have the ability to see what we post, comment and share though, so it is our job to post with precaution and make sure we act professionally.

Kayla: I think this was a very important conversation for us to have together, rather than discovering the impacts of a Facebook account on your own. Thank you both for engaging in a respectful and meaningful discussion. I feel that I have learned there may not be as much to fear about Facebook as I had thought going into this, but I will still be thinking further before getting a page of my own. As a professional, Facebook and other social media platforms all come with different rules for me, but that’s a discussion for another time!

Andrea: I think you both made excellent points, and when it comes down to it, moderation is key no matter what the tool is.

Parker: I agree that this was a very important conversation. I have learned that facebook may be more dangerous than I expected and I now know that nothing I post on it is private and has the ability to be viewed by anyone. I will do my best to make it a safe and enjoyable environment for everyone as I was unaware that there was a major issue of cyber bullying happening on it.

To summarize our conclusion, we agreed that Facebook, like all other social network sites, can be dangerous to use. Even if you have privacy settings equipped, strangers are still able to view everything you post, comment and share. We also agreed that if you follow safe internet safety procedures, you are at much less of risk of being endangered while using Facebook. As a group, we decided that moderation is the key when using any social network site and you should post with precaution and professionally because once you do post, it is out forever.

dejankrsmanovic Flickr via Compfight cc

Learning How to Pronounce French (Harder Than it Seems)

Hey everyone! Hope the break went well and you found time to catch up on all your work and spend time with your families and friends. This past week has been the toughest part of my learning project so far. I am still working on my voice recording of my complete biography as well as coming up with a conclusion for it. I have also begun the second part of my learning project, which is developing a conversation in French with another person that I will record and present to you guys. Some of the resources I have been using to help with my conversation section have been:

Resource #1

Resource #2

These resources are very good with grammar help and great for beginners. I have also continued to use duolingo as I find it to be my most helpful and reliable source for all I need to know to help me succeed with this new language.

My goal for next week is to present my completed biography with a written conclusion. After that, I will focus solely on my voice recording and my conversation portion and then provide that. Thanks for stopping by!

Emojidetail Flickr via Compfight cc

My Hobbies and Interests

My goal for this week for my learning project was to be able to add on to my biography with my sports I played and watched growing up, as well as some of my interests and hobbies. This was the most difficult week so far since I added quite a bit, but I really enjoyed doing it and found some great resources along the way!

Babbel was the site that I relied on this week to provide me with my information that I needed to learn and it worked amazing. I also have continued to use duolingo as well.

This week my sentence that I wanted to convert to French fluently was:

I grew up playing hockey and football. I also enjoy watching my favourite teams, the Buffalo Sabres and Oakland Raiders. My hobbies are travelling, listening to music and playing video games. Some of the places I’d like to travel to are Hawaii, Switzerland and Alaska.

I was curious to see how they would spell football in French because Canadian soccer is pronounced futbol in their language. My learning from this week begins with the sentence that starts with “Depuis”, enjoy!

Next week’s goal after the break is to be able to speak this whole page fluently to the best of my ability and provide a voice recording for everyone to hear. The most difficult part of my learning project so far is being able to pronounce these French words properly as almost all of them do not sound the way that we would expect.

My First Twitter Chat #SaskEdChat

My first twitter chat experience was overwhelming, but also very informative and I took away a lot of good information that was being talked about between the people participating in the #SaskEdChat. The topic that I participated in speaking about involved teachers helping students incorporate life skills into the classroom. Some answers I had involving this topic were:

I received lots of positive feedback on my answers and got into deeper conversations with the people who also agreed with me. My goal is to try and participate in the #SaskEdChat every couple weeks to stay up to date with what is working in teacher’s classrooms and also some tips for me as a future educator. I think twitter chats are a great way to get your name out into the education community and also learn from other educators on what works for them as most of the people I conversed with in this chat have been educators or principals for 10+ years.

If anyone would like to speak about a certain topic regarding education or just have a chat about anything you can contact me on twitter here:

https://twitter.com/ParkerMcC_

 

Presenting My Family

My learning project has been difficult, but also very interesting and I have managed to stay up to date with my weekly goals and achieve them. My goal for this week was to add on to my biography by presenting my family members and their ages, as well as provide a voice recording of what I have learned to say so far regarding my biography. Below I will state what I am writing/speaking in english for everyone to see as well as post my written biography and my voice recording. I was unable to add a voice recording right in to this post so I have posted it in a word document that you will be able to click on and go listen to. Hope everyone enjoys!

English:

My family consists of four people. My mother Shara who is 50, father Mark who is 50, sister Morgan who is 23 and my dog Bailey who is 10.

This weeks learnings begin with the third sentence.

Biography (Week 3) – Voice Recording

I have been finding many useful resources and received plenty of positive feedback and ideas of other resources that may be useful to me. A couple classmates recommended that I use Duolingo and it has helped me a ton with the numbers in French, as well as being able to write/speak a fluent sentence, since google translate can sometimes be faulty and not provide you with fluent answers. I will provide a link below for anyone that wants to give it a look and maybe begin to learn a new language themselves!

https://www.duolingo.com

My goal for next week is to write/speak about my activities and hobbies I had growing up and still have today such as; hockey, football, music and video games.

 

Making Progress!

My learning project has been going well and I have achieved my goal that I made last week, which was being able to speak/write an introduction to my biography. I am now able to introduce myself, my age and the faculty that I am in at the University of Regina. Another blogger recommended that I download the google translator app to help with my learning project and it has been very beneficial to my learning. If anyone would like to start learning a new language or even just a few words or sentences, I highly recommend they do the same. Here is a link to the google translate webpage if you are unable to download the app!

English:

My name is Parker McCormick, I am twenty years old. I am in the faculty of education at the University of Regina

French:

Je m’appelle Parker McCormick, j’ai vingt ans. Je suis à la faculté d’éducation de l’Université de Regina

This is a good start but I know I have much more to learn. Another good source that has helped me with learning French is a website I found which helps you understand how to use punctuation in French, it is similar to English but has a few differences that you need to know in order to speak/write fluently.

For next week, my goal is to be able to add on to my biography by introducing my family members and their age. I will also provide a voice recording of myself introducing what I learned this week, as well as next week’s goal.

Here is my introduction to my biography that I wrote down, the words written in red above are how to pronounce these words as many of the words in French do not sound like the way they are written:

 

 

My RSS Reader Experience

Hey everyone! Feedly has been a great RSS reader for me since signing up and I recommend it to anyone who wants to stay up to date with what’s going on in our world today. I have followed many helpful and entertaining sources and placed them into two separate categories; Education and Entertainment. My education category consists of sources that post helpful teaching tips, education news around the world and TED-Ed talks, which is people speaking about education experiences or knowledge that they have and sharing it with everybody. My entertainment category consists of sources that post about music, sports and fashion, three of my passions/hobbies that I like to stay up to date with. I categorized these sources into two because my education category is helpful for school and being a future educator, while my entertainment category is solely for my interests and does not impact my teaching practices. An education source that I am very interested and enjoy is “Education Week”, they post several times a day and most of the time it is a topic that catches my eye and contains valuable information. An entertainment source that I recommend following if you are a football fan would be “Bleacher Report – NFL”, they post what is happening on the football field, as well as the heartwarming acts that these players perform off of the field.

Here is a look at my Feedly Home Page! It is super easy to find sources, just search any key word such as “education” or “sports” and all of the top sources will appear for you to follow.

 

Learning a New Language (Francais)

For my learning project, I will be learning the basics of french with my end goal of being able to speak/write a detailed biography about myself as well as hold a conversation with another person in this language. I have not been taught French since elementary school and believe that if I am able to learn this language it will be a valuable asset for my future as an educator as well as being able to travel and communicate in another language.

charlotte henard Flickr via Compfight cc

I have found several resources so far that will help me along the way with learning this new language. My girlfriend is bilingual as well and speaks both English and French so I am lucky enough to have her as a mentor for me.

My goal for next week is to be able to introduce my name, my faculty and my age fluently, which is much harder than it seems. By the end of the semester, my goal is that I will be able to speak/write a biography about myself fluently in great detail and be able to hold a conversation in french with another person. I am very excited to see my progress over the next few months and hope my interest in this language continues to increase so much that I will continue to learn it and become bilingual myself.

Introducing Myself!

Hey everyone! My name is Parker McCormick and I am in my second year at the University of Regina in the middle-years education faculty. I was born and raised in Regina and grew up playing hockey and football. I am very passionate about music and love almost all genres. I hope to one day coach a hockey or football team myself as well as be a middle-years educator. I don’t have much experience with educational technology but am looking forward to gaining knowledge this semester in EDTC 300. I did not have a blog prior to this class but I have followed many sport and music blogs for years now. I think that having a blog for myself now will be an awesome experience and valuable for my future as an educator.

Rawpixel Ltd Flickr via Compfight cc

I have created a twitter account as well, which will present my journey through EDTC 300 as well as the rest of my education career and encourage you to give me a follow!