Ella’s Learning Portfolio

Jan 14 EDCI 336 Class

February 14, 2025 / ellagreen / 0 Comments

For our January 14 class, we had to watch the documentary Most Likely to Succeed, which is about a school that takes a unique approach to teaching. One of the biggest takeaways I had was how much more motivated students can be if they get to focus on things they actually care about. The film showed a lot of great ways to connect the students’ interests to the curriculum, like doing a play or independent project. It was also cool to see how their school used family and community involvement, which made the students more proud of their work. Their projects mattered more to them when it was on display for their loved ones to see. It made me think of all the different ways I could create this level of engagement in my future classrooms.

During the class, we also talked a lot about technology in education, especially focusing on keeping kids safe online. Teachers have to think about privacy, permission and potential risks before they can take or post a photo of a student. Another interesting point made during class was how much content is actually created by teachers, like lesson plans, assignments, quizzes. I also didn’t realize that anything a teacher makes is automatically copyrighted to them, and there are platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers and Twinkl for sharing resources or getting inspiration. There are other helpful websites that share educational resources as well, like Creative Commons. Overall, this class had me thinking about how to balance technology so it improves learning but keeps everything safe and accessible.

Incorporating Drawings into my Assignments

February 1, 2025 / ellagreen / 1 Comment

For my inquiry assignment, I am going to be working on my drawing skills. I have always loved doing art but when it came to drawing, I never felt like it was my strong suit. It has deterred me from doing something I love, so I thought this assignment would be a great opportunity to face my fears and practice my drawing skills.

To start this inquiry assignment, I had a math project where I needed to make some flash cards with drawings on them. So I thought this would be a great chance to take a bit of extra time and work on my drawing skills. Since this was my first time working on my drawing, I started with very simple images (a bed, clothes, food, etc). I would search for simple images or how to draw videos of the picture I wanted to make and followed along. I struggle a bit with figuring out the dimensions of my drawings, so it’s very helpful for me to have a guide to follow along with.

Something I learned from doing all these drawings is that dimensions are changed and shown through different sizes. So for example, when I drew my plate of spaghetti, I left a thicker space between the spaghetti and outline of my plate which got smaller when it got to the sides. This better shows that the spaghetti is sitting on a plate and it’s not just this weird circle that has no meaning.

I definitely still have so much to learn about drawing but I believe this was a great introduction that gave me a lot of beginner skills I can expand on for the next little while.

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints — Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

September 9, 2020 / edtech

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

Do you want to be online vs. offline?
Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “EdTech” category or sub-categories, Free Inquiry and EdTech Inquiry). We have also pre-loaded the Teacher Education competencies as categories should you wish to use them to document your learning. If you would like to add more course categories, please do so (e.g., add EDCI 306A with no space for Music Ed, etc.)
See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the course categories assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
Add pages
Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works)
Under Appearance,
- Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, etc.)
- Customize menus & navigation
- Use widgets to customize blog content and features
Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to use the course topic as the category as opposed to the course number as those outside of your program would not be familiar with the number (e.g., we use “EdTech” instead of “edci336).

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging: