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Ted Talk About Leadership and Storytelling

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Ted Talk About Leadership and Storytelling

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This Ted Talk was quite interesting and made for some good discussions during class time. My group and I discussed how storytelling is a big part of being a good communicator. Being a good communicator then allows you to be an effective leader and, in our case, connect with students better. As far as how this connects with the idea of literacy and digital literacy, I'm not entirely sure how this Ted Talk is involved. I guess in a way, ensuring that you are digitally literate can aid in storytelling. For example, using mindomo, one might be able to storyboard an idea that can be brought to life later on. Or, perhaps being able to use a certain type of software might enhance a story that you are telling. There is a more direct correlation between literacy and storytelling, in that I would assume the more literate you are the better you are at telling stories.

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Digital literacy goes beyond just being well versed in the uses of technology and the terminology associated with it. In the article "Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age", the author lists the following categories to explain the various components to digital literacy:

"Participate effectively and critically in a networked world

Explore and engage critically, thoughtfully, and across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities

Consume, curate, and create actively across contexts

Advocate for equitable access to and accessibility of texts, tools, and information

Build intentional global and cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought

Promote culturally sustaining communication and recognize the bias and privilege present in the interactions

Examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information

Determine how and to what extent texts and tools amplify one’s own and others’ narratives as well as counter unproductive narratives

Recognize and honor the multilingual literacy identities and culture experiences individuals bring to learning environments and provide opportunities to promote, amplify, and encourage these differing variations of language (dialect, jargon, register)"

Right off the bat, this is a lot more than I would have ever considered to think about. However, there are some pretty interesting points mentioned here. For example, the idea of being a consumer, a curator, or a creator of content. I like how the author mentioned that these do not necessarily happen in a linear fashion.

I also never considered how much of an active role one must take in becoming digitally literate. Making sure that when you are teaching and using a new type of technology, you are making it accessible to all of your students. Now, this to me seems like a given, but I never would have considered it to be part of digital literacy.

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What Do Teachers Know About The Science of Learning?

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What Do Teachers Know About The Science of Learning?

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I really enjoyed reading this article and the structure of the survey built into the piece. I did not realize just how much I did not know. For example, varied practice leading to more long term learning that predictable practice. I guess the idea of repetition has been drilled into my mind so much that I just assumed that repeating the same information over and over again had to be effective. The more I thought about it though, it makes sense because to be honest... that strategy never really worked for me. It was boring and I would usually give up after about five minutes of studying. However, I think that I was also usually studying for the short term instead of the long term, which is kind of sad. My teachers, especially in high school, drilled into our minds that we HAD to pass a test in order to succeed.

In relation to the "learning styles" brought up within the article, I remember my SCIENCE teacher in 8th grade telling us about these learning styles. He told us how each of us learns differently depending on if we are right brained or left brained and that there was really nothing we could to about it... It was really discouraging to be completely honest.

Taking the survey first was pretty eye opening to how much I really did not know in relation to this topic.

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I had read most of the article for Friday but I did not want to do a Padlet post until I had read the entire article.

An aspect of the article that I really connected with was the section on engagement. I went through primary and secondary school with an undiagnosed case of ADHD. Because it is more difficult to detect in women, I was told that I just need to focus more and "buckle down". But the reality was, I could not focus if the content was not engaging to my brain. Luckily, I was able to develop certain coping mechanisms, but if my teachers would have educated themselves on the topics presented within the UDL, I think that I may have had an easier time in school.

The UDL website emphasizes the idea that everyone learns differently, which I definitely think is important to recognize. However, I cant help but wonder how this will actually be implemented. How can one teacher possibly cater to every individual student?

I think that the best way to achieve this is teaching self-regulation. I like that section on the website because I think that learning how to become an independent individual is really important. Trying to promote kids to find motivation within themselves and providing certain resources that may aid them in this endeavor. The idea of self assessment is important as well. Not all "grading" should come from the teacher in my opinion. Having the ability to asses your own work is crucial for kids to understand.

The representation section of this website was very enlightening to me. Making sure that each students' needs are met is crucial. The introduction of technology into classrooms I believe has had a very positive impact in this regard. Certain disabilities such as deafness have been pushed onto the back burner in the past, but having various resources to aid in their learning has been wonderful. For certain learning disabilities, having different options for auditory learning has also been effective. *Ensuring that information is not only available to consume, but available for all students to comprehend as well*

What I have learned overall from the UDL website is that the best thing you can do for students is to provide options for them to be at their fullest potential. Whether this is to allow those with physical disabilities to access the same information as those without a physical disability or if it is making a lesson plan that is engaging for multiple types of learners.

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Miller's Suggestions:

1. Use AI as a deeper source of information than Google- this is the most obvious one to me but this is the only way that I use AI at the moment. AI presents information to users in an easier way than Google usually does. It takes away that whole searching aspect of a Google search.

2. Use AI for lots of good examples- just like using AI as a source of information, AI can also spit out some great examples without the user having to search through various websites. In this use too, users can ask more niche questions and get a thorough response.

3. Use AI to remix student work

4. Add AI to the "think-pair-share" thinking routine

5. Grade the AI- this could be a really helpful tool not only to teach kids things to include in their writing, but also for students in the ENED program. To be able to look at work from a certain grade level and practice grading could be really useful.

6. Debate the AI- I think that this might possible lead to some dead ends, but it could be an interesting experiment to do maybe with the whole class and have the AI projected on the screen.

7. Use AI for insight into big, difficult-to-serve problems

8. Ask AI for advice- this might work but I think that it should be used sparingly. To see other perspectives or other ways of thinking would be nice as long as it is not directly copied from the AI.

9. Anticipate the response you'd expect from AI

10. Take several AI responses and make a better product

11. Use AI to create personalized learning experiences

12. Use AI to facilitate group work - I dont mind this idea but I think that there is the possibility of students relying on the AI rather than facilitating discussion within the group. Could be used as a conversation starter though.

13. Provide a unique perspective with AI - because AI takes in so much information, it has numerous inputs from various groups of people.

14. Use AI to apply learning in unforgettable ways - there are so many cool ways to integrate AI in a fun way for the classroom (such as character AI)

15. Empower students to make a difference in the world - this IS important to focus on but I dont know if Im on the AI wagon with this one yet because I think that reading memoirs or real stories about people. But it could potentially be helpful...

16. Help persuasive writing with AI

17. Use AI to improve vocabulary

18. Ask AI for definitions on a variety of levels

19. Ask AI for text in a variety of voices - once again, character AI could be really cool for this aspect. To have AI write something to you in the voice of MLK would be wild.

20. Ask AI for student work feedback - this seems like it falls into the vein of Grammarly, which I dont mind (I actually use it from time to time) but I dont think it should be used often

21. Ask AI to do some teacher tasks for you - such as a rubric

22. Create review content, questions, and activities with AI

23. Write report card comments and parent emails with AI help- using AI to do this, while it could be helpful, takes out the humanity from these tasks. If I got an AI generated comment on my report card and I knew that my teacher did not write it themselves, it would feel insincere. Same thing with an email.

24. Use AI to summarize texts

25. Use AI to create leveled text sets

26. Generate prompts and questions with AI to facilitate discussions- as a conversation starter, I think this could be really helpful.

27. Use AI as a virtual lab

28. Create presentation slides with AI

29. Write content for individualized educational plans (IEPS) with AI

30. Use AI to help write letters of recommendation

I have highlighted aspects that I connected with and can see myself implementing at this moment in time. I have also made notes underneath aspects that I feel need more explanation or that I wished to share my opinion on.

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This book has been surprising me. The writing, because the author is writing from his 9 year old perspective, is very concise. No flowery language used. BUT the descriptions that the author uses are so spot on; like when a child says something outlandish to describe something but it makes more sense than anything an adult could say. That is what this author has achieved with this writing which I find really interesting.

At this point in the novel, nothing that "crazy" has happened and in my opinion it is dragging a little bit at this point, but I can tell that it is all about to pick up. I will say though, I am not expecting some action packed plot because it is a memoir. With that being said, the author has made the mundane aspects of this book interesting. Whether they are being raided by police or eating a taco, the author finds some way to make the story intriguing.

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I was really surprised at how difficult this presentation turned out to be. For an entire week I did research on how to use the tool, watched YouTube demos, and tinkered around within the tool itself. Looking back I should have reached out for more clarification on the purpose of the presentation because I did not realize that I was supposed to teach a lesson integrating the tech tool instead of just giving the demo and showing how it could be used in the classroom. I did the latter which I now realize missed the mark. However, I do think that I have a detailed explanation on how teachers can use this tool in the classroom and the various resources that are available to them through the tool. Book Creator has a lot going on so I also wanted to show as many features as I could within the time constraints.

I also think that I should have asked for clarification on the prompt that I was assigned because I thought that I could just give a quick example of how images could be used to show setting within a work. I should have connected it to the class and asked them to create their own based on their own reading.

Over all, I think the presentation went well, I just don't think I fully understood the assignment. I also was basing my presentation off of the first one that we saw, which was with a completely different type of software than what I was assigned. But with all of that said, I believe that the class learned about a valuable tool that they can apply to their future classrooms or even use for their own schooling.

I do wish that the peer feedback would have included a bit more constructive feedback rather than just saying that it went well, but I did get a couple with some constructive criticism. In the future, I will really make sure to put down some useful feedback on what people can improve on.

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Javier wrote Solito from the perspective of his nine year old self which makes the narrative so much different from any other memoir I have ever read. The language, while beautiful and descriptive, is simple. The sentences are all very short and straight to the point. It is a great example of “from the mouths of babes” because he describes ordinary things in such a unique way while also being alarmingly accurate. An additional layer to this is that Javier is not a native English speaker, so the way that his nine year old brain interpreted English swear words was also really interesting to me. The inflection within speech was recognized and used to create mood and tone in a scene. I think that while the length of the story and was necessary to fully understand how difficult his journey was, there were also times where I lost interest. I know this sounds bad since this is someones real experiences, but it was not his story that I found boring at times. It was more so the details that he would include did not always make the story better. I do really like the way that Javier describes things, but it felt unnecessary at times.

To be honest, I don’t like reading memoirs, but this assignment was nice. I liked that we got to pick our own so that we could choose what we wanted to read about and choose the length of the book depending on our schedules. In addition, I liked that we started it early on in the semester so I had time to read at my own pace. I also appreciated that we could read this in any medium that we chose because I am such an audiobook person. I like to doodle or do laundry or any other mindless task while I am listening to a story and that helped me finish this book in time. I don’t think it should be taken out of the curriculum.

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I like the features of this tool and that I can customize the look of my board. I have had some technical difficulties this semester and it appears that I have had trouble keeping track of when to post on here for a grade. But I think that this could be a fun tool to use in a classroom as a writing journal or self reflection. However, am not sure that I would use this as an interactive thing for students to use to respond to each other because I could just do a discussion forum on a different platform. But perhaps this would be a more engaging format because students can customize their padlet.

As far as how I would respond if my students are not engaged with the work I am assigning, I think I would probably ask my students what they need from me and what they think I can do to help them feel more engaged. This doesn't mean that I will just do what they tell me to do. Rather, I will use their comments to pivot and reassess my own teaching.

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The process of making this video was much more time consuming than I initially thought it would be, but because we started the assignment so early on it did not feel like an overwhelming project. I had a lot of ideas for poems that I wanted to work with, but this poem by Emily Dickenson had so much imagery that I figured it would be the easiest for me to work with. Also, when we were doing initial photo research, I found a lot of images of birds.

Personally, I am not very good at video editing. I have tried to mess around with iMovie on my computer and I have done similar assignments to this one in previous classes, but it is just not my kind of thing. What I liked about this assignment though is that we could use any type of video editing software that we wanted.

I find Canva to be one of the most useful and accessible tech tools for school because you can do so many things on it. Not to mention that, for this project, I was able to directly link my Google Drive to Canva and automatically upload those images into my video. I was also able to easily record my own voice on each slide to narrate the poem myself.

So, although this was a fairly time consuming project, it was a smooth process because of all of the tools given to us during class and the freedoms we were given in the completion of the assignment.

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I wish I could participate in this but I don't have either of these platforms downloaded anymore! I just get too overwhelmed with social media during the semester lol. BUT I do know that there is a lot of great content out there for teachers. Even if there it is not advice on how to run a classroom or ideas for lessons, sometimes it is nice to see other teachers just doing teacher things. I guess its that relatability factor. One of my guilty pleasures on these platforms is when the school year is starting and teachers do a "Set up my new classroom with me" video or "come shopping with me for decorations for my classroom". Those are pretty much brain candy for me, but I think that there are also some great ideas in there for how a teacher might set up their classroom and what has and hasn't worked for them in the past.