Category: Weekly Reflections

11/14/25

Rich McCue Group Conversation: Phone Bans and Tech Access

Today in our tech class we had Rich McCue talk in our zoom lecture and he had us create questions and ideas about technology in education and he would group us up based on the question we chose and we had to discuss the topic and take notes with our group. In my group we got to discuss phone bans in school and their effectiveness and how access or lack of access to technology in school impact students learning. In our group we all agreed that high schools should not have the authority to ban phones in schools and we believe that students at that age should have control over their learning and decide whether or not they want to use school time to go on their phone, but the teachers should be able to decide if they want phones away during instructional time or have a phone wall to keep phones away during instructional times. Although for elementary schools we think that they should not bring phones to school at all as they are very young and most students do not have phones at that age, however for middle schools we think that there should be wifi blockers that blocks access to social media when connected to wifi as it can lead to less distraction for them during school time. We talked about the effectiveness of phone bans and found that from most of our experiences students only found ways to sneak around the policy, with wifi blockers they simply use their data or vpns to get around it. I think that phone use during instructional time is not beneficial for a students learning but i think there should be a different way to reduce screentime at school rather than to ban them all together. For tech access we believe that technology in schools is super beneficial for a students learning as they use it for research and learn how to use technology in a safe way. Comparing technology with books we see that using computers to do research is way more efficient compared to reading through a book to find information, it is way more time consuming and not efficient. Especially now in university our whole schooling is done on our laptops. This whole discussion has taught me the impact that technology has in our everyday life and how different it would be if we did not have access to it.

Cari Wilson Presentation On AI In Schools

10/31/25

Today in class Cari talked about AI in schools and how to better teach and understand how to use it to help us rather than to take advantage of it. Cari brought up some important points about AI used in school and whether it should or should not be allowed. Cari talked about the different types of AI such as reactive AI which is task specific, and one input always produces same output such as a vacuum robot, predictive AI that uses machine learning to identify patterns in data and makes predictions, an example would Netflix recommending you shows based on the shows you have watched, and generative AI which uses algorithm to identify patterns and structure within data to generate new materials an example would be ChatGPT. It is cool to see the different types of AI as before I only thought that the only AI there was, was from the websites and I did not realize that other programming things like that counted as AI. In her presentation she talked about how AI can help kids with learning disabilities with being able to better cater to their needs. Cari talked about her brothers experience in primary school dealing with ADHD and dyslexia and how much he struggled in school and could not form full sentences until grade 3 and the school told his parents that he was stupid and that they did not know how to help them. But now that we have more knowledge and resources to help people with learning disabilities, we can use AI to help them. I think for things like that it can help students learn better as everyone learns in different ways and would be more beneficial for them. There were many important ethical questions brought up in her presentation specifically about AI used in schools and if a student uses AI for brainstorming or creating an outline for an assignment would it still be considered their work and where you would draw the line between support and substitution. I think in our time now where the use of AI is so predominant, using AI to help you brainstorm ideas or create an outline would not be considered cheating but would lessen the idea of it being considered your work depending how what you do with the idea or outline AI gave you. Where I would draw the line is when you solely rely on it and copy word for word rather than gain inspiration from it to build on those ideas. Cari Wilson brought up many important point during her presentation and has helped future educators during the rise of AI in schools.

10/24/25

Rich McCue’s Presentation: Image and Video Editing

Today in class we had a presentation from Rich McCue talking about image and video editing. He touched base on using AI websites such as Gemini to generate images using prompts such as “create an image of two dogs flying a plane” and it will use AI to generate an image which I thought was cool. But thinking about the ability to use Artificial Intelligence to create images and videos so easily from the click of a button seems terrifying in my opinion as AI is a relatively new concept that has grown so much in just a few years it is scary to think about what they can create in the next few years. Although when these images are generated their are some mistakes within the image such as an image Rich had generated of an image of an orca jumping out of the water in front of the Parliament building in Victoria, there was some mistakes in the picture such as it created two Parliament buildings right next to each other which is not real in reality. So there still are some faults and just overall in general, looking at social media for example there are so many AI generated pictures and videos online but a lot of the time they are quite obvious such as the illustration looks fake or just small design flaws such as the hair looking too smooth to be real, or having an extra finger, or the blurriness of people in the background is a big giveaway. Rich also showed us a cool trick using google photos to be able to use the feature magic eraser which I did not know you could use simply from having a Gmail account. The feature allows you to delete certain things from a photo, as he showed us using a picture of his dog and erased the collar from the photo. I think it was such a cool feature and makes editing photos a lot easier. Rich also gave us some great videography tips to make videos a lot better and look better quality, such as using a stabilizer or tripod to make videos look more still, and also a helpful trick is to use a “clap” to easily identify places within your video that you may need to redo or edit as you can identify clap sounds when looking back at audio frequencies and see where you need to fix things which I thought was very helpful as it may be hard and time consuming to have to look bad at the video multiple time just to find mistakes. Also with getting a variety of shots from different angles is helpful to make your video look better and not so bland, such as different angles of people if you are interviewing them or clips of other people just to get some different perspective. Rich’s presentation gave great insight on how to better create content with pictures and videos and how to use AI to our advantage.

10/ 17/25

Jesse Miller: Social Media and Technology

Today in class we had a guest speaker Jesse Miller who talked about personal mobile tech in the classroom and how to navigate professional boundaries. I found his presentation to be very interesting and educational as a future educator as he talked about social media and the effect technology and social media have on the younger generation. He brought up many important questions during the presentation, such as; Is taking away phones at school effective or beneficial for a students learning? In my opinion to answer this question I think in a way it is effective to take phones away if it is distracting students, from my own experiences I found that having my phone nearby makes it more tempting to go on it and I almost always do, also it depends on the age we are dealing with. For younger students like elementary I think phones should not be allowed at all but for older students like middle and high school it should be allowed but put away during instructional time. But overall I think it is beneficial for students to have phones taken away if it gets in the way of their learning. Jesse also talked about a story from UBC on an Instagram account made called UBCdimewatch where they took pictures of people on campus if they found them attractive and would caption it where they found them. This reminded me of when I was in high school and their was an account on Instagram called Belmontbananas where they took pictures of students in the school eating a banana, at first it was funny but looking back it made me realize how much of an invasion of our privacy it was to be photographed eating a banana at school and it being posted for everyone to see. Jesse also talked about digital footprints and how everything we share on the internet is there forever, I thought this was important to know as someone who hopes to apply to jobs working with children and being careful what we post on social media and such as it could be traced back to us, and I think this issue is important to teach to students to be careful and aware of what you are putting out on the internet for the world to see. Jesse brought up an important story about someone who attended a UBC protest for the legalization of marijuana back before it was legalized and was posted on a news article, years later she is now a teacher and when students look their name up that article appears and they know she is a “pot smoker.” This story puts into perspective about how peoples ideas of you can change in the drop of a hat, as I assume once students see this different side of you that they did not know before their entire perspective of you can shift and could potentially lose respect for you or gain it. Overall Jesse Miller’s presentation on social media and technology has brought some interesting points and thoughts about how we should address social media and such to future generations.

9/26/25

PSII Field Trip: Jeff Hopkins Presentation

Today we listened in on a presentation from Jeff Hopkins who talked about the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. It was very interesting to get to tour the school and see the students in action. Through his presentation I learned how student oriented the school was how it focused on personal curiosity and personal learning paths, shying away from traditional school where curriculums were so heavily enforced, it was nice to see how much freedom students had to explore different interests and their ability to be able to develop projects based on their own inquiry. It was refreshing to hear that their were minimal requirements to be able to get into the school and how it is first come first serve. As well as hearing how low tuition is, around $8000 a year which is on the low end compared to other private school. This presentation has made me think of how I want to be as a teacher, in letting my students have more freedom to build curiosity in their learning and let their interests grow.

9/19/25

Most Likely To Succeed Documentary

UVic Libraries Videos

This week we were assigned to watch a documentary Most Likely To Succeed (2015). After watching it, it was interesting to see a new modern way of learning. As the documentary went on it was fascinating to see how independent the students were, in the video where they it was shown how they were often doing group discussions or seminars, and freely being able to create a project for their exhibition. It was interesting to see their opinions on standardized testing and how they opted to assess their skills through an exhibition of the students project as they feel like it is better than taking a test. In a way I agree with them as I feel taking tests can be controversial in the sense that the information we learn and get tested on is often only in our short term memories and we tend to forget majority of the information afterwards, especially with multiple choice tests, it feels like a lazy way to assess students as the answer is right in front of you and doesn’t produce critical thinking, I find it to be very black and white and doesn’t help me retain information in the long term. In the video they mentioned a study done that asked returning boarding school students to retake a test they had done 3 months priors, and the results show that the average grade fell from a B+ to an F, this shows how fast the information can leave our memories and shows that we are taught to memorize information for a short amount of time rather than teach information to students that they will actually be able to remember. I think High Tech High did a great job at accomplishing this, with instead of the standardized testing’s they did exhibitions instead to showcase students achievements and what they have been working on over the course of the year and their dedication to a single project has helped them work on something they are actually passionate about and will remember for the rest of their lives. Overall, this documentary has broadened my view on a new way to educate the younger generation in a positive and innovative way.