Category: Weekly Reflections

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

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.

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