In this week’s class, we discussed how to support students with disabilities.

My group was assigned to the question: How can you include a student in music class who is physically incapable of holding an instrument, but does have mobility enough for an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device?

We came up with some strategies we could use.

• we can ask that student to use his body instruments, such as clapping hands, softly hit the desk or click on the AAC device.
•  That student may use his body instruments mentioned above to play beats that go along with the music.
• That student can also play the music with an iPad or any electronic device.

The key is to keep that student engaged because most of the time they want to engage with the class but they can’t. Therefore, as teachers, we need to modify our teaching methods and provide them with a comfortable learning environment.

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

In this week’s class, we talked about coding for kids. Personally, I have not learned any coding in my life, I always feel so unfamiliar with this topic.

As same as the previous class, we were assigned to groups with different topics. This time, I was in the “Scratch Jr” group. I downloaded the App on my iPad and started to play with it. I have to say, I found it really interesting to play with. Our group was exploring this app and shared our thoughts and works. Here is a short clip I made with “Scratch Jr.”

These are the codes I used for it.

There are so many thing you can do with this App. You can create different characters and background, manipulate the character’s movement, or adjust the range for movement code.

Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

Weekly Reflection-EdCamp

In this week’s class, we were broken into multiple groups where each group has a different topic that’s related to teaching. My group was the “Mental Health Group.”

We mainly focused on how to support students’ mental health and how do we know when they need help from teachers. There were various solutions mentioned, here are some strategies I would use in a classroom.

-Use colourful figures from the movie Insideout which each colour represents a different emotion (ex. red is anger, blue is sad, green is happy…). We can make some papercuts of these colours for students, they may choose one or more colours to put on their desks to represent their emotions.

-We can give students a survey at the beginning of the semester so that we can know more about them.

-Have a conversation/survey individually. This is where we can ask students to write down or talk about something they wish the teacher would know. Provide a private space and an opportunity for them to tell their feelings.

-Build strong relationships with students so that they will have more trust in teachers, and they will tell you things they normally wouldn’t.

I think this a great opportunity for my classmates and I to discuss a topic that we are all interested in. There were lots of stories, experiences and methods brought out within the breakout groups. I really love the idea of letting people who share the same interest joining together to share and brainstorm.

Photo by Scott Goodwill on Unsplash

I found this week’s learning is helpful because applying videos or GIFs in the classroom is more effective for grabbing student’s attention. When I was in high school classrooms, I felt boring with a slide that contains pages of words with no photos or videos. Especially using videos in a classroom, students can relax their brains a little so that they will stay more focused in class afterwards. Playing a video in class can also get students engaged and have their attention.

Other than that, I finally learned how to create a Google document with anonymous animal icons. I found it is really friendly for a group of students to join and work on the same project.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

This week’s class with Jesse Miller as our guest was excellent.

The part which shocked me the most is that we are actually helping AI improving by doing some very simple things on the internet. For instance, Google sometimes give us a photo which is equally divided into nine pieces, and ask us to choose the ones contains something (traffic lights, cars, pedestrian crossing…). By the time when we finish this little “game,” AI also learned more thing and it was taught by us.

This week’s topic reminds me of a movie I watched lats week “The Social Dilemma.” This movie uncovers the truth behind social media platforms, and how they are influencing our lives. When i have watched this movie, I felt it is very hard for people to have critical thinking in this era when all the information we see were presented to us. Everything we see, everything we watch is served in our needs and political stands.

I strongly encourage you to watch this movie!