Innovation in Teaching and Learning - PME811

  During this course on Innovation in Teaching and Learning I have been swaying back and forth, away and towards artificial intelligence (AI). This reveals innate fear of the unknown, of what is novel, of the incredibly innovative and powerful tool that AI represents. And yet there is something that draws me in, if only because it seems like it is here to stay and that it may/will engender very positive outcomes in many areas. The key here is understanding where, at this very point in time, AI is situated. With this in mind and with the intention of using a resource from my newly-forged Personal Learning Network, I set out to listen to episode 214 of the Shake Up the Learning website, titled Planning for AI in Schools: Curriculum, Teacher PD, and More! Host Kasey Bell begins her podcast with what I will brand “advertorial-style announcements” promoting her website, blog and offering, and then goes on to give the “AI Tip of the Week” which clearly indicates the host’s engagement t...

 

Part 1 - Reflect For this module, I feel the need to look back into my past and remember what I did when I was actively working in the field of public relations and communications. The first thing that deserves mentioning because it puts things in perspective and gives us a sense of how things have evolved, is that when I started to work in the early eighties there were no computers and, of course, no internet. I was working for a multinational American company then, and 2 or 3 years into that job, we finally got one computer to be shared and used by appointment only! At the time, I recall the rolodex and a paper calendar being important and useful tools to remember and keep track of events and things in general. Later on, towards the late eighties, early nineties, we more or less all worked with computers, but it took some time before the internet could be considered an exciting, enriching and reliable tool. I lived through the different stages that led up to what we know today: from ...

  Diversity and Inclusion in Innovation, Teaching and Learning What Should We Do with a Feminist Educational Theory When We Have One? A Response to Audrey Thompson In this article American feminist and philosopher of education Jane Roland Martin discusses what she calls the “cultural wealth approach to education” (Martin, 2015, p. 67) that she defines as the “stock a culture possesses” or, in simpler terms, the cultural wealth or heritage. Martin ponders over how such stock (that I interpret here as a vast array of knowledges, in the plural) is preserved for transmission to future generations and/or whether it is forgotten and hence lost in the process of preservation. She then introduces the idea of a preservation continuum (that I see as a kind of measuring stick) with which we can calculate whether cultural stock – say a play or a poem – should be considered a dead relic therefore of little value and undeserving of future transmission or a living legacy a concept that is self ex...

  Indigenous Perspectives   As if Indigenous Knowledge and Communities Mattered:  Transformative Education in First Nations Communities in Canada Jessica Ball’s article comes to me like a breath of fresh air on a hot summer’s day. Fundamentally, this article is about socio-cultural recovery, capacity-building, and healing after years of practices such as the “Indian Residential Schools” program whose aim it was to negate the legitimacy of Indigenous values, culture, traditions, and language. Claiming to serve the best interests of Canada’s Aboriginal People, this experience in residential schools was detrimental to the First Nations of Canada because of the program’s intent to subjugate and undermine Aboriginal children’s identity. Moreover, mainstream training curricula offered to Indigenous students and dispensed by instructors of European origin was not in line with Indigenous philosophy, thinking, culture, etc., thus “[shattering] Indigenous students’ sense of cultura...

Historical Foundations of Teaching and Learning Preamble In March of 2022, I responded to a peer’s comment by stating the following: “You see, as I haven’t ever taught, I thought the best thing I could do with my posts was try to appropriate the subject matter by relating it to something I have experienced in my lifetime. And it’s been an amazing journey: I approached this new content with great enthusiasm and interest and I got to remember things from my past as a student, a child, a worker, a woman." But... historical texts are just not my thing…  I will be candid; this module was a struggle for me because the reading material just does not connect with the way my brain is cabled. I am not trying to criticize the choice of the course readings. But I am trying to explain what works and what doesn’t for me in this learning journey. To requote myself: I have really tried to “appropriate the subject matter by relating it to something I have experienced in my lifetime,” but I fail to...

  Philosophical Foundations of Teaching and Learning As an introduction, I would like to specify that I have chosen to explore the article titled Pedagogy of hope: global learning and the future of education , because of the promise held in the notion of “hope” that is introduced and because this article is topical and narrates a very contemporary story that has been spurred on by such dramatic events as the climate emergency, the Black Lives Matter movement and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic that was experienced the world over and that left nobody indifferent and/or untouched. As a complement to this article, I made it a point to view the video How should schools reboot the future? (mentioned in the article) that brings together the thoughts and ideas of a good number of professionals in the field of education. In less than four minutes this video summarizes many of the issues discussed in the Douglas Bourn article: in our current, dramatic present-day what is the purpose educa...