EDUC 431 – October 22, 2019 – REFLECTION

Oh yay!!! Sandra McAulay RETURNS to #UNBCed #EDUC431 #EdTech. She is soooooo amazing!!! Who does that? SHE DOES!!! That’s why I love her so much. Sandra has a thirst for teaching and learning that is difficult to describe. Her energy and enthusiasm is incredibly contagious and TRUTH… I am so happy that my students have an opportunity to witness and be in the presence of a master teacher, but I get the opportunity to be in the same room as her to watch her live as well. It’s pretty phenomenal. All of the tips she had for our teacher candidates who are soon heading to practicum are all those that we suggest and advise at the university. How affirming can that be for me as one of the instructors, but also for our students. I love the idea of asking the school principal to observe your class, to take the opportunity to observe other teachers classes while on practicum, and taking EVERY opportunity as a learning opportunity to inform you about your pedagogy and practice. Wow!!! This was incredible. I know that we were NOT team teaching per se, but I love working with Sandra. She can carry a room and haven’t started talking about EdTech yet.

I will admit… I’ve been very serendipitous with how my guest speakers are scaffolding themselves with one another. Working with an experienced teacher like Sandra is incredible and humbling. She can take what she knows and “move on the fly” with what she knows. As you can see, students were coding (without computers again). I love how physical and tactile this is… and takes an extension to Carrie Antoniazzi’s session on Computational Thinking by taking coding to the floor. Students continue to collaborate and learn from experience together, but I also like how Sandra was able to teach to “students” and “teacher candidates” at the same time. This takes a lot of skill and she was doing it. Modelling classroom management, describing how this learning activity would look like for kindergarteners, grade 7’s, and high schoolers. Secondary teacher candidates had to use their imagination, but I was surprised (and impressed) to hear their knowledge of coding and platforms in addition to their level of engagement.

Students went from coding on the floor to coding with tabs and finding their ways through paths. I loved how Sandra always checked in after an activity. What did you notice? What do you wonder about? What’s next? Students were able to see extensions to this activity and were able to understand through experience the “step by step” nature of coding and why it’s so important to learn how to code. how to debug, and how to program. Sandra managed to scaffold this learning experience with coding with other sessions my students had with other presenters such as Noelle Pepin: Ozobots and taking it further. Sandra took advantage of these previous learning opportunities (knowingly or not knowingly) and created a professional learning experience that transformed what does with elementary students to seamlessly catered the learning activity for my students in EDUC 431. I appreciated how some students in my class were able to take their own extensions or adaptations based on their prior knowledge with technology.

We concluded the 2-hour class with a third activity… CODING WITH SCRATCH JR. Some were already familiar with Scratch, but this was a time for students to play with the iPads and application to co-create a situation on Scratch Jr. Sandra gave them a challenge. Some had hitch hiking dragons catching a ride on a school bus. Some had neon green cats catching a ride on an airplane that was driving on the main drag. Some were playing basketball. I saw flying pigs. The permutations of creativity were endless and they were all coding. I loved how engage my students were. This was a beautiful BALANCE between structure and freedom… between management and leadership… and between teaching and learning. THANK YOU SANDRA for facilitating a super fun class on coding. I love your honesty, candidness, and authenticity. Your passion for this work in EdTech is VISIBLE and I believe that this was a worthwhile learning experience. The class conclude with someone saying that they wished they had these tools, apps, and tech when they were teaching a few years ago. That is the greatest compliment.