Melissa Giesbrecht’s Blog

  This digital story  explores the history, resilience, and cultural knowledge of the Blackfoot peoples of southern Alberta. It highlights the treaties and agreements that shaped their communities, the strength of the Blackfoot language and also the ways in which nature and language remain intertwined. Through this project I aimed to move beyond surface level understanding to appreciate the depth of Blackfoot teachings. Creating this story challenged me to reflect on my own role as an educator which helped me to recognize the importance of teaching from a place of humility, truth, and connection to the land. References Alberta.ca. (2019).  Government of Alberta and Blackfoot Confederacy protocol agreement.  Government of Alberta.  https://www.alberta.ca/first-nations-agreements Blackfoot Confederacy. (n.d.).  Blackfoot Confederacy Nations.   https://blackfootconfederacy.ca Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers (CASLT). (n.d.).  Discover...

Mini Lesson: Grade 3 Multiplication and Davion review using Plickers.  Get the app:   https://get.plickers.com/ View Lesson plan      Integrating plickers is a great efficient way to get formative feedback from your students anonymously as you teach. We created a review lesson in which we were going through practice questions and checking understanding from our students using the plickers cards. Using plickers is very easy and I had a great time building the questions and then using the cards with our “students”. I think the cards and questions help keep the students engaged and also provide real data to show which students are struggling.        We had a bit of technical difficulties as I was having a hard time logging into my plickers account on the smart-board and so we had to improvise and just write out the questions on smart notes instead. Technology often doesn’t work how we expect or want it to and so this can often be a challeng...

My previous experience with AI applications is not huge. I mostly only use ChatGPT and I only discovered how to use it a little over a year ago. I use it to aid in helping with time consuming tasks but never with content creation for writing and things like that. I find it is very helpful when I have say forgotten to read my 20 page textbook reading for class. I can import the pages and ask for a detailed summery. Additionally I use it for stuff in my everyday life, like making me a meal plan/grocery list. It is nice to have a tool that can do things efficiently for me when it seems I have so little spare time. The educational technology being used in my 3rd year practicum placement includes smart boards, Chromebooks, and coding classes that include little robots. Our classroom uses to smart board multiple times daily for note taking, video playing, interactive games and many other things. They use the Chromebooks, for writing in English, or creating graphic designs in art. It is super...