In class today, we had an EdCamp session which is a user generated conference that is free and open to all. EdCamp is participant driven, meaning that it relies on the participants to initiate the discussions and to keep the conversations going. EdCamp sessions also rely on your experience with the given topic(s), the participants do not need to be experts to participate. The participants are able to move around to different topics to listen to what other people have to say and to give their own opinions and share information from their experiences.

Today I joined the breakout room with the question “Is inquiry-based learning always effective?”. I really wanted to voice my opinion on the matter but also hear opinions from other people because the concept of inquiry is completely new to me and it is so abundant this semester. Here is what the group came up with:

-What are other progressive ways to foster student learning and development? (Inquiry shouldn’t be the only “right answer.”)

-Students thrive off a structure, and inquiry is typically structure-less… how do we solve this problem?

-Is commotion and a lack of order good to expose children too? Is this good for mental health?

-It seems that some subjects are easier to incorporate inquiry into than others; how do you incorporate inquiry into math?

-How do you make sure that students are actually learning and not relying on their peers or information from the internet (group projects, etc.)

-Back to “Most Likely to Succeed,” thoughts and viewpoints about what we should be preparing our students for (does inquiry support this?).

-Inquiry seems to be really popular in Victoria, but maybe not so much on the Main Land or other parts of the island?

-Sometimes inquiry just seems like a research essay/project.

-The topic “inquiry” is broad (is this self-directed learning or simply asking questions (a spectrum)?
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Thoughts and Feelings

I really enjoyed the EdCamp session that we had the opportunity to participate in today. It was cool to be able to talk among my classmates in a smaller group regarding a topic I was interested in. I also enjoyed hearing all of their opinions and ideas, stuff that I hadn’t even thought of.

One downside that I experienced was that there was a topic that I really wanted to participate in “What technology do you see being used in your classroom?”. I really wanted to talk about this one because my mentor teacher uses technology in so many different ways, and I wanted to hear from other classmates as to how their mentor teachers were using technology in their classroom. Unfortunately, the topic did not have enough votes to be chosen which was a bummer. There was only one less vote from the last topic that had been chosen… had we done six breakout rooms it would have been picked!

Screen Recording

I wanted to include a little information regarding screen recording on a computer. If you have a Mac then there is a really easy way to do it. It was actually our EPHE 310 professor who shared the information on how to do it which was really helpful!

-Click the magnifying glass in the top right corner of the computer.

-Search QuickTime Player and click on it.

-At the top left hand corner of the computer click “File”.

-Click “New Screen Recording”.

-A little black rectangle will pop up, click the little red circle in the middle.

-Then you can either click anywhere on the screen to record the full screen or you can drag your mouse to record part of the screen.

-Once you are finished recording, click the little black circle at the top right hand corner of the computer.

-Finally, your screen recording will automatically pop up on your screen and you can save it to your computer.

Below I have included a screen recording I made of how to do a screen recording! (kind of ironic haha)