Over the past couple of weeks in our Internet for Educators class, we had the opportunity to meet with two exceptional presenters, Tyler Letkemen and Matteo DiMuro. Both presenters are Brandon University Education alumni and they each brought us so much knowledge on the way that they incorporate technology in their classrooms.
Tyler Letkemen is currently a teacher at Vincent Massy here in Brandon and informed us of some interesting ways to use technology as an educator. One of my personal favorites that he shared with us was using memes as a way to encourage writing in his classroom. We were able to see some examples from his students and I thought it was a great way to get students excited about writing in a creative and unique way. Tyler discussed the importance of implementing real-world writing for students. Schools tend to put a lot of emphasis on formal writing like essays and papers when that isn't the only type of writing that is done outside of high-school. He talked a lot about how he likes to give many options for students to choose from when doing a project. One that he talked about that I found interesting was the use of Instagram in the classroom. Instagram is one of the most highly used social media apps among youth and Tyler noticed this and allowed for this to be a choice for his students. I know from my own experience that students are much more invested when they are able to produce something that interests them. An example he shared was an Instagram project that revolved around the study of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Students were actually excited to be studying and transforming a 400-year-old piece of writing into something much more modern. I hope to be able to incorporate some of Tyler Letkemen idea's into my classroom as well.
Matteo DiMuro also shared many fantastic ways to get students excited about learning. Matteo brought us the idea of using Minecraft as a way to teach the curriculum. Game-based learning is a fairly new concept that has so much potential. Making learning fun and engaging is the goal of every teacher and now there are so many resources available to make this possible. While scrolling through Matteo's website I came across many great resources to use in the classroom like Math Cat, https://edpuzzle.com/, https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/, https://www.arcademics.com/, and many more I encourage you to check out. You can also find his website here for many other resources Matteo DiMuro.
Matteo briefly discussed a fun activity to do in any classroom to get students thinking critically about the detail involved in coding. A simple activity of writing out the directions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This caught my attention because there is a series on Tik Tok that I came across demonstrating exactly this. The teacher shows the results of this activity and it is hilarious.
PB & J Saga: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Hopefully, you enjoyed this saga as much as I did because it really makes me want to teach my students about coding.
I agree with you about making sure that we are giving our students enough options for their writing and giving them the chance to do non academic writing. This is so important for helping our students build a sense of autonomy because they are the ones choosing what they want to write about and how they want to write! giving them these options also can help make students become more decisive as get the opportunity to practice making decisions!
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