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Digital Citizenship: Conduct in the 21st Century

24 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Digital citizenship (DC) is a concept integral to acting as a functional member of society in the 21^st century and is it therefore imperative that it occupies focus in education with clarity and understanding. In general, DC refers to the responsibility and etiquette of one who uses digital technology (computers, the internet, etc.) to interact and engage with any aspect of society. Because there are differing views in academia as to what DC is and includes, formal definitions are variable. In an educational context, some authors have defined DC as “…a transversal dimension that involves the values, skills, attitudes, knowledge and critical understanding which citizens require in the digital era” (Frau-Meigs et al., 2017). Furthermore, a general but clear aspect of DC is to “…make safe, responsible, respectful choices online” (Common Sense Media, 2011).

In the traditional sense, citizenship is often viewed as a legal membership bounded within a nation-state which provides civil, social, political, and economic rights and responsibilities to legal citizens (Choi, 2016). As a citizen of the digital world, such boundaries and societal norms are eliminated or disjointed because DC includes concepts like globalization and multiculturalism that emerge from a global network of information sharing like the internet. It includes self-representation and interaction through one’s digital identity on a platform that is lousy with misinformation, nefarious intention, permanent records, unrelatable contexts, and unregulated volumes of opinion (this is a “with great power comes great responsibility” moment from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben). Unlike the 20^th century, where those who wanted no part in the technological movement had the ability to stay out of it, global citizens of the 21^st century have no say over being integrated into a digital world—you can ignore the internet, but the internet will not ignore you. The dichotomy of the digital world is that is simultaneously a source of greatness and horror. It has given power to the people through the democratization of information and performed functions such as having broken down ancient systems of belief used to suppress and control marginalized groups while, at the same time, formed whole new factions of misinformation and rebirthed dormant ideology without context. The problem with a digital world, without digital citizenship, is that the rules for this new age are not yet discovered because they are rewritten daily; therefore, in order to use such a tool while protecting oneself and others, one needs to understand how to be an appropriate digital citizen.

I have tried to provide some indication to a spectrum of good and evil potentiated by the digital world, but why is digital citizenship important to a classroom? The internet and social media can be wonderful tools for connection, information sharing, learning, community building and more, but it is also a place of sexual harassment, catfishing, cyberbullying, psychological torment, and physical threat—particularly in school settings (Brailovskaia et al., 2018; John et al., 2018). DC is an antidote to many of these issues through understanding the risks, applying positive mental health to digital use, gaining experience in safe, informed settings, practicing self-regulation, and more.

Although digital literacy can be incorporated into any curricula with an educator worth their salt with digital technology, there are developed curricula in use. As of 2018, an organization named Common Sense Media has been a leader in the DC field providing curricula to 76% of all public schools in the US (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). On the Common Sense Media website, educators, students, and parents can find resources that can be applied to K-12 education where it “[a]ddresses topics of concern for schools…, [p]repares students with critical 21^st century skills…, [s]upports educators with training and recognition…[, and e]ngages the whole community through family outreach.” Personally, I would make a concerted effort to explore digital citizenship by integrating it into all classes I teach. I hope to teach in the sciences, and as part of the science curriculum, the scientific method is taught and maintained throughout scientific education. For those unfamiliar with the general basis of the scientific method, it is a set of principles (ie. Replicability, falsifiability, correlation vs causation, ruling out rival hypothesis, extraordinary claims, occam’s razor, etc..) that exposes why and how we are wrong with our hypotheses (informed and educated guesses)—a result could be positive, but that means that your hypothesis was not proven wrong, not that it was fact. Just as the scientific method is capable of putting our biases in check, it is a method for detecting misinformation and navigating the chaos and negativity on the internet. In this sense, the negative aspect of the internet is in fact a tool to use the scientific method against for learning! Other ways to engage DC is to build positive health in the classroom to provide students with the confidence and ability to handle misguided and ill-intended content on the internet; furthermore, to make good choices and gain awareness towards what is personally exposed on the internet and devices…and what that means.

References:

Brailovskaia, J., Teismann, T., & Margraf, J. (2018). Cyberbullying, positive mental health and suicide ideation/behavior. Psychiatry Research, 267, 240–242.

Choi, M. (2016). A Concept Analysis of Digital Citizenship for Democratic Citizenship Education in the Internet Age. Theory and Research in Social Education, 44(4), 565–607.

Common Sense Media. (2011). Digital Literacy and Citizenship in the 21st Century: Educating, Empowering, and Protecting America’s Kids A Common Sense Media White Paper. In Media (Issue March, pp. 1–16). Common Sense Media.

Frau-Meigs, D., O’Neill, B., Soriani, A., & Vitor Tomé. (2017). Digital Citizenship Education. Overview and New Perspectives (Vol. 1).

Gleason, B., & von Gillern, S. (2018). Digital citizenship with social media: Participatory practices of teaching and learning in secondary education. Educational Technology and Society, 21(1), 200–212.

John, A., Glendenning, A. C., Marchant, A., Montgomery, P., Stewart, A., Wood, S., Lloyd, K., & Hawton, K. (2018). Self-harm, suicidal behaviours, and cyberbullying in children and young people: Systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(4).

An Afternoon with EdCampUvic

9 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

I just finished attending an EdCampUvic conference via zoom, which is a form of professional development for teachers with some key differences from what a typical professional development workshop consists of. This specific experience was with the education cohort of the University of Victoria; however, it conceptually generalizes to the EdCamp organization which is simply broader in scope and attendance. When I think of a typical Pro-D day—in terms of format—I have expectations I will receive information that may contribute to my professional interests by choosing from a selection of given topics where contributing professionals are scheduled to share their knowledge and resources through a presentation, speech, workshop, and so on. A key difference utilized in the EdCampVic program is that it is participant-driven rather than presenter-driven, and thus, learning and engagement is distributed through conversation (where participants have equal opportunity to contribute) rather than planned presentations. For instance, it is the participating educators who collaboratively determine the topics of engagement through polling prior to the workshop. Furthermore, it is open to educators of all levels and specializations, and, in the interest of maximizing learning, educators are free to enter or leave any of the open sessions throughout, so their interests and needs are best met. This format follows a model of differentiated learning, which is an educational style that promotes opportunity for learner’s individual differences within a curriculum. It is education tailored to fit the variance of needs and strengths of a body of learners within a curriculum.

Although I had the opportunity to join and leave any session as I pleased, I stuck with one which was titled “Cross Curricular Inquiry in High School.” The open discussion format—which facilitated the experiences and ideas of both seasoned, expert educators, and teacher candidates alike—was immediately beneficial because it promoted relationship building and external awareness—aspects often absent in formats that facilitates a presenter and an audience. This way, I was able to express some of my ideas, experiences, questions, and concerns about applying cross-curricular instruction when I enter the teaching profession and I obtain dynamic feedback in multiple forms and perspectives. Moreover, my viewpoint as a teacher candidate may have—and hopefully—promoted thought and perspective in the more advanced educators in the session, allowing them to explore their wealth of knowledge through a different lens. An observation that stuck with me throughout the experience was the fact that discussions often took life of their own and freely explored the space of the intended topic, while constantly diverging into other topics, stories, resources, philosophies and so on. No matter what the divergence was, it fit nicely with the cross-curricular topic because it really examined the interrelatedness of knowledge and subjects and how robust learning can be when constraints are lifted. It also supported differentiated learning because it allowed participants to engage in any way they felt comfortable, including speaking, asking questions, posting resources, writing, and silently observing.

It is not hard to see how this format would benefit a classroom setting. I am entering into the profession of secondary education and in such a setting, allowing students to discover and select their interests and curiosities through low-risk, conversational discussion, would be extremely beneficial for learning in general, but more precisely, applying it to place- or community-based learning and cross-curricular education. Imagine a scenario where you ask students to engage in place-based learning in an outdoor setting. There are plants that have stories, are used as medicine, that have molecular physiology, that follow mathematical patterns in growth, and that are homes and food to other organisms—that is just one word, plant. If you constrain the learner by making only one subject (ie mathematics) open to observation, the student may have to abandon the object that spiked their learning curiosity. The fact is, most things are connected or interrelated in some fashion or another and by allowing for more dynamic and robust curricula (ones that are collaborative), the educational quality follows. Through my observational practicums, I have observed that teachers often don’t want to step on their colleagues curricular toes meaning that they might intentionally exclude learning about some topic because another class covers it in a different year or subject. This observation demonstrates how important building relationships and collaborating with colleagues is when trying to develop a cross-curricular program—you need others on board too. Getting others on board is often difficult because change is always of that nature; however, when I asked for suggestions in how to begin implementing cross-curricular education, I received some excellent feedback. From Christine, my Pedagogy, Curriculum and Teaching instructor at UNBC, I received feedback that really resonated, which was that you need to be disruptive and build relationships. To be disruptive alone can cause negative outcomes and a lot of stress, but if you are constantly doing your best to demonstrate how effective the change could be while building positive relationships and respect among colleagues, the problem is solvable. Another educational professional noted that you can start without colleagues on board by practicing cross-curricula within your own class to set an example and demonstrate success that will attract others. Going forward into my career as an educator, I hope to take this advice and develop systems of teaching that incorporate cross-curricular learning which includes place-based learning and department collaboration through example.

Learning Progressions!

5 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Regardless of the setting or environment, learning is a process that develops with experience and time, it is not a discrete phenomenon (even though learning Kung Fu like Neo would be awesome). No matter who is learning or what is being learned, the process occurs in non-linear stages at variable rates. Take any learning goal, such as learning to play the guitar, learning how to use polar coordinates, or playing on a floor hockey team in gym class, and consider that it is not really a single goal at all, but a complex of many building blocks, and each building block is its own complex of subunits—and that this regression is infinite. Well these building blocks are the skills required to achieve the learning goals and each level of regression is a refinement of a skill at some level of precision. If we use the analogy of building a house, we can think of the general characteristics (foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, etc.) as the skill sets that need to come together and coordinate to become the final product as something that provides shelter and a place to call home. As we regress lower in the analogy, the general characteristics—lets choose electrical—are comprised of many subskills that need to be learned in order to do electrical work (have and know how to use the proper equipment, knowledge around electricity, building code regulations, etc.). We can carry this regression indefinitely—in order to attend electrician school, you need to have completed a Grade 12 education to show you have a foundation in math and literacy…to get that you needed to be socialized to attend school throughout and so on—but the right answer to how far one should take this regression is as far as is needed to achieve the goal. The most important point of this analogy is that none of the building block used to achieve the learning goal are independent of one another or linear and are all predicated on developed skills.

With that analogy in mind, learning progressions are a format of education that takes into account this process of learning as a developmental progression where there are blocks of skills that students must master to achieve a curricular outcome. As an educator, learning progressions are the development stages of a learner’s journey that can be refined at particular points of need, from a place outside of, what Vygotsky would call, the Zone of Proximal Development to a high level of competency where the learning can excel. Students are usually not curricular experts upon entering the education system; however, they are full of individual strengths and curiosities that, if allowed to flourish and amplify, can potentiate confidence in that student that will perpetuate their learning in the next skill “block” in the curricular set and contribute positively to the collective. The very act of promoting strong skill sets in students should be the clarifying clue of why learning cannot be a linear process, because the building blocks are not independent nor necessarily hierarchically linear.

Today in groups, during our Theory in Context class in the B.Ed program at UNBC, we were asked to quickly explore ideas of how learning progressions would be considered if developing curricula based on some subject of our choosing. My group decided to model floor hockey through the developmental span between Kindergarten and Grade 9. We decided that during Kindergarten to Grade 1, the curricular focus should be on developing skills relating to working in groups, spatial awareness, and safety, and learning to enjoy the participating. At this stage, competition is not so much the goal as participation because the skills needed to compete safely and effectively have not been developed in most students. Next, over the span of Grade 2 and 3, students would focus more on developing game-related skills, such as developing proper stick grip, ball/puck handling, passing (awareness of self and others), and game rules to higher degree. In Grades 4 to 5, students would play more as teams within their class and/or school and team competition would be introduced. At this level, students should be competent in using the many skills developed over the previous years (coordination, spatial awareness, muscle memory, teamwork, etc.) and able to perform in a competitive setting among peers. In Grades 6 and 7, the level of competition expands to playing against other school and the concepts of comradery and responsibility are elevated. Finally, during Grades 8 and 9, the competition level expands higher to competing in competitions and tournaments across the province and this is where the teamwork, leadership, game knowledge, and technical skills are in highest demand. Now I know what you may be thinking: this seems quite linear, but it is not and here’s why. During this learning progression, the curricular requirements are stages or skills that need to be mastered throughout the learning process. But as we have all experience, students come to class with an extensively diverse set of skills and strengths, so rather than force the bored student in grade 2, who had been attending and playing in a minor league hockey since he or she was 4 years old, to work on stick handling, the student could use their strength to teach and help other students at a lower skill level. This way, the advanced student is developing new skills in leadership because they have the confidence to step up and display their strength for the good of others and themselves. The same could be said for a student far who is in the zone of proximal development for some skill. Vygotsky often referred to the process of facilitating learning, when the learner is at the point where he or she is ready to learn but not yet component, as scaffolding. If the class is averaged around the intended point in the curriculum, the number of scaffolding opportunities for the lower student increases along with the opportunity to learn from multiple perspectives, and thus, so does the rate of learning. Through treating the building blocks of the learning goal—the learning progressions—as a continuous and interconnected process, the students, who are also interconnected and have strengths across multiple domains, have the opportunity to build confidence towards new skills through the momentum given by providing their strengths opportunity to accentuate.

A Pro-D Day! PSA and Classrooms to Communities

29 October 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Items of learning:

COVID-19 and Learning Cohorts according to Bonnie Henry and Teri Mooring
Koh-learning in our Watersheds
Using the iNaturalist app in and out of the classroom.

COVID-19 and Learning Cohorts according to Bonnie Henry and Teri Mooring

This past Friday, I was fortunate to participate in the Classroom to Communities (C2C) annual conference during the provincial PSA Pro-D Day. To start off the morning, my personal assumptions around the BC school cohort learning group model being ineffective as a preventative measure for COVID-19 transmission was confirmed by BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) president, Teri Mooring, following her conversation with BC Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry. This conversation was influenced by the recent COVID-19 outbreak in a Kelowna high school which caused infection and hundreds and staff to self-isolate. Although acknowledgement of the learning group model’s lack in efficacy came as no surprise, I learned—and found useful—how the terms exposure, outbreak and cluster are defined in relation to contact tracing. A school exposure requires that someone, positive for the viral agent, from outside of the school comes into to the school. An exposure is what occurred in SD57 following a reported exposure at Prince George Secondary School (PGSS) in Prince George. Fortunately, the PGSS exposure did not lead to an outbreak (exemplified by the Kelowna high school), which requires that multiple people be exposed and positively diagnosed for the viral agent. An outbreak is closely related in definition to an epidemic; however, it differs in that it is used more often to emphasize geographic location. Finally, a cluster is essentially a small outbreak, where one or two people are exposed and positively diagnosed. I am pleased to have learned also that the BCTF is pushing so that teachers have increased access to information around contact tracing and become part of the information sharing process.

Koh-learning in our Watersheds

Prior to attending my scheduled workshops, we—as participants of the C2C conference—were introduced to the Koh-learning in our Watersheds program developed through a UNBC-SD91 partnership and collaboration with “students, teachers, administrators, the Aboriginal Education Council of SD91, community partners and interdisciplinary researchers.” This program is a place-based program that is curricular based on local watersheds near communities in the SD91 jurisdiction. Panelists Dr. Berry Booth, Professional Biologist and UNBC research manager, and Jacelyn Boyes, high school science teacher in Fort St. James, are both involved in developing and implementing the Koh-Learning program in SD91. Although not indigenous himself, Booth was explicitly humble while presenting his work and discussing how to view conservation through community in collaboration with the fourteen First Nation territories and 4 secondary schools within SD91 and the Nechako Watershed.

Watersheds (lakes, streams, creeks, wetlands) are central to all of our lives and all watersheds present different functions, including movement of nutrients and minerals, spawning grounds for fish, ecological habitats, or any a multitude of other factors. The Koh-Learning in our Watersheds program (where Koh is the Dakelh word for waterway) is a program directive for both indigenous and non-indigenous students to become stewards of change and connection to their local environments and communities so that the future is empowered, informed, and aware. Booth is particularly attentive to the protection of the endangered salmon habitats and began developing the Stream Keepers program as component of the Koh-Learning in our Watersheds program. Stream Keepers was designed to train teachers in how to use specific streams in education and to get students out and into the streams collecting data, learning, and contributing to restoration. Booth highlighted that a personal challenge, when developing the program, was centered around getting away from linear thinking, using the “square peg, round hole” analogy. Specifically, he was referring to how the model changed as it was developed. In the original model, they were going to use four small streams in four different communities; this was perfect for the school in Vanderhoof because a model stream ran a moments’ walk from class, but less perfect in Fort St. James where the stream was much larger and posed safety challenges. Furthermore, feedback from the collaborators in Fraser Lake questioned why they would bother finding a little stream when there was a giant lake in the backyard. With these considerations, it was clear that instead, teachers needed to figure out what would work best in their particular communities (wetlands, creek, lake, etc.) that would allow for inter-school overlap. The takeaway lesson from this process was that we, as place-based educators and community members, need to be able to adapt our systems to let them work and evolve on their own rather than try and take a square peg and pound it into a round hole. Boyes, who collaborated closely in the process with Booth, praised his work and effort both explicitly and through the success she demonstrated while implementing the program with her own students in a Grade 11/12 Geo-Environmental course she teaches. According to Boyes, students would be involved in a multitude of place-base practices including setting up and monitoring trail cams on streams and in the nearby John Prince Research Forest to monitor hummingbirds. She further spoke to expanding and integrating the program to the junior grades and said that one could teach the entire Grade 9 Science curriculum through Bees alone. If nothing else, you could tell she was engaged with fish ecology by the collage of student-painted fish backdropped in the camera frame of the Zoom.

Two students involved in the program personally spoke to their experience. The first student gave positive feedback noting the practical skills he gained, such as learning to set fish traps and chemically testing the water, and how the self-assessment and place-based work resonated with him. He elaborated to explain how real-world application and experience allowed him to explore why something does or does not work. I felt his comments were profoundly useful because they support my personal philosophy of learning which requires a spark of curiosity in concert with meaning in the process of exploration where things continually work or fail. A second student spoke praised the program for providing her an avenue to utilize her strengths and passion for art—she made the program logo! Furthermore, she highlighted her personal progress in developing social and leadership abilities and in the building of unlikely relationships and friendships that emerged as a product of this collaborative place-based learning system.

I find promise in the place-base model for curriculum. A sense of place are the emotions someone attaches to an area based on their experiences, according to Valemount Secondary School Counselor and Researcher, Dr. Shirley Giroux. Just as Dr. Booth explained how the processes of developing the Koh-Learning program required a step away from linear thinking and towards adapting our systems to let them work and evolve, learning involves allowing individuals the time and space for their curiosity and motivations to evolve and grow. Personally, I see the classroom as a functional and useful space for learning; however, it is missing part of the story—the practical space in which theoretical topics and ideas can be explored or perhaps the laboratory of life. A place-based model is a framework for students to take the principles, theories, and ideas developed in most classrooms and see how they manifest in real life—like in a stream. This provides more than a robust understanding, but that emotional connection called sense of place that is often absent from classrooms and textbooks. Perhaps the largest benefit of a place-based classroom is the gained opportunity for of differentiated learning. Students have all sorts of strengths and interests that makes life and humanity so robust; nevertheless, the teacher-to-student ratio is largely skewed so there is an obvious need for generalized learning curriculums and because of this, many traditional classrooms tend to privilege the students often labeled ‘book smart’ and deem the more restless, kinesthetic types as behaviours. The place-based classroom provides outlets for all types of learners because the parameters of opportunity are not constrained. Take ornithologists as an example: when studying birds, they contribute a large portion of their lives to academic study and learning, but when they are out in the field, they need to be able to visually (behaviour and identification), auditorily (bird songs), kinesthetically (handling), and creatively (drawing accurate representations) apply their knowledge which is only possible through practice. Students do not need to hone the abilities and knowledge of a trained scientist, but one can easily see the diverse attributes of students collectively applied to a curriculum to form learning that is robust, inclusive, and respectful.

Using the iNaturalist app in and out of the classroom

Before I finish, I would like to mention my favourite workshop of the day and how it gave me a brilliant tool for place-based learning. In the Exploring Nature with iNaturalist workshop, presenter Neil McCallum introduced the participants to the iNaturalist app which was developed by a Masters student from UC Berkley and uses image recognition software (like the automated categorization of your Google or Apple images for example) to identify taxonomy in nature. This free app allows the user to observe and identify organisms in nature to a degree of precision that reflects the quality of the image or audio input. The uploaded file is then cross referenced to a databased, geotagged, and stored on a public database. Geotagged identification is mapped for public access where any user can add additional input, corrections, confirmations, collaborations, and more. The data is also publicly available with defined quality parameters so it may be collected and utilized by researchers. For the classroom, a teacher can create a class account and have students perform and participate in projects while keeping their online anonymity; moreover, the geotag option allows the precise location to become generalized to prevent tags from marking student’s homes. There are many teaching resources available as well, including the City Nature Challenge and the BC Nature Challenge & BC Parks iNaturalist Project. For teachers looking to utilize iNaturalist with younger students (Grade 3 and under), there is another free app by iNaturalist called Seek, although I have not given this one a try. I have been enjoying playing with app and uploading my own images. I was also impressed to have received multiple responses from hobbyists and professionals in the community regarding my uploads. Furthermore, I was blown away by the apparent number of users found all over the globe while I used the interactive map portion called ‘Explore’. The place-based learning potential is explicit in the definition! Please check it out, even if you don’t plan to use it in a classroom!

Curriculum and Assessment

26 October 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

In his TED Talk titled How to escape education’s Death Valley, Sir Ken Robinson uses the Californian Death Valley as a metaphor to describe the effect of learning conditions on education. Death Valley is considered the driest, hottest part of America where nothing grows until once in a blue moon, mass rainfall floods the landscape awakening dormant seeds that come to life and sprout and bloom into a magnificent valley of life. Robinson says that teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system, and that by allowing the proper conditions of possibilities, expectations, opportunities, relationships, innovations and creativity, learning is as inevitable as life in Death Valley after a downpour. Education that is narrowly focused, restricted, and conformed, however, will dry the learning from the education leaving behind a dormant arid scape of monotony. It is a great metaphor because at some point in time, every one of us has experienced curiosity, the spark the drives true learning, the engine of achievement, the water that brings the desert to life. Nevertheless, sparking curiosity in a collective of individual learners in a curricular framework that provides systematic assessment and reporting to bureaucratic officials in charge of monetary distribution can be a hurdle.

Before getting into curriculums, I would like to consider the differences and values of summative and formative assessment. Formative assessment is commonly an informal and ongoing tool used by teachers orient themselves to where a student is in their learning process. This style of assessment is not meant to be high stakes, but to diagnose the strengths and weakness of both the learner and the instruction so that the education is purposeful and effective. Conversely, summative assessment may be thought of as the formal cumulative outcome of learning intentions following instruction—the assessed product of what the student knows after the learning has occurred. These assessment types are often modeled in the K-12 education system, particularly in high schools as I have come to observe through my practicum experience this past month. The generalized model for what I have observed follows the similar process of presenting a lesson (full of required content based on curriculum), a work block (where students are given time to work on assignments, tasks, practice problems, quizzes, etc.), and finally a unit test that tests the important material of the unit. During the lesson portions, where content is transmitted, the teachers are constantly performing formative assessment by posing questions to the class and judging their answers and understanding, observing levels of attention and body language during instruction, and continuously communicating with students individually or as a collective. During work blocks, students have the time and resources to engage with the material and discover their own deficiencies in their learning; furthermore, they are able to ask the teachers for help or further explanation on individual levels. The teachers use this time for formative assessment as well, noting which students are struggling or motoring through content, so they may make individual adjustments and additionally use the student’s work as a metric for where their understandings are at. Formative assessment also helps orient the teachers to where discontinuities of learning stem from—if no one in the class appears to grasp the material following a lesson, perhaps corrections should be focused on the instruction, not the individual learner’s inability to understand, or visa versa. After the teacher makes appropriate efforts in mitigating discrepancies discovered through formative assessment, summative assessment is issued through the form of a written test so they may show their understanding in a standardized format.

Personally, I see clear advantages and short comings in the way formative and summative assessment are being used in the classes I’ve observed this year and these observations are independent of the educator’s abilities to perform effectively within this framework. On one hand, I see a written unit test being a summative tool that tells the teacher how well students write tests in a particular format; this could be completely independent of what students know or understand because it leaves out human variables like whether a student was bullied that day, whether they ate breakfast that morning, whether they memorized the material or understood it, and so on. Furthermore, we know from behavioural psychology and studies like the Candle Problem, that high-stake, extrinsic rewards and punishments (contingent motivators), like grades, restrict creativity and dulls cognition by narrowing focus. This phenomenon may be contrary to expectations, however, it does tell us that the model of testing, when based on contingent motivators, is best fitted to assess rote or mechanical tasks and that the act of testing creative and critical thought with contingent motivators is in itself a fallacy for achievement. On the other hand, I see an obvious need for summative assessment in that there must be some metric that provides structured feedback into the effectiveness of the educational process and the ability of the learner. But if the curriculum is content driven, then how would one possibly assess a student’s learning that may include creativity and critical thinking, while not narrowing focus through contingent motivators, without getting rid of summative assessment? Change the curriculum.

Curriculum may be thought of as the scaffolding that supports the space where learning can be explored by guided and planned intention. Many models of curriculum exist, and I suspect many of us have knowingly or unknowingly been subjected to several of them. Academic post-secondary institutions often model their curriculum with a syllabus which might include a timeline of headings describing content to be covered through a series of lectures or assignments and eventually leading to a form of summative assessment like a final exam. The largest shortcomings I have experienced with this style of curriculum is that it does not require the learner or teacher to be curious, critical, or even knowledgeable about the body of knowledge being transmitted. For example, I attended a course in genetics during my undergraduate degree where I observed a professor reading directly off PowerPoint slides borrowed from a different professor who had previously taught the course; furthermore, these slides were adapted from a the textbook manufacturer. As slides were read off to the class during lectures, questions from students would occasionally arise around the material and more often than not, students and their questions were deferred to asking again after class unless the answer to the questions happened to be within the slides being read. I will never forget the lecture following our second midterm. The syllabus stated that we would cover a third of the content in lectures before the first midterm, another third before the second midterm, and the final third before the cumulative final exam. Well, due to poor time management, the lecture following the second midterm landed on the final week of classes meaning there were two lectures left to complete 33.3% of the content, and with the miraculous rate capability of pressing the next button on PowerPoint presenter, we were able to cover all the material in the course and endure the final exam that upcoming Saturday morning. In this model, there was no need for us to be curious, there was no need for the professor to hold any knowledge in the subject, and there was no need to attend lectures (because we can all read). There was no formative assessment (as even questions went unanswered), and the summative assessment tested our ability to rote memorize words from slides. When I reflect on that experience, I realize that although the quality of education I received in that course was lacking, to be polite, it easily followed the requirements within the bounds of the curricular model. The information we needed was transmitted to us via prepared slides and we were assessed on our ability to reproduce the content, end of story.

In contrast, during my undergraduate honours thesis, I experienced a curricular model that was far closer to curriculum as praxis. Praxis as a curriculum can be conceptualized as the action of engagement in learning and situation which embodies qualities leading to human emancipation. On praxis, Mark K. Smith writes that “[i]t is the action of people who are free, who are able to act for themselves.” In my honours thesis, I was given that exact gift of freedom—to act and engage in the learning because it mattered and meant something. The research and topic of my thesis was collaboratively decided by myself and my PI, Dr. Sarah Gray. Afterword’s, I was given an intimidating level of autonomy with high stake responsibility in how I used my time and accomplished my work. For example, I was permitted to purchase thousands of dollars’ worth of laboratory equipment and materials on Dr. Gray’s account, but the onus was on me to give purposeful and precise reasoning for every decision I made. As a time commitment, there was a minimum requirement of hours I was to spend in the lab per week (although how and when I allocated my time was up to me), but honestly that never came into my consideration because I basically lived in lab. When performing biochemical and molecular biological experiments, I learned through peers in the lab, reading literature, and trial and error; there was no manual, no instruction, and total responsibility for my work. Dr. Gray had lab meetings once per week where she would sit with a notebook and rapidly absorb and assess where we were in our experiments and work—it was always an intimidating experience because she had high expectations for us and we were highly motivated to provide something useful in the group. That was her method of formative assessment because the quality of our work, efficiency, and level of understanding was exposed weekly in what we presented and how we answered her questions. Furthermore, we were constantly humbled by the little we really knew when she applied her wealth of professional knowledge to our child-like scientific minds—we respected her. The work was by far the hardest and most valuable period of my undergraduate degree. I engaged in the work to a nearly obsessive level because it mattered to me, because it was my own and because it was part of something greater than myself. My engagement was also tied to my respect for Dr. Gray and my peers in the lab; we were contributing to a body of scientific knowledge that would contribute possible solutions to the obesity epidemic and thus the work easily translated to the betterment of human emancipation. The summative assessment of my thesis was centered around my research proposal, the experimental work throughout the course, the final thesis document, and a final seminar where I presented my work to a panel of scientists with appropriate specializations. The onus of the research proposal was on me to create an argument that would permit me to even conduct research. The experimental works were my decisions, and the quality was what I judged to be good enough—after all I was the one who would be defining my work in the end. The final paper was my creation, my argument, my work, and my findings. Finally, my defense seminar was the manifestation of all the work I accomplished and the story it told transmitted through my personality in front of far more qualified scientists. The summative assessment was nothing like a written test, but an extremely high stakes judgement of a years’ worth of knowing, doing, and understanding in a guided framework full of autonomy and creative thinking.

The current BC curriculum, which I am being trained under, can be modeled as praxis if implemented appropriately. It is modeled around three concepts: Know, the content of which students are expected to know; Do, the curricular competencies of which students are expected to do; and Understand, the big ideas of which students are expected to understand. The core competencies are proficiencies developed for students to engage in deeper learning at an intellectual, personal, social, and emotional level. They include critical and creative thinking, communication, social and personal awareness, and responsibility competencies. The Big Ideas are the generalized principles that students will understand—the theory that can be applied to practice. And finally, the content is the stuff that students need to know but here, it is not centric to the curriculum as it was in my genetics class. I was fortunate to ask Dr. Christine Ho Younghusband how she would use the new curriculum when teaching something like adding and subtracting fractions (a content item I figured would be difficult to apply core competencies like critical and creative thinking to—how many ways can you creatively add fractions anyway…). Brilliantly, she said that the content—that is the fraction operation—was not the focus, but a vehicle for applying critical thinking. It made perfect sense after she said that because in the real world, we don’t go around collecting information (adaptations) that may one day come in handy for something; we go around encountering problems and adapt based on what that problem is. So, a problem is not the ability to learn fractions, the problem is a real thing that fractions can solve when critically and creatively applying them in the solution! With this model students can engage with their learning on a more personalized level and develop an education that is directly associated to things that matter like acknowledging relationships to place and community or why taking on responsibility has value in developing moral identity and purpose. Allowing students to discover and engage in their learning is what I experienced in my undergraduate honours thesis and it truly contained the element of human emancipation that is so central to curriculum as praxis. Having personal experience and understanding of how this model can potentiate learning gives me a framework for application as a future educator, and I must say, it’s exciting.

One Month into the B.Ed. Program

8 October 2020 / Simon Harris / 2 Comments

I have always considered myself one who is open and adaptable to new ways of thinking, opportunity, and change; however, adaptability happens to be my biggest learning about teaching and learning so far. Now that the first month of the B.Ed. program has been completed, I reflect that my learning has developed both in categories of expectation–the topics and content we are required to be adequately familiarized with to receive a passing grade–and in unanticipated categories that are emergent as a consequence of this strange year of the pandemic. For example, apart from our observational practicum, all communication between peers, instructors, administrators, and content have been entirely virtual and the virtual platforms used are not universally familiar to all users. Immediately following orientation, the first-year cohort—of which I am a member—set ourselves up on media sharing platforms that allowed for cohort collaboration that is partitioned from the UNBC structure. The app “WhatsApp” was first employed for peer sharing and conversation at a rate of approximately 200 messages per day, which we scanned through for useful information. Needless to say, the time commitment of scanning put considerable constraints on my work-life balance and added unnecessary stress. Later, we transitioned to Stack where personal direct messages, group messages, and topic categorization was available and utilized to efficiently search and participate in peer-wide information sharing and collaboration. Furthermore, I am learning to familiarize myself with peers and professors who I have never met in person, build relationships through my perceptions of their online personas, and effectively collaborate with strangers while accepting their responsibility as professional students towards significant portions of my own academic success, which is predicated on the large emphasis of group work in this program. Interestingly, the unmistakable gain in efficiency of cohort collaboration, media sharing, digital literacy, and communication, that I’ve experienced as emergent obstacles since early September, is directly correlated to, what I would consider, valuable adaptive skills needed as a future educator and learner across the diversity of classrooms and students.

We have been learning of indigenous perspectives on learning and knowing and one aspect of First Peoples Principles of Learning (FPPL) is revolved around the holistic nature of learning—how learning is not mutually exclusive from real life but is reflexive, reflective and relational. Well, I received a K-12 public education under the presuppositions of the old BC curriculum, I attended college and university under similar test-assessment based formatting, and now I am being trained as an educator under the new BC curriculum, of which I am new to (although I’ll admit much of the new curriculum formatting—such as place-based and differentiated learning—aligns with personal educational philosophy I’ve held for decades). Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that the adaptive skills required to align with the new BC curriculum, implemented in the B.Ed. Program, are similar types of adaptive skills that have emerged organically from obstacles related to technology and this online format of learning? Hmm, it is almost as if learning truly IS holistic, reflexive, reflective and relational after all…

This blog post is all about development and change over the course of the past month. Here is an array of maple leaves at different stages of change as we transition out of September and into October. I am changing with the leaves!

Over the course of the first month, we have been expected to engage with our learning and be reflexive, not necessarily display that we irrefutably are on board with everything nor understand concepts to their deepest precisions. We have been introduced to the fundamentals of the teaching profession, including its bureaucratic structure, the nine standards of education professionals are required to uphold, professional ethics, what it means to be FOIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) compliant and personal responsibility to the profession outside of the classroom (ie. our online presence and conduct). Perhaps one of the largest advantages to online collaborative tools is the ability to engage and learn from professionals who live and work all around the province or world. We have been privy to the aboriginal professional development day hosted by SD57, to teachers from northern and lower mainland school districts who have shared a wide range of experience and focus. We have been introduced to the online and physical resources available to us, both as teachers and student teachers, from organizations like the District Learning Center (DLC) or the First Nations Education Steering Committee website. Our expectations are to, over time, interact and reflect on these professional perspectives and resources and consider how they may apply to our own developing pedagogies, lesson designs, and frameworks as future teachers. Much of the course assignments and reflections are cross-curricular in nature and require us to use our learning as a whole and build upon past learning. As mentioned, we are being introduced to indigenous ways of learning and how they can be applied to the classroom to fulfill the newly added education standard 9. We are expected to consider the value of different approaches and perspectives and use our developing understanding to prospect towards an inclusive and robust educational future for learning that incorporates the foundations of education, diversity, history, differentiated learning styles, practical application and collaboration.

This blog post is all about development and change over the course of the past month. Here is ANOTHER array of maple leaves at different stages of change as we transition out of September and into October.

Anytime you stretch your learning into new factions of life and understanding, you learn something about yourself. For me, I have learned how different the university curriculums and focuses are between a Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Education program, which I would consider more based in the humanities and arts. For instance, throughout my previous degree, I got sufficient at structuring my scientific writing concisely and with precise intent within a rather rigid framework. The rigidity of structure struck me as slightly suppressive to creatively early on, however, later I started to learn that the rules of scientific writing are more like keys of piano where notes are constrained to a specific location as keys, defining the parameters of space in which a pianist may create within. In this degree, the writing assignments are often reflexive and reflective, and are used as tools of developing educational philosophies and pedagogies. I find this style of writing much faster, open, and a useful tool for exploring one’s thoughts. I’ve always liked free writing and I learned to quite enjoy rigid structure as well. So what I have learned about myself this past month is that I do not hold preference for one of the two writing styles, but find them cooperative and functional as a team inside my head.

Lhulh’uts’ut’en We Come Together”

26 September 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Yesterday, I was fortunate to attend the Virtual Indigenous Professional Development Day Lhulh’uts’ut’en “We Come Together” workshops. The title of the workshop, Lhulh’uts’ut’en We come Together, stood out to me as appropriate. To elaborate, I’d first recognize the description of “decolonization” given by the morning’s keynote speaker, Dr. Dustin Louie, a First Nations scholar from Nee Tahi Buhn and Nadleh Whut’en of the Carrier Nation of central British Columbia. The etymology of the prefix “de-” stems from its Latin use for “down, down from, off” and modernly functions to reverse or strip a verbs action. As such, decolonization has a suggestive connotation of reversing all colonial influence since its beginning for the goal of reverting culture to what it once was. That definition is incorrect as described by Dr. Louie; he promotes that decolonization is a change in the way indigenous cultures are viewed by those outside these cultures on the basis of not letting others define who you are. Having others control your narrative is perhaps analogous to reading a book about the experience of pregnancy and childbirth authored by a male; it simply lacks depth and perspective and can be misconstrued (especially if there’s an agenda). Considering Louie’s definition, it makes more sense how indigenous ancestral knowledge can be presented on perhaps the most powerful product of capitalism to ever arise in the age of humans, the internet. This point is exceptionally important to K-12 education because it challenges core belief systems that are scaffolded around correct and incorrect ways of doing things. In fact, it says that there are not only different ways of perceiving and knowing, but that these different ways can merge and support one another rather than compete. The next step in this learning is to implement it into pedagogy and teaching practices. Astrophysicist and educator, Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaks of pre-K children as little scientists who are continuously observing and testing the world through unguided and unbiased sensory input, which thereby informs their future decisions of interacting with like-objects or contexts. Then, once in school, they are told to make a macaroni picture, but it has to look like “this,” and it has to stay in the lines, and it has to…well follow the rules which pertain to a single perspective. Where this learning would influence my pedagogy is clear: promote independent thinking through goal-oriented learning that permits a spectrum of paths to some objective rather than algorithmic learning which promotes the existence of an arbitrarily correct method.

I was thrilled to be influenced by the obvious passion and spirit of Métis herbalist and educator Lori Snyder. She presented a workshop titled “Discovering your Wild, Native and Medicinal Plants” where we learned of numerous plants which function for pleasure, food, medicine, and teachings while simultaneously acting as keystone components to BC’s ecosystems. One example was fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) which grows everywhere, bears tasty leaves in springtime prior to flower, has flowers that produce fine jellies, has leaves and flowers with anti-inflammatory agents that can be infused into skin oils, can function as a diarrhetic, has roots possessing agents which promote prostate gland health, and grows in areas of devastation including scorched earth following forest fires and cutblocks. So what is fireweed? If I answered a protector of exposed soil from the sun or food or medicine or an agent connected to human internal organs or a source of pleasure, I would be both correct and incomplete because so many more descriptions make up its story and interconnectedness. Through promoting independent thinking, learning about fireweed in a holistic manner causes the plant to lose its stigma as a weed and gain importance while occupying—as far as I can tell—all nine of the first peoples principles of learning.

Chamaenerion angustifolium (Common name: Fireweed) at the end of its season in my backyard in Prince George, BC. 9/26/2020.

Digital Literacy for Real Life

23 September 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Since the dawn of the technological revolution, the online space—where we network and democratize information—has grown and morphed from something that seemed like an independent entity, separated from real life, to something congruent and, in some cases, necessitated to real life. Traditionally, literacy had been pigeonholed to the standardized ability of obtaining and understanding information through reading, writing, and numeracy (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). In today’s digitally integrated climate, digital literacy has become a requisite for safely and effectively navigating such environments. Historian and educator Paul Gilster (1997) is attributed to coining the term Digital Literacy and defined it as “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers.” Gilster’s definition of digital literacy was intended to go beyond mere technical ability of using computers, the internet, and associated tools, to critical evaluation and implications of information in a real-world context (Brown, 2020). But defining Digital Literacy must be contextualized to the present, and therefore, four key concepts of digital literacies have been proposed. Information literacy, media literacy, computer/ICT literacy, and digital literacy are non-competing categories primarily focused on the quality of accessing and assessing information, the evaluation and production of online communication styles and formats, the technological ability to use, adapt, and learn digital tools, and the ability to digitally innovate, learn, and collaborate respectively (Brown et al., 2016). Learning proficiency in digital literacy has never been more important. Used correctly, digital literacy has clear implications in the critical use and accessibility of information, creative production and innovation, learning and professional development, and forming identity; furthermore, digital literacy has become a tool of distant interactions providing a method for students, professionals, and personal relations to communicate and collaborate wherever an internet connection exists. In the classroom, I hope to harness digital literacy as a skill in critical thinking. The exponential growth in technical sophistication combined with the shear mass of information mixed with misinformation (not obviously) can be overwhelming and such falsifications, opinions, and lies have the potential for real harm to a society, but also an exceptional learning opportunity! Recently I have come across a website dedicated to helping save the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from extinction. I encourage you to check the website out for yourself; it includes classifications, facts, media, ways to get involved, activities around the creature, and even global sightings. A website such as this makes for a fantastic tool for developing digital literacy and critical thinking skills because the presentation, facts, and evidence, are relatively convincing…until you remember octopuses do not and cannot live in trees. Digital literacy is important for everyone. Technical and informational skills aside, we are human beings with sight that picks up on subtle body language, ears that recognize tone and volume, smell that recognizes pheromones, touch that coveys attention, and taste that can stimulate memories and aversions—if we are to live in an integrated world, it is out duty to recognize the potential consequences of diminishing our most valuable evolutionary characteristics for surviving in a group.

Work Cited

Brown, C. (2020). Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Literacy. In M. Schwartz (Ed.), Digital Citizenship Toolkit. Ryerson University.

Brown, C., Czerniewicz, L., Huang, C.-W., & Mayisela, T. (2016). Curriculum for Digital Education Leadership : Curriculum for Digital Education Leadership : A Concept Paper. Commonwealth of Learning, 1–53.

Gilster, P. (1997). Digital literacy. Wiley Computer Pub.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). Digital Literacy and Digital Literacies: Policy, Pedagogy and Research Considerations for Education. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 1.

A Morning Metaphor for the First of Nine FPPL

20 September 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors
I imagine something like a droplet of the Self hitting the surface of body of a water-like fluid and causing a ripple effect. The body of water has its own movement–it is not still–because this fluid body is a manifestation of Becoming and Being. The existing waves, currents, under-toes, reflections, eddies, white caps, swells, ripples, composition, and so on, all influence how the ripples of the Self move outward. The ripples are emanations of learning from the self that are strongly influenced by the family, community, land, spirits, and ancestors, which are represented by all factors of the fluid. At the center of the emanating ripples is the Self at some point in time, which is subject to continuous change throughout learning and development. Learning is the connecting factor between all factors of the fluid and, thus, all factors are dynamic. One factor cannot exist without the others for none are mutually exclusive. A tiny ripple on a still surface is prominent, yet a tiny ripple on a rough sea is invisible; however, a ripple is a small wave and waves can amplify and propagate when they constructively aligned with other waves and ripples, thereby becoming part of something new. Conversely, waves may deconstructively align with other waves causing a decrease in amplitude (force of influence) or novel emergent patterns (creativity). The fluid is made up of matter that constitutes the spirit and is heterogenous and dynamic. The kinetics of the fluid is a function of how forces influence the matter that makes up the fluid; therefore, changes in properties such as salinity, viscosity, temperature, purity, and density will affect how the fluid will be influenced (learn) by force (fluid factors). The body of fluid is a distribution of dynamic microcosms in time that are in continuous contact with the land, shared and shaped by the ancestral fluid. The Self is continuously influenced by learning from all factors–consciously or unconsciously–and likewise, continuously influences all factors that learn. By this model, each Self acquires a unique distribution of learned phenomena in some context at some time and thereby must require a degree of individualized education to function optimally in the fluid body as a whole. To me, this FPPL tells me that we are connected to everyone and everything through an ever changing landscape of learning, and that the dynamic component of life requires a dynamic component of learning.

This image is free for use under creative commons and is credited to Jiří Rotrekl by Pixabay.

A Teacher of Movement

17 September 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

My most influential teacher—we’ll call him H— helped guide my imagination rather than told it what to do. He spoke with his entire body as though the air itself was the telling it how to fit in. By being himself, he inspired in me a yearning for earned respect that only the experience of a full life lived could give. I once learned he had attended theatre school with the great actor of our time, Daniel Day Lewis. When confronted about it, he confirmed with such an absence of vanity, I was left with a lesson in the power modesty I will never forget. As a film director, he was clear, confident, and seeing around the people he directed. You can only be successful in something like directing if you have the skills of seeing the individual and their potential—an idea that exemplifies the importance of personalized learning. H was a teacher of mine while attending the Vancouver Film School for Acting in Film and Television. He did not teach me to read nor write nor count, he taught that some doors can only be opened when the mind, body, and environment flow together—or at very least notice one another. That lesson has guided me through all my scientific training and improved my access to becoming an effective learner more than anything else. As almost everyone, my path to the present was anything but linear in nature. Linearity implies that side tracking from “the path” is, in essence, inefficient and—more precisely—a breaking of the dimensional rules. Luckily for us, life is for living, learning, looking, listening and extending in a much higher ordered space, where divergences make discoveries and growth towards individual excellence. H’s way of living and teaching reminds me of something I had read some years ago from the introduction of Behave—The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by author and neuroendocrinologist Robert M. Sapolsky. In essence, he takes a captivating observed behaviour by someone and gives explanations for the behavior from apparent perspectives of multiple specialists (ie. a neurologist, psychologist, endocrinologist or evolutionary biologist). Each specialist’s explanation is related to their training so who is correct? Well solely none, but totally all. The lessons I’m relating come out something like: truth can be demonstrated when parts contribute to the whole.

The Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) is a tiny (~3cm) shrimp feeder that flows with the waters of the central pacific where it searches for food. The bioluminescent Aliivibrio fischeri is a symbiotic bacterial species that lives and proliferates in a special niche cavity within in the squid. The bioluminescence eliminates the squid’s shadows on the ocean floor through illumination, acting as a cloaking device—symbiotically acting as one to improve the whole. Hawaiian bobtail squid 2.png. (2020, May 9). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Hawaiian_bobtail_squid_2.png&oldid=418084159

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