Pondering the Product

Now What? 
What kind of Artifact can I create? 

(That will bump up my mark and get me an A? as my students would ask 😄)

We have covered some serious ground in this course and not all of it was easy for me. I came in thinking that I was ready to hike and had some resources in my pack to get me through the journey. Turns out, many of my supplies expired in 2020 and my stamina was not what I thought it was! 

I had originally thought to dive into how AI could be used for good instead of the cliched evil but in my research have stumbled upon some very clever and knowledgeable people who say & do it better than I ever could. And I know what I would do as a teacher or TL- forward the links and give credit where it's due. So that particular path is not one I want to explore with my rusty compass and older iPhone GPS now that it's been mapped in so well. In 3D. With drones. 

This is the amazing blog https://thirdspacelibrarian.wordpress.com where TL Jeri Herd is doing some awesome work with AI and it's educational use. 

Then I thought I could maybe do something with social media. I'm hip, right? I did use "drip" in a sentence properly last week according to my students so I could talk about how social media could be used to engage students and staff, right? I referenced this as a possibility a few blogs ago and thought it might be an avenue to pursue. I do follow a few TL/teacher Instagram accounts after all. But after reading my fellow classmates plans with videos, Instagram and TikTok accounts, I became seriously intimidated. That is not my realm and I quickly realized that I need to stay in my lane. 

So I asked myself, what is my lane? Currently, it is teaching gr 11 and 12 students how to engage with novels and develop some general literacy skills. Why not use my classroom work as my inspiration? My purpose, or "why" of teaching has always been to help make someone a better thinker, better reader and a better version of themselves when they leave my class. Yes, cringe worthy and eye rolls abound but that's what I'm attempting to do in my classroom. 

@educatorandrea is a teacher/influencer on Instagram and TikTok. She also sells great merch on her website: educatorandrea.com that includes this quote on teacher tees. If only she shipped to Canada for a reasonable price! 

Since the absence of decent tech in my school makes the online world almost inaccessible for daily lessons, I and many of my colleagues are attempting to do good work without technology. Paper and pen are our most reliable tools and we can supply them far more easily than a laptop or iPad. 

Thinking more deeply, I realized that there is a great divide in staffroom conversations as to the value or merit of technology in the ELA classroom. Which means many aren't even willing to discuss its role in ELA education. Which means any tech resource I create will be ignored by colleagues I respect. 

So I think I will go backwards a little to go forward. I have found the doing and learning throughout this inquiry based, creationist designed course to be something quite engaging. It hasn't always been comfortable and I have been frustrated many times trying to figure out how to answer a blog question or how to express my learning in a clear way but I think those are not always bad problems to have in education. It means that I have been thinking in new and dynamic ways which can do nothing but keep my brain sharper.  And I think that students could benefit from such a process. And my colleagues could appreciate a clear guide to an old new teaching tool and some baby sized steps into the tech world. 

My Tentative Artifact:

At this point, I am most curious about how the inquiry process could be used in a senior English classroom. When inquiry became a hot education buzz word about 7-10 years ago, most English teachers decided that it was for science and social studies teachers to engage with. That we should focus on the literacy and writing skills that we have always zoned in on. But the scope of literacy and the skills students need have developed in a different way than just reading books and writing essays and the new curriculum reflects that. So maybe it's time to bring the inquiry process back to the English Language Arts classroom in a meaningful way. My artifact will be a unit plan that embeds inquiry and a choice novel study together with the learning commons as resource base. With a skoosh of tech options thrown in to appeal to students and more savvy teachers alike. But not so many that it scares off the old guard (they have knowledge and skills to be respected). I plan to work with my TL to shape and form this unit so that it can be used in meaningful ways by teachers like me who want to do something more engaging and student centered but still feel a need to stay closely aligned with curriculum and content. I also hope that this kind of unit would provide a valuable opportunity for collaboration between classroom teachers and TLs. 

That's the plan. Unless something better comes along! 

Seriously though... will this get me an A? 😉