Author: amyedwards
This is Carla’s and my EdTech inquiry presentation! Our inquiry question is “How can different apps be used by teachers to connect with families and aid in a student’s learning outcomes?”
We focussed on two apps: Seesaw and ClassDojo
All references are placed in the bibliography at the end of the presentation.
Enjoy! 🙂
This week in class we tried some different coding programs for kids. It was actually so much fun! I have never tried coding before and the website I tried, Grasshopper, was really cool. I always thought of coding as this impossible, complex thing, and it still is in my eyes, but this website was a great way to introduce coding to students. The instructions were straight forward, and the website was really user friendly. I enjoyed myself, and I know if I was a child and that was introduced into my classroom, I would love it. I think it is great that students are starting to learn the basics of coding in school. That was something that never took place when I was in grade school, and I think it’s an important skill to have, especially because our world is becoming more and more reliant on technology. I also just really enjoyed joining breakout groups and discussing the different coding websites. I feel like I am bonding with my cohort more and more. Now it’s time for reading break which will be great, but it will also be a busy week prepping for the last month of the semester.
Amy
This week my mom came to visit, and I wanted to cook her a nice meal. We were planning on going for a run the next morning so I wanted to choose something light, something that wouldn’t slow us down. I decided to make her a delicious salmon dish. I found the recipe online here. It was quick, yummy, and filling.
Ingredients
3Â red peppers, sliced into strips
2/3 c. olive oil,
1 tablespoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. lime juice
2 tbsp. finely chopped cilantro, plus more for serving
2 tsp. honey
1Â Garlic clove, minced
4salmon filets
4 c. cooked brown rice
1Â avocado, thinly sliced
Lime wedges, for serving
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degreed Fahrenheit. Place thinly sliced bell peppers onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
Cook rice while peppers are baking.
To make the marinade, combine olive oil, lime juice, cilantro, honey, and garlic and whisk. Place the salmon in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. Pour half the marinade over the salmon. Toss until it is fully coated. Set aside the remaining marinade.
Remove the peppers from the oven and place the salmon on top of the peppers. Bake until the peppers are tender, and the salmon is fully cooked. This will take about 15 to 20 more minutes.
Serve in a bowl with peppers, avocado, salmon, and rice all mixed together. Garnish with cilantro and a lime wedge. Add the remaining marinade.
This meal was so delicious and easier than you would think. The salmon was also pretty inexpensive, which is nice for a struggling student. Try this one at home and ENJOY!
This week I made one of my favourite meals of all time. It was a classic in my household growing up and I never get tired of it. Each time I make it for myself I feel like a kid again. The great thing about this dish is that it is cheap and easy. The meal is called sausage pasta.
Ingredients
Olive oil
Hot Italian sausages
1 small yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
7 Mushrooms
Tomato Sauce
Spaghettini
Instructions
Heat pan on medium heat. Chop sausages, onion, and mushroom, and mince the garlic. Add each of these into the hot pan with a splash of olive oil.
Cook until sausages are cooked through. Add the pasta sauce and bring to a low boil. Let sauce cook for as long as you want. The longer you cook it, the tastier and more flavourful it is.
While the sauce is cooking, bring water to a boil with a tbsp of olive oil and salt. Cook spaghettini, drain, and serve with sauce on top.
Just writing out this recipe has inspired me to heat up my leftovers and enjoy it all over again. Have fun making this meal, but most of all, enjoy it!!
Amy 🙂
This week in EdTech, we did something slightly different. We did an EdCamp session. Essentially, we brainstormed a few different topics in a Google Doc, and we went off into breakout groups on zoom and discussed the topics. The great thing about this activity was that we could hover around to different groups whenever we wanted. It was so much fun speaking to everybody in my cohort about various topics such as physical health. The crazy thing about this school year, with everything being online, is that there are some people in my cohort that I have never spoken to! I have spoken to almost everybody but there are still a couple of people that I have just never been in a breakout group with. This new mode of learning has certainly made it difficult to get to know my fellow classmates, but this activity was fantastic. I spoke to some new people and made some good connections on the different topics. I am looking forward to doing something like this again sometime.
Amy 🙂
Blog Post 1
For my music project I will be composing a song. I have a musical background and am able to play a handful of different musical instruments. My strongest instrument is the piano. I love learning and playing classical piano songs. I am a solid pianist; however, I struggle with performing the songs I learn. No matter how often I practice, I still manage to get very nervous before playing in front of somebody. The funny this is, it doesn’t matter who I am performing in front of. I could be playing a song for my parents and I still manage to get extremely nervous. My hands shake and become very clammy. I’m not exactly sure why I get so nervous, but it is something that I have always needed to work on.
I will be composing a song for piano and guitar and writing the sheet music for it as well. The piano section will be completed by midterm on October the 30th. I feel as though this project will help bring me out of my shell. Recording myself playing a song that I will have composed will be a huge step for me and will bring me more confidence in my piano and guitar skills. I have a few ideas of what I am going to do, but I am really looking forward to getting started!
Blog Post 2
I have started composing my song on the piano. I am really enjoying practicing each day. I used to play piano all the time before I became a university student. It was a relaxing activity for me, but now that I am so busy working towards my Bachelor of Education at UVic, I don’t have as much time to play when I would like to. I am so grateful for this project because I can challenge myself by composing this piece, but I can also do what I love and practice piano again! It is very therapeutic for me.
Now that I have an idea of what I want my song to sound like, I need to start thinking about how I am going to write my sheet music. I have never written my own sheet music before, so I do not know what to expect. I know it is going to be very time consuming if I try to do it all by pencil, especially with all of the articulations and dynamics. That is why I am going to try to find a program that allows me to digitally write the sheet music. We will see what I find! Either way, it is going to be so cool to have sheet music for a song that I wrote!
Blog Post 3
I have completed the piano section of my song and I absolutely love it! I have included everything that I put in my criteria and feel very fulfilled. I used a free program called MuseScore to write the sheet music. I would recommend this program to anybody who is interested in composing music. It was super user friendly, and I had so much fun doing it. I have also recorded myself playing the song which took forever! I think it took me at least 20 tries, and that is not an exaggeration. I kept getting nervous, overthinking it, and making slight mistakes. I also have the tendency to gradually speed up as I play and recording myself really showed me how often I do that. I eventually had to put on my headphones and have a metronome sound in my ear, otherwise the song would finish with a completely different tempo than when it started. Recording myself really helped me shake off some bad habits. I will likely still speed up slightly when I play, but now it is something that I will be hyperaware of and work on. I am so happy that I chose to compose my own song. I am thrilled with how the piano section turned out, and now I can focus on the guitar! Scroll down to check out my midterm video and sheet music!
Click this link for my sheet music! —> My Song
This week I really wanted to try some graphic design. My partner creates videos and graphics for different companies, so he has Adobe Photoshop on his computer. I played around with it a bit and tried a few different things. I am currently working on a header with my name on it. I used Adobe Photoshop a few times when I attended BCIT, but it has been so long I can hardly remember what all of the little buttons mean. And seriously, there are so many buttons! It’s actually a bit overwhelming. I wish I could just automatically know what every button does, it would make things so much easier. But I guess that would only come with practice. I think that using online programs like photoshop is really important. I want to be able to use these tools to create lesson plans and graphics for my classroom. It would be great to add my own personal touch to everything I do. I’m looking forward to learning more about Adobe photoshop!
This week I made delicious and healthy turkey lettuce wraps. This meal was very popular with my partner, who went back for seconds. I retrieved this recipe online from Weight Watchers. WW has some fantastic healthy recipes, but the best part about this meal is how inexpensive it was. I already had some of the ingredients, I just needed shredded cheese, taco seasoning, ground turkey breast, and cilantro. Here’s everything you need to create these delicious ground turkey taco lettuce wraps:
Olive oil
Yellow onion
Red bell pepper
Ground turkey breast
Taco seasoning mix
Salsa
Iceberg lettuce
Shredded cheese
Red onion
Tomatoes
Cilantro
As you can see, each of these ingredients is fairly healthy. Now I will show you how to make them. Although, it really doesn’t take much effort. This meal is so simple, you could make it in your sleep.
As some olive oil to a non-stick pan and sauté the red bell pepper and ½ cup of yellow onion.
Add the ground turkey and cook until the turkey is cooked through.
Add taco seasoning and salsa, stir, and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
While it’s cooking, prepare the iceberg lettuce by peeling off a piece and washing it. Dice the tomatoes and red onion and pick the cilantro.
When it has finished cooking, fill each iceberg lettuce cup with the ground turkey mixture, shredded cheese, tomatoes, red onion, and cilantro.
That’s it! So easy and delicious. Enjoy these wraps because surely, they won’t last long!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Instead of cooking something this week, I decided to bake! I love baking but it can be a bit tricky because you have to make sure you have the exact amount of ingredients. It’s not like cooking where you can just add a bit of this or a dash of that. One simple mistake, like too much baking soda, could ruin the whole thing.
This Thanksgiving I visited by parents in Courtenay. I decided I wanted to surprise them with a delicious carrot cake. I just needed one thing: a great recipe! I searched online for the perfect one. I knew I wanted the cake to be light, simple, and moist so I came across a recipe online called “Incredibly Moist and Easy Carrot Cake”. You can find the recipe here!
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp fine sea salt
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 ÂĽ cups canola or other vegetable oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
3 cups grated, peeled carrots (I used 3 large carrots)
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans (optional, I opted in)
½ cup raisins (optional, I opted out)
Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (I preheated to 375 because my oven is off by 25 degrees)
Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans
In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon
In a separate bowl, combine oil, sugars, and vanilla. Whisk in eggs one at a time until combined
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in 3 parts, gently stirring until they disappear, and batter is smooth
Stir in carrots, nuts, and raisins
Divide batter between two cake pans. Bake until tops of cake layers are springy when touched and when a toothpick is inserted into the center of the cake and comes out clean. I baked them for about 30 minutes
Cool cakes in pans for about 15 minutes, then place them onto cooling racks to cool completely
Now it’s time for the icing! I decided not to use the icing recipe that was included in this recipe. The one I used is called “The Best Cream Cheese Frosting”. You can find the recipe here! Make sure your cakes are completely cooled before icing them. Otherwise, the icing will just melt and drip off the cake.
Ingredients
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter softened
8oz cream cheese softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
ÂĽ teaspoon salt
4 cups powdered sugar
Directions
Combine butter and cream cheese in a bowl and beat until creamy, combined, and lump-free
Add vanilla and salt and stir well
With mixer on low, gradually add powdered sugar one cup at a time until combined
Place the first cake layer on the plate it will permanently be on and frost just the top
Place the second layer on top of the first and now completely frost the top and sides of the top and bottom layers.
Sprinkle pecans if you would like!
My family absolutely loved this cake and it was so much fun to make. The cake to icing ratio was perfect. I don’t like it when cakes are over-frosted, it takes away from the complex flavours of the cake itself, so this amount of icing was absolutely perfect. It completed the cake very nicely. I will definitely be making this one again.
Enjoy!