Category: Weekly Reflections

For my final reflection I went into Scratch, which is a free to use coding resource meant for beginners that we learned about in this class, and created a cute video. I have never thought of even trying coding before because the idea seemed too daunting and difficult. I had always thought of coding as being a bunch of confusing numbers and symbols, and that it wasn’t something that I was smart enough to do. I was so excited to learn about this resource that made coding fun and simple for a user at any level. I did not go into it thinking I would be able to make music, but there were so many different options of ideas to chose from. On this site you can make stories, interactive videos, music, and so much more. Things I played around with while I was making this Scratch video was animating the saxophone, changing the pitches of the notes and the timing between each note, as well as adding additional instruments and sounds.

I will definitely be using this in some form in a future music class, because it can be a cross-curricular lesson combining coding with music which is so cool! It’s also another mode for students to be creative and make music. Please enjoy Jingle Bells on the saxophone that I created using screen record, WITH audio this time. For this reflection I learned how to use the screen record function on my iPad with the microphone turned on, so that I can now include audio in my screen recordings. I still plan on trying to use the screen sharing option via Zoom, as well as the one on CANVA as well, and other resources that have been shared through this class.

This week I chose to use one of the resources listed in the Week Seven slides and created a word cloud using a website called EdWordle. This was such a fun resource to use and I can see myself either using it again in my personal life, or potentially using it with a music class in the future. It can be used for any subject and can be personalized for any use. I created the word list on my own just thinking of different musical instruments and terms, but there are different resources to choose terms from such as Vocabulary.com that gives you different vocabulary lists to choose from.

There is also another website that you can use to create word clouds similar to this called Word Art which gives more options. Some downloads are free to use, others are higher quality downloads you have to create an account and pay for. I think out of the two I prefer Word Art! It allowed me to customize it in the shape of a music note with different fonts for every word if I wanted. I think this source would be a hit with students being that it is more interactive and they can be as creative as they want.

This is my first post attempting to use a Creative Commons License. I embedded a video from YouTube that talks all about what a Creative Common License is, and then used the link that was added below the original video to find the proper license to cite this video and its source properly. Hopefully I did it right!

This was quite a challenge for me. The YouTube video itself had a link that took me directly to the Creative Commons website. There was nothing directly to copy and past and I still was unsure of what exactly I needed to include. I looked up images on the website itself to look for examples on what to do and it was very helpful. For the video above I had to link all three linked sources on my own, whereas the image below I was able to copy and paste the information directly from the site.

Above is the photo I looked up as an example for myself on how to give credit for the license in Creative Commons.

It’s been interesting that up until this class I have never been informed that any of this licensing even existed. I’ve always been told that I can add whatever images or videos I wanted to posts, presentations, etc. I feel guilty now that in the past I never had the knowledge to properly credit the original creators.

This week we talked about the concept of Digital Curation which is not a concept I was familiar with beforehand, but something I’ve been thinking about throughout the course of my time here at UVIC. Due to the nature of Brightspace, everything that our professors have shared with us, or recourses we have submitted or shared with our peers cease to exist once the semester is over and that course is no longer running. I have a few courses that are still live on Brightspace, but for the majority of them that is not the case. The idea of digital curation and being able to create a file to save all of your resources is so smart and such a helpful tool for the future. I feel that I have had countless situations where I have been given a resource and thought it would be helpful for me to save it for down the road to come back to when I am a future teacher, but then realize I have no clue how to go about actually saving it and end up losing it. So far I have been using sites such as Google Docs to save links to different sites, as well as the Notes app on my phone/iPad. I also have a messy desktop on my laptop with a bunch of random, unorganized documents that I have saved with the intention for future use. I am thankful for the resources I have learned from this weeks class so that I can now hopefully take the time to organize.

In the process of creating this blog post, I was trying to find an image that I could use that depicted the data curation lifecycle model, but unfortunately I could not find a non-copyrighted image and I am still learning about what is and is not acceptable to do in the world of copyright.

This week we learned about screen casting, video creation, and the importance of incorporating different video types into your lessons. Since I’m using an iPad this semester rather than a laptop, it’s been a challenge to use a lot of the features that are typically only available for laptops. I am still in the process of learning how to properly screen cast, but I am hopeful due to how many resources are available out there that I will be able to create one successfully for one of my personal inquiry posts. I have seen recently a new feature on CANVA that allows you to screen cast as well as multiple tutorials on YouTube that I will most likely use. I have been able to use the screen record feature on my iPad which allows you to record what is on your screen, however as far as I’m aware it does not allow you to include audio in your recordings. Another thing I have been enjoying incorporating into my recent presentations in my other class are gifs! They are so fun to throw in instead of using images and there are many resources online to choose them from. They are especially a hit with actual students since gifs are something popularly used within social media.

This week I was interested to learn about the Digital Scholarship Commons located within the UVIC Libraries website. I have been going to this school now since 2015 and never knew these resources even existed! We were only ever taught about the music specific section of the library and what technology resources we could rent out from them for physically recording music. There is a comment on the front page of the website that says: “WE’RE HERE TO HELP! Our staff are available to teach virtual workshops and provide online consultations and training during the COVID-19 situation” which makes me think this website could have been created or updated to include more content since COVID-19 began.

Another section of this website that I listed above is the “badges” sections. In my Multiliteracies class that I am taking this semester, Rich McCue, who is the DSC Manager & Hacker-in-Chief for the Digital Scholarship Commons, came to our class to do a CANVA workshop where I actually earned my CANVA “badge”. This is so neat to me and I am really interested in taking more of these courses when I can to get more badges to add to a future linked in page.

This week I focused on the idea of investigating my digital footprint! This is something I have actually done before out of curiosity before it was mentioned in this class. In the past, I’ve been on the news numerous times for being a recipient of the Help Fill A Dream Foundation as well as the Variety Charity. I’ve also been in the news from when I played wheelchair basketball at the end of high school/ beginning of my bachelors degree here at UVIC.

I took a screen recording on my iPad to see what happens when you search up Alyshia Joinson on Google! I was surprised to see that Tempo Trend, my old music studio, still has me listed as an employee and that is what pops up first. The rest is more of what I was saying already: my medical charity news stories, wheelchair basketball. Something else that surprised me was that the history goes all the way back to when I competitively swam for Swim Canada in about Grade 9-10.

This week we learned all about FIPPA, Open Educational Resources, Fair Dealing Guidelines, and information about copyright. This is new information to me, and actually up until this class, I have never been told that in a powerpoint or classroom presentation I should be using an open licensed photo or open educational resource. I simply thought that any image/resource on the internet that related to my topic was good enough to use freely. This is very useful information to have learned in this program leading up to becoming a teacher, as now I have the resources to use appropriate content in my class lessons. Some sites you can use for this are:

• https://unsplash.com
• https://wordpress.org/openverse/
• https://www.pexels.com