Month: January 2025

This week, we had the opportunity to have the guest lecturer Jesse Miller in the class and talk about online citizenship so that teachers could understand safety, privacy, consent, and bullying in online and social media spaces. I really appreciated this lecture because social media and online spaces are constantly being used by students, teachers and everyone in the education community and community in general. Still, as we learned, we must navigate these spaces cautiously and develop our digital literacy. When I was in high school, when social media was starting to be more heavily used, we had a guest speaker called the White Hatter who spoke to us about the dangers of social media. Even though some examples were extreme and fear-inducing, the presentation was super educational and prepared me to use caution when using social media. When listening to Jesse’s lecture and thinking back to the White Hatter presentation in high school, it made me realize yes, students should absolutely have these sorts of presentations and be adequately informed, but teachers equally should be too, especially with the uses of AI and just how online spaces are constantly changing and evolving. Just hearing the examples and situations Jesse mentioned regarding the misuse of AI and inappropriate usage of social media by teachers, online citizenship education should be enforced more often through professional development days or workshops. However, I believe school administrations and teachers must take responsibility for being digitally literate to protect themselves and their students. 

For my inquiry project for this course, I have chosen to learn Yoruba, one of Nigeria’s three most spoken languages (as demonstrated in the map above with all of Nigeria’s linguistic groups). Of all the languages I could have chosen to learn, I decided on Yoruba because it is my boyfriend’s first language and is spoken by his family. I have slowly been learning based on the words he and his family have taught me, but I would like to build a more proficient level to converse with them.

This inquiry project will provide an excellent opportunity to explore different technological avenues that assist language learning and reflect on my progress. As someone who loves discovering and learning new languages and has a personal tie to the language, I will be motivated to pursue this inquiry through the term and beyond. To be able to do so, I am committed to researching various forms of media, like music, videos, TV shows, movies, etc, to assist my learning. Additionally, I will commit to one Yoruba lesson a week on a Nigerian language app I found called LangaApp (I will discuss using the app in my next post). It was pretty easy to find the app by typing “Learning Yoruba” in the App Store on my iPhone. Still, I also downloaded Duolingo and Babbel and found those platforms very limited in specific languages, especially in African languages. I wish that apps like those that are mainstream and popular would have more linguistic diversity, but I also understand they are businesses that choose languages that demographics would want to learn; however, if more languages are made available, would people be more inclined to learn them? It’s just food for thought 🙂

During our last class, a classmate was trying to develop a strong password for their WordPress site, but the system was not accepting the passwords they were putting in. I have been there, too, when creating an account, and I’m being asked to create a password with a certain number of characters and symbols. It can be frustrating having to keep putting in new passwords only for it not to be strong enough. However, lucky for me, my mom works with a couple of IT guys who pass on a handy guide to creating the perfect password. My mom then passed it on to me, and then I passed it on to the classmate, and it worked for their WordPress site! What’s the trick, you might ask? Well, it’s super simple. All you need to do is come up with 2 four letter words that are unrelated (if they’re related, then it becomes a weaker password). Make sure the first word has a capital for the first letter, then add two numbers and finish with a unique character. An example: Ballcarb49! 

I thought I’d share this little life hack to help anyone unaware and make it common knowledge!

Hello my fellow EDCI 336 classmates,

Welcome to my first blog post for this class!

This week, we were asked to reflect on one of the three big ideas we discussed, and I chose the movie we watched outside of class, Most Likely to Succeed. It was the first time I had watched the film, and I was fascinated by High Tech High’s structure and inquiry-based learning. In previous classes, I have come across many alternative schools. Still, this one effectively builds upon students’ prior knowledge and focuses on building their academic strengths and who they will become as people. Our society is shifting where academic skills are not the only key to success; we need to build leadership, communication and interpersonal skills to compete with the rapid technology that is fulfilling jobs that people once did. However, I think it’s important to note here that when discussing technology in an education or job setting, we should view it as less competition but a way to evolve and adapt. Lastly, the film demonstrated how behind our current education system is regarding High Tech High in valuing student-led learning and preparing students for the future. Yes, it is like comparing apples to oranges, but we as teachers can implement some of the principles of High Tech High by following the current curriculum.