Author: paytonmorros (Page 1 of 2)
This week we had another guest speaker who we have had before, Rich McCue. Rich led our class through a brainstorming exercise where we added topics to a board online and then joined breakout grips based on one of the topics on the board. I joined the group discussing phone bans and tech access. We started off talking about our experience with phone rule sin elementary, middle, and high school all of our experiences made me relax how different each school environment was. Our group talked about lot about how expectations with phones really depends on age and how it should change on age a 10-year-old should not have the same access to the internet as a 17-year-old does. In elementary schools a lot of our experiences were having strict phone rules which makes sense because my personal opinion is young children should have a phone out in school at that age other than emergencies. Middle school seems like the perfect time to start talking with students about digital citizenship and how to use phones safely and responsibly. a lot of us shared that schools we went to used things likes Wi-Fi blocks to block certain apps or phone sleeves to help manage phone usage in schools. we came to the conclusion that most students almost always found a work around. For high school we all agreed that students should now have more autonomy when it comes to phone because they are at the age where they need to start taking responsibility with their phones and learn when to use it and when not to. At this time, it is less of the teacher’s responsibility and more of the students. Instead of having full phone bans we felt that teachers should set out clear expectations and boudoirs for phones in their classroom such as warnings, putting phones way syringe lessons, and having students only e able to use them during free work periods. This conversation really made me realize that phone bans are not something that fits eery student and the rules really shift as the grades go up. instead of focusing on how to block apps and taking phones away I believe that teachers should focus more on eon teaching students how to use them and build healthy habits, understand boundaries, and overall teach students how to manage distractions on their own. Teaching them these skills can help them recognize unhealthy habits and correct them on their own.
This week we had a guest speaker, Cari Wilson. She is the Vice Principal of Technology and Innovation, she started us off by having us think about a wish, a wonder, and a worry when it comes to artificial intelligence, I thought that this was a great way to start off the class and kind of told us that we would be talking about AI. It also made me think about what I thought about AI with the prompts that she gave us. She mentioned that some days she believes that AI may be able to solve major climate issues and lead us to an amazing utopian future, while other days she is terrified that we will be in a dystopian future. She added on to this to say that education will make a difference. She explained how AI works reactive systems such as Roomba’s, Netflix, generative tools like CHATGPT, Google Gemini, etc. Cari explained three types of AI (artificial narrow intelligence, artificial general intelligence, and artificial super intelligence) and how fast these tools are growing. She told us how it took Netflix three years to reach 1 million users and how it took ChatGPT 5 days to reach one million users. This comparison honestly blew my mind and still does. It is crazy to me that Netflix a staple in almost every household took three years to reach one million users and ChatGPT only took five days. A big part of our conversation was things that we as teachers need to worry about such as privacy, ethics, equity, bias, deep fakes, environmental, and human’s costs. The biggest worry for me was to never put student information into tools like ChatGPT. To me this honestly seems like common sense but the more I think about it to some it may not be and that is honestly really scary. Another part of our conversation was should teachers admit when they use AI to create lessons or report card comments and if a student uses AI to brain story or edit an essay is it still considered their work? This really make me think about what I believe the right thing to do and I quite honesty do not know. Overall, this class really made me reflect on the responsibility’s I have as a future teacher when it comes to AI. AI is something that is not going to go away ever it is something that is rapidly growing and advancing so instead of just ignoring it we need to learn how to use it as a tool, understand it, and teach our student how to use it responsibly so they do not abuse it.
Guiding Question For This Week:
After spending 8 weeks stretching all areas of my body, will I be able to bring everything together into one full body routine and see if I have reached my goal of being able to touch my toes?
This Week’s Goal:
This weeks goal was to do a full body stretching routine that hits all of the places that I have covered so far in this stretching journey. I picked my favourite stretch from each week and each of the areas that I covered to make my full body stretching routine.
What I did:
Hamstrings
- Seated Forward Fold: Sit with legs out straight, hinge forward and reach for toes.
Hips
- Butterfly Stretch: Sit on the ground with feet together, gently press knees towards the floor. Sit with your back straight or lean forward and put head towards the floor.
Spine
- Thread the Needle: On all fours put one arm underneath the other and rest your shoulder and head on the ground and gently twist.
Chest
- Doorway Chest Stretch: Stand in a doorway with both of your arms bent at 90 degrees and your hands on the door frame. Step one foot forward and lean through the doorway until you feel a stretch in your chest.
Neck
- Side Neck Stretch: Put your left ear towards your right shoulder. For a bigger stretch you can out your right hand on your head and gently press down.
Shoulders
- Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch: Bring one arm straight across your chest. Use your other arm to gently pull the arm closer to your chest closer to your body.
Wrists
- Prayer Stretch: Place your palms together infront of your chest. Lower your hands while keeping your palms pressed together until you feel a nice stretch.
Ankles
- Ankle Circles: Standing, lift one foot off of the ground and rotate your ankle clockwise about ten times. Repeat going anti-clockwise.
Toes
- Seated Toe Stretch: Sit on your heels with your toes tucked under. Lean back gently until you feel a stretch through your toes and the bottom of your foot.
Calves
- Standing Calve Stretch: Face a wall and place your hands on it. Step your right foot back keeping your heel fat and leg straight. Lean forward until you feel a stretch in your calf.
Hold each stretch for 30 seconds. Repeat on both sides if appliciable.
Reflection:
I did these stretches throughout the last week and It felt so nice to end my stretching journey with all of these ones targeting all areas of my body. My body felt loose and less stiff by the time I was done with my routine and I did all of the stretches above for about 40 minutes. This routine took a lot longer that I thought it would be but I am lad that it was longer because I was able to go through each stretch at least twice. Comparing the beginning of my routine the last I was noticeably more flexible. I was just barely able to touch my toes and keep a straight back and at the end I was fully able to put both my hands around my foot and lean forward easily.
Guiding Question For This Week:
Since I am revisiting my hamstrings, can I try new hamstring stretches and will them help me reach my goal of getting more flexible?
This Week’s Goal:
I had my blog posts set to end last week, that is why I did a full body routine for week 6 but because I needed to do two more to reach the 8 post requirement I decided that for this week I would stretch out my hamstrings again since the last time I did a full hamstring stretching routine was about 7 weeks ago, because of this I decided that I would do all new stretches so although i’m revisiting the same area I will be doing different stretches.
What I did:
- Standing Hamstring Stretch: Standing, place one heel on the ground with your toes in the air. Bend other leg slightly, hinge forward slightly while keeping your back straight. Repeat on both sides, hold for 30 seconds.
- Lying Hamstring Stretch: Lie on the ground, with a towel or belt gently pull through lifted leg towards you while keeping it as straight as possible. Do the same on both sides, hold for 30 seconds.
- Forward Fold With Bent Knees: Stand with feet hip width apart. Bend your knees slightly and fold forwards letting your upper body hang. Then, slowly straighten your knees until they are straight. Hold for 30 seconds
- Seated Hamstring Stretch: Sit with one leg extended so the sole of your foot is touching the inside of the opposite thigh. Lean forward slightly keeping your back straight. Hold for 30 seconds.
Reflection:
I did these stretches throughout the week of November 17th-21st. The reason I am just now making the post is because I thought that I only had to make 6 posts but I needed to make 8 and I got caught up with school and put making this post on the back burner. I still documented my stretches I just did not have time to make a post until now. Because I had a week gap and haven’t stretched my hamstrings since the first week I thought that I should revisit them. I really enjoyed revisiting stretches that targeted my hamstrings using different stretches that I have not tried before. They all felt very nice although the lying hamstring stretch I found very difficult because I could not being my leg up very high without it bending. I repeated all four of these stretches a few times until I reached 10-15 minutes so by the time I did that stretche for the third time it felt better. Overall it felt very relaxing once I did them a couple time and got into the groove.
Resources:
I was not able to link through videos like I did in my previous blog posts so I will just be putting the channel name and video title below of the videos I used for this weeks stretches.
AskDoctorJo:
- Hamstring Strain Stretches & Exercises – Ask Doctor Jo
- Hamstring Stretch in Long Sitting – Ask Doctor Jo
Baptist Health
- Hamstring Stretch
These videos were very helpful when choosing what stretches I wanted to do because they were quick short videos that explained what they were doing and why which I really liked.
Next Week’s Plan:
Since next week will be my last week I decided that I am going to do another full body stretch as I really like the last one that I did and because it is my last week I thought it would be the perfect time to do a full body routine. I will be hitting all of the areas that I covered over the weeks and do a 20-30 minute routine.
Guiding Question This Week:
If I put all the areas I’ve covered into one routine, can I keep the flexibility I have gained so far and notice which stretches feel easier compared to earlier weeks?
This Week’s Focus:
For this week I wanted to focus on all of the areas that I have covered so far because I felt that if I focus on hamstrings in week one and then never cover it again I would lose that mobility. So I compiled a 20-25 minute routine that goes over all the areas I have worked on for the past few weeks.
What I did:
Lower Body
- 90/90 Hip Stretch: Sit with both knees bent at 90 degrees (one in front and one to the side) keep your back straight and lean forward slightly
- Butterfly stretch: Sit with feet together and gently press your knees to the floor or flutter your knees. Hold for 30 seconds
- Seated Forward Fold: Sit with your legs out straight gently lean forward with your back straight and reach for your toes.
- Low Lunge: Step one foot forwarding a lunge, put your back knee on the ground. Hold for 30 seconds.
Spine
- Cat Cow: On all fours arch your back looking up, round your back and look down tucking your chin
- Seated Spinal Twist: Sit with your back straight ben your left knee, place your foot outside of your right thigh and gently twist toward your left side. Hold for 30 second, then switch sides.
Upper Body
- Shoulder Stretch: Bring one arm across your chest and gently pull it closer with your other arm. Hold for 30 seconds, repeat on the other side
- Side Neck Stretch: Put your left ear towards your left shoulder, can use your arm to pull your head closer to you shoulder for a deeper stretch. Hold for 30 seconds, repeat on the other side.
- Neck rotations: Looking forward rotate your head going clockwise about ten times, repeat going anti-clockwise for about ten times.
- Wrist Stretches (Flexor & Extensor): extend one arm out with your palm up and gently pull your fingers back, then flip your palm down and gently pull your fingers back towards you. Hold for about 20 seconds, repeat on other side.
Reflection:
I really liked doing this full body stretching routine it made me feel less tense overall. I definitely noticed that while doing some of the stretches from previous weeks that I could go father and they were easier to do which was cool to see. I noticed that my forward fold I was able to lean farther forward which made me realize how just in these 5 weeks I have gotten more flexible than the first week
Next Week’s Plan
I thought that we only had to do six blog posts so I had this set to be my last week of stretching but found out it is actually eight posts. Since I have stretched basically everything I am going to be doing another full body stretching routine with different stretches that still target the areas that I have covered previously.
This week we had another guest speaker come in named Rich McCue. Rich is the Manager of the Digital Scholarship Commons. He introduced us to a few different kinds of tools like Google Gemini and the magic eraser tool on Google Photos. These tools could be used in the classroom as well as personal use. He encouraged us to think about how tools like these could be used in a classroom setting. I really enjoyed how hands on this workshop was because it made it much more engaging and fun to listen to. We were able to try out different features that these tools have like removing backgrounds, editing photos, as well as videos.
One thing that he said that I had never really thought of before was about privacy and data ownership. Rich explained that when you upload a picture onto for example Google Gemini it goes to a server in the United States meaning it can be accessed under the Patriot Act, so he remined us to never upload student pictures since there isn’t a clear answer on who actually owns it.
We also played around with video editing and podcasting using iMovie and Microsoft video editor which was super cool. I really liked how he gave us lots of time to play around with the different tools. He showed us a few videos with different things wrong with them like a shaky camera, loud noise, etc. which was to help us notice and avoid these things when creating videos. Overall, this workshop was a lot of fun and very informative, I enjoyed how interactive and hands on it was.
Guiding Question For This Week:
Since I have never covered these areas before can learning them help support the goal I have been working towards?
This Week’s Plan
For this week I thought it would be fun to stretch my chest since I did not know you could do that as well as my calves/ankles, and toes! I feel that these areas can be overlooked as people like myself may not know they they are areas you can stretch. Tight calves and ankles have the potential of making other stretches harder and stretching my chest can help improve my posture.
What I Did
- Doorway Chest Stretch: Stand in a doorway with both of your arms bent at 90 degrees and your hands on the door frame. Step one foot forward and lean through the doorway until you feel a stretch in your chest. Hold for 20-30 seconds. Repeat 2-3 times.
- Standing Calf Stretch: Face a wall and place your hands on it. Step your right foot back keeping your heel flat and leg straight. Lean forward until you feel a stretch in your calf. Hold for 20-30 seconds. Repeat on the other leg.
- Ankle Circles: Standing, lift your right foot slightly off the ground. Rotate your ankle clockwise about ten times. Repeat on your other foot.
- Seated Toe Stretch: Sit on your heels tucked under. Lean back gently until you feel a stretch through your toes and the bottom of your foot. Hold for 20-30 seconds. Repeat 2-3 times.
Reflection
These Stretches felt very different since I have not done any of them before but after doing them a few times throughout the week they became more comfortable and felt really nice. At first though I did find the toe stretch to be uncomfortable and weird but it got easier each time I did it.
Resources
I found these resources to be very helpful in guiding me in how to do the stretches that I picked for this week. They included pictures or videos which I found very helpful so I could refer back to make sure I was doing the stretch properly.
Next Week’s Plan
Next week I want to combine all of the stretches that I have done so far into one singular 20-25 minute routine. I want to include at least one stretch from each week so that it can target everything I have done so far. I thought that this was a good idea because the stretches that I did in week one may get lost because I haven’t touched on them in a few weeks while focusing on other areas. I plan on doing longer full body routine like this every few weeks so that I can continue to work on all areas so I don’t lose that mobility.
This week in class we had a guest speaker Jesse Miller who talked about digital citizenship and online privacy. His presentation was very engaging, and I loved how interactive he was with the class, prompting us to react with emojis to his questions as well as to type in the chat. This made the class much more interesting and engaging. It also made me think a lot about how closely connected our professional and personal lives are when it comes to technology. He pointed out how our generation grew up with social media which makes us a lot more social media literate.
Jesse started by asking us to think back to the first social media platform where we had a positive experience. Most people said Instagram, but others said platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, snapchat, and more. It was actually very interesting to see other people’s experiences and to think back at my own and see how young I was when I first got it and how much social media has changed since then. He shared examples of how technology can have serious impacts like the Canucks riot in 2012 when social media was used in a good way to help the investigation. This really showed me how serious and powerful digital footprints can be even when you think what you are posting or sending is only temporary.
He talked a lot about personal vs professional as a teacher. As a future teacher maintaining personal and professional boundaries online is very important. I am aware that as a future teacher remembering to think before you post and being aware of your online presence is extremely important as it could be viewed by employers, coworkers, parents, and even students. I remember being in Grade 7 and looking up my favourite teachers on Instagram and requesting to follow them. Looking ack at this I can understand how important these boundaries are. Jesse gave a few examples of how data can be collected such as scanning IDs at a club and simply using the Wi-Fi in a store. This really made me realize how unaware some of us are to all of the ways that data and information about us can be collected in our everyday lives.
One thing that stuck out to me was phones in schools. For me I have always seen phones as something that is not allowed in a classroom especially in elementary and high school, less so later on in high school. I feel like I view it that way because in elementary school we weren’t allowed to have phones out and if we did it was rare so when I went in to high school that view carried over. Now in BC phones are not allowed in classrooms unless they are approved by a teacher. Jesse framed this in a way to give teachers power rather than restrict students. I agree with this because being in a classroom where a teacher has taken phones away, I found myself holding a resentment towards them. It almost made me like them less because they were known as the “strict” teachers. Instead of banning phones completely I think students should be taught how to use them responsibly, safely, and that they can be used as helpful tools in the classroom.
Jesses talk was overall very eye-opening, it made me realize that as a future teacher and being in this new generation of growing up in the digital world and being on social media its more than just knowing how to use technology, it’s about modeling how to use it responsibly.
Guiding Question For This Week:
Since I have been having tension in these areas especially my wrists can following videos help improve mobility in these areas?
This Week’s Focus:
For this week I chose to focus on my shoulders, neck, and wrist mobility. After working on different areas of the past few weeks I have noticed a lot of tension in my back and neck and thought that this week would be a great week to work on it. I have also noticed that my right wrist has started hurting as it does every once and awhile so because of that I thought it was the perfect time to add in wrists stretches as well.
What I Did:
I did the following stretches for around 10-15 minutes as I have found throughout this journey that 10-15 minutes seems to be the perfect amount of time for my stretching routines.
Shoulder Stretches:
- Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch: Bring one arm straight across your chest. Use your other arm to gently pull the arm across your chest closer to your body. Hold for 20-30 seconds, then switch sides.
- Shoulder Rolls: and Arm Circles: Sitting or standing roll your shoulders forward about ten times and then do the same thing but backwards.
- Eagle Arms Stretch: Extend both of your arms in front of you at shoulder height. Cross your right arm over your left and try to bring your palms together. Lift your elbows slightly and hold for 20-30 seconds. Do it all again with the other arm.
Neck Stretches:
- Side Neck Stretch: Put your left ear towards your right shoulder. For a bigger stretch you can put your right hand on your head and gently press down. Repeat on the other side.
- Neck Rotations: Starting from the front roll your head around going clockwise about ten times, then repeat going anti clockwise about ten times.
- Chin to Chest Stretch: Put your chin towards your chest until you feel a stretch on the back of your neck. Hold for 20-30 seconds.
Wrist Stretches:
- Wrist Flexor Stretch: Put one arm straight out with your palm facing up. Use your other hand to gently pull your fingers back toward your body. Hold for 15-20 seconds. Repeat on the other hand.
- Wrist Extensor Stretch: Put one arm out with your palm facing down. Use your other hand to gently pull your fingers down. Repeat on the other hand.
- Prayer Stretch: Place your palms together in front of your chest. Lower your hands while keeping your palms pressed together until you feel a nice stretch. Hold for 20-30 seconds.
- Wrist Circles: Make fists with both of your hands and then rotate your wrists in slow circles 10 times going clockwise and then 10 times going anti clockwise.
Reflection on my Learning:
I did these stretches throughout the week of October 8th-14th but I accidentally saved it to my drafts instead of posting it. So that is why there is two blogs posts in the span of a week. thought I should mention. Throughout that week while doing the stretches above I noticed a big difference in how my neck, shoulders, and especially how my wrists felt by the end of the week. My shoulders felt less tense, loose, and my wrist pain felt a lot better. I really want to make the wrist stretches apart of my daily routine. Maybe not every day but at least a few times a week because of my reoccuring wrist pain and with these stretches my wrists felt a lot better.
Resources:
While looking for resources for this blog post I came across Yoga with Adriene. I remembered her from when I took yoga in grade 12 and I really enjoyed her videos. I really enjoyed following along her video and using some of the stretches she did for my blog post.
I used a few of the stretches that Dr. Jared did in this 6 minute wrist stretching video. I really liked how he explained why we were doing wrist stretches, how to do each stretch, and what each stretch did. I thought that it was really helpful to know what each one did for my body.
Next Week’s Plan:
Next week I want to move on to my calves/ankles, chest, and toes as these are a few areas I haven’t covered yet. I also did not know that you were able to stretch your toes or chest so I thought it would be interesting to go over. I am excited to see how I feel after doing these stretches.