In the last few weeks, I’ve been fortunate to be exposed to a number of new tech ideas to continue building my professional toolkit. Rich McCue is the manager at the digital learning commons at UVic (he prefers the moniker ‘Hacker-in-Chief’), and my EDCI 336 cohort has been fortunate to attend a handful of workshops put on by McCue.

Our most recent workshop put on by McCue was intended to give a introduction to coding and it’s practical implementation in the classroom. The workshop can be accessed here:

I spent some time looking at different coding resources like Scratch, Hour of Code, and Code BC. However, I really connected with Grasshopper, and I spent time learning how to code through the tutorials. I was successful in many of my coding attempts, and let’s just say there’s lots of room for improving my self-efficacy in coding.

Last week, we learned about video conferencing. Although we split our cohort into two groups and conferenced with each in different spaces, I can see this technology being used to bring experts into our classroom via video conference. I felt much more confidence thinking about integrating this into my learning space after this workshop.

Getting the opportunity to gain exposure to so many tech resources has been great professional development. I appreciate the time that our guests put into nurturing our development in different areas, and I can picture myself doing something similar when I am an established teacher. As usual, I can’t wait until the next learning opportunity. Thanks for reading. – Mike