Weekly Reflection #2

During week 4, we learned about the PSII (Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry) which is a school that is entirely independent and is built on an inquiry framework which means the students are in charge of their learnings. This school coast around $7,000 a year roughly which is a lot for a self based learning school but I still found this approach quite interesting. This school has the teachers and students design activities for their inquiry projects and they will tag their work with curricular competency instead of the different school subjects. This school has many different spaces for both group and independent instruction. For example, they have an individual sensory room, as well as a library room, tech space, music room, art room, kitchen, quite spaces and lots of group instruction areas. To track the students progress the school has a planning software as well as portfolios that the students can still access once they graduate which is much more beneficial I think than the google accounts that deactivate once you graduate. Overall, I found this approach very interesting but I don’t think I would have succeeded at this type of school because I am not very self motivated.

This week we also had a guest speaker from SD61 who talked to us about the different types of tech available in their district as well as their take on AI. This district is similar to SD63 as they both take a security first approach to protect student data. This district is extremely chrome book heavy and every class has a tech package which includes an apple tv and projectors. This district also has a tech learning website for both students and teachers to access and the two main systems this district uses are Microsoft for business needs and Google for classroom needs. After the guest speaker talked about the different tech available in SD61 they then went on to talk about their districts view on AI which I really liked because they believe that we should be taking it slow and being very carful about safety and security when it comes to kids and AI. They also said that we shouldn’t be relying on AI and that AI should just be a guide and that we should be controlling what we input. Even though this district has a more safety heavy approach they still allow AI within Magic School and School AI and teachers are encouraged to use Copilot and Gemini but they should avoid putting students data into AI systems. I personally find this a bit contradicting since they are still allowing AI but I guess as along as the teachers are being careful then I guess a little AI is alright. Overall, I liked this districts approach to tech.