Weekly Reflection #4

During week 6, we attended two different Focused ED seminars that were available for all districts in BC. The two seminars I attended were on Digital Classroom Resources for K-7 and the Student Cyber Security. The first seminar focused on digital classroom resources available on the Focused ED website. Some of the resources that stood out to me were 4 canoes, Know BC, World, Click view and Twig. 4 Canoes has teacher guides for Ojibue, and Haida Gwaii lessons as well as many other Indigenous books, magazines and resources that will be very useful for Indigenous learnings. Know BC is the leading source for all BC info and is home of the BC encyclopedia. This resource also has a full copy of Indian Horse, Far West and many other published books great for BC history which I found quite interesting because I would love to know more about BC. World Book has resources for early readers all the way to advance with each instalment providing different features to help students research. One feature I found interesting was that World Book Discover has a life skills tabs where students can learn about bullying, etc which I think is a very important topic to be learning about. The last resource I found really interesting was Click View and Twig which is a resource that has teaching videos and lessons for grade 6-9. Each video is paired with a teacher guide that has a 5 page lesson plan and activities. This resource also has safer internet videos as well as longer movies and documentaries on subjects like science, socials, etc. This resource looks very interesting and I am very excited to use these once I’m teaching. Overall, I found this seminar very informative.

The second seminar focused on Student Cyber Security and the lessons available on the Focused ED website. These lessons were written by teachers for teachers and are for students aged 8-18. Each lessons has a manual for how to integrate these lesson into the classroom. Some of the lesson content include; a teacher guide, ready to teach lessons, slides, and handouts. Some of the topic idea vary on age so for example: 8-11 is on passwords, 12-14 is on social media influence, 15-18 is on cyber security but each age groups has multiple units and topics. Overall, I found this seminar very informative and I really like how teachers have taken the time to create these cyber security lessons because social media isn’t going any where so we might as well teach students how to be safe instead of trying to ban them because they are going to use it no matter what.

Focused ED website for teaching resources linked: https://focusedresources.ca/digital-classroom-access

Focused ED Cyber Security Lessons linked: https://focusedresources.ca/student-security-awareness-curriculum