In this weeks class we had the opportunity to listen to Jeff Hopkins speak about his school the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. During Mr. Hopkins presentation we learnt about the process and work that goes into creating a school, as well as the way that the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry is different than other private schools. One of the things Mr. Hopkins said that stood out to me was when he said that the school is only private because it allows for him to run the school in the way that it is ran, but Mr. Hopkins wants the school to eventually shut down because hopefully that will mean that public schools are following the School of Innovations lead. The aforementioned statement was interesting to me because I have dreamt of creating my own school for several years and often explain that it would only be private in order to operate in the desired way until it was adopted by the public school system. Hearing about Mr. Hopkins achieve his goal of various other schools adopting his School of Innovations design is extremely inspiring and allowed for me to see that my dream can actually be done.
Month: February 2021 (page 1 of 1)
This week I worked on strengthening Daisys tricks. In the video that I attached below we go over ‘sit’, ‘lie down’, and ‘up’. I have not yet written a blog about ‘up’ as I have just started teaching her it! This video was taken right before dinner time so Daisy is quite distracted and not listening to direction as well as she usually does. What I found very interesting is that in the video you can see that Daisy hears the command and then thinks about it before actually following through the trick. Next we are going to work on ‘leave it’!
Daisy quickly mastered the skill of sitting down, and because of that I moved right into teaching her how to lie down. I began by asking Daisy to sit, then showing her the treat in my hand and moving my hand to the floor where she would have to lie down if she wanted to try and get the treat, once Daisy laid down I then gave her the treat and told her that she was a good girl! Daisy was fast at recognizing that the word lie down, as well as the motion of me placing my hand on the floor, meant that I was asking her to lie down. I was then able to take away the treat and only use the hand motion as well as the the phrase lie down to get her to lie down. I am now working on teaching Daisy to lie down when she hears the phrase lie down without the motion, while it is a little difficult I have no doubt that she will quickly catch on! I am still using the same resource as the last two weeks – Zak George’s 3 Easy Things to Teach Your New Puppy, and I am still finding it extremely useful!
This week we have been working on teaching Daisy to sit. While she picked up on sitting down as soon as she sees a treat, she doesn’t necessarily know to sit down when I use the word ‘sit’. Because of this, I have changed my training method from using treats as a motivator to treats as a reward instead. When I first began changing the training method I used a treat to get Daisy to sit down the first few times and then after that I no longer showed her the treat before asking Daisy to sit down. The transition between methods was surprisingly easy and she now knows that when I say the word ‘sit’ she should sit down. While my training method still involves treats I am trying to slowly use positive words or pets as rewards instead. One of the resources that I have been finding very useful is Zak George’s Dog Training Revolution, and for teaching Daisy how to sit I specifically liked Zak George’s video 3 Easy Things to Teach Your New Puppy!
In this weeks class we had the opportunity to listen to Trevor MacKenzie talk about inquiry-based learning and how we can incorporate it into a teaching methods. While we learnt quite a bit about inquiry-based learning last semester I found that this conversation furthered my understanding of the idea and provided me with a visual, (attached below) that made the four types of inquiry very clear. The visual that I found very helpful was of a swimming pool where each type of Inquiry are in different depths of the pool which signifies the amount of freedom in the Inquiry. The visual also makes it obvious as to why students who have not yet mastered structured inquiry are unlikely to succeed when they are placed in guided inquiry based classrooms. In all of my academic experience I have never been given the opportunity to partake in a free-inquiry until this semester, and in all honesty I found it very hard to come up with a topic because I am used to receiving a set of rules or guidelines when it comes to topic choice. If I were to go through the steps mentioned in the visual below during my time in school prior to university I feel that I would have achieved high grades because I would have been more passionate and interested in what I was learning.
Photo of Inquiry Learning by @trev_mackezie (Trevor MacKenzie).
While knowing your name seems like an easy task to accomplish, it can be pretty tricky for puppies. With Daisy we first called her Valentine before deciding that the name Daisy was a better fit. Our indecisiveness caused some confusion as Daisy was not sure what her name actually was. During this week we made sure to continuously call Daisy by her name and not any nicknames so that we do not confuse her any further. As per Zak George’s instructions we used treats to get Daisy’s attention, while also calling her name. Zak George’s video 3 Easy Things to Teach Your New Puppy has been extremely useful in understanding how to teach Daisy her name. Currently Daisy looks at us whenever we say her name but we are uncertain of if she is just looking at us because we made a noise or because she actually knows that Daisy is her name.
In this weeks class we had guest speaker Jesse Miller tell us about our Digital Footprints, and how important it is to be aware of it. Prior to this class I have already learnt about digital footprints, where images might end up and who may end up seeing them. My parents brought me up to be extremely cautious with what I put on line and have taught me how to make all of my social media accosts extremely private and secure. When I google myself (or if someone else were to google my full name) the only result is the famous Volleyball player Gabrielle Reece. The only places that you can find my name connected to anything personal is an archived newspaper article that features all of the students from my graduating class, the Big Brothers Big Sisters 2017-2018 annual report, and, if you look hard enough, a poetry book that my grade five class published.
When thinking of social media in the classroom, the only time that I could imagine using it is creating a private blog of some sorts for the parents to know what the class will be up to that week, or showing off some of the projects the class has completed.