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’!
Author: gabriellereece (page 4 of 4)
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.
As mentioned in my introductory post Daisy is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Chesapeake’s are a large-breed hunting, sport and retriever dog, who are known for being loyal, happy, protective, and dominant dogs. Before Daisy we had a Chessie, named Princess Analiese commonly known as Kona who we were fortunate enough to have in the family for over thirteen years! Kona was an extremely loyal and protective dog who was extremely happy when swimming or when she was eating berries off our shrubs in the garden. Kona was extremely loyal and did this great big Chesapeake smile that looks quite terrifying but is actually how Chessie’s show their excitement about seeing you. Kona is actually Daisy’s great great aunt, can you see the resemblance?
In this class we delved into the topic of photo editing, although I know how to use photoshop quite proficiently I found this class extremely interesting and we were told of different platforms that we could use as an alternative to adobe photoshop. I often use either Photoshop or Procreate for any photo editing that I wish to do so I was quite out of my element when we then proceeded to edit the iconic sitting Bernie image onto various backgrounds using powerpoint. As mentioned, I found this difficult because I have never used powerpoint before. While I am not the biggest fan of using the Powerpoint platform I understand that it is a great way to create items to use in the classroom. I found it very interesting to see what my peers created with their sitting Bernie images, while I was excited to see so many of my peers thrive with the powerpoint photo editing I was also quite glad to see that I was not the only one who was having a little bit of a difficult time.
During our class this week (19/01/2021) my group delved into the topic of Public Domain. I already had some understanding of how Copy Right and Public Domain worked I found it extremely interesting to look at it from an educators point of view. The resource we were encouraged to check out – https://archive.org/ includes a multitude of free resources for students to access and teachers to add to their teaching toolkit. While I doubt I will be using F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby when I work with primary students the fact that the story is now Public Domain means that I can remix it (and various other stories) to suit my audience.
My peers in the class also covered other topics such as; Fair Dealing, Creative Commons, Open Educational Resources, and more. All of which were quite new to me as I have not previously had the right resources to explore such topics before.
After this first week I already feel as if I have a better understanding of how technology/social media can be useful for teachers. I don’t have very much experience with incorporating technology in my teaching practices, or have I had very much experience seeing technology being used by my previous teachers. I am excited to further my understanding of the educational uses of technology as well as the way that it can connect me to teaching communities in a way that can help my future students!