It’s hard to believe the semester has come to an end. I really enjoyed getting to know all my peers in EDTC 300 and truly appreciate everything I learned from you. I am excited to continue to stay connected through the Twitter network we have created. Here is my final post and evidence on how I have supported the learning of others this semester.
That’s a Wrap!
It’s hard to believe this learning project has come to an end already. I didn’t get nearly as many recipes done as I was hoping. However I still learned a lot about the canning process. One thing I definitely learned is how long it takes to complete a recipe. But I am looking forward to taking the knowledge I have learned these past few months and trying some more recipes when life slows down a little bit and I have more time. I’m thinking over Christmas holidays I would like to try a few recipes! Here is a summary of what I learned about canning:
Week 1: Too Many Tomatoes– I started by choosing this topic for my project because of all the tomatoes and apples I had from our garden. At this point I had high hopes and was going to have a basement full of canned goods (reality set in quick once I did my first recipe and saw that it nearly took me all day just to make salsa!) Although I do have about 5 jars of salsa left- so I will call that a win!
Week 2: My Canning Menu– This week I compiled a list of recipes I wanted to tackle in the coming months. I also gathered the materials I would be needing. Looking at the list of recipes I wanted to make, and what I actually made- I didn’t do too bad! I had 6 recipes chosen and I ended up making 3 of them. I made Salsa, Apple butter, and Caramel sauce. Jam is still at the top of my to-do list!
Week 3: Make Salsa with Me and CapCut!– This was the biggest part of my project, not only did I make the salsa but I also created a video of the process. The video was very time consuming, but it might be my favorite part of the project. It was really cool to see it all put together.
Week 4: What the Heck is Pressure Canning? -This week I took a bit of a turn and just did some research on the canning process. I noticed the terms “pressure canning” and “water bath” popping up a lot and I needed some clarification on what exactly the difference is. I found that pressure canning is a bit more complex and requires some more tools, as well as knowledge on the process in order to ensure safety when preserving food items. It’s not something I was ready to tackle, but perhaps if I continue with canning and get better then one day I would give it a try.
Week 5: How ‘Bout Them Apples? -My second recipe was apple butter. Which I don’t know if I would actually describe as a butter, it had the consistency of a spread rather than a butter. But this one was fairly straightforward and didn’t involve nearly as much chopping or prep as the salsa did. I still have a jar of this in my fridge and it tastes delicious on a piece of cinnamon raisin toast!
Week 6: Too Old for TikTok?– This week I explored Tik Tok to see what I could learn about canning. It was also my first experience with TikTok and I was pleasantly surprised what a useful tool it was. I always thought it was just full of silly, mindless videos. But this week really opened my eyes to the possibilities.
Week 7: The Value of a Good, Old Fashioned, Hard Copy Book– I know the point of this project was to learn everything online, but I also learned about a few books that many people recommended on canning. While I learned a lot of things online, I sometimes think just a regular book can sometimes also be helpful. I can see myself purchasing one of these books and following some of the recipes and directions from there. I was a bit overwhelmed at times on the amount of information I could find on canning, along with a few contradicting messages. So having a book would help clarify those things.
Week 8: Caramel Magic- This was my favourite recipe I made because let’s be honest, who doesn’t love caramel sauce! I was also amazed at how the process turned sweetened condensed milk into caramel sauce. I wasn’t sure it would work. Even my mom had stopped by my house the day I was starting and she kind of chuckled because she also didn’t think it would work. But I will never make caramel sauce another way! It was so easy, while it was time consuming the only thing that took time was the actual boiling. So as long as I am home I can be doing other things while the caramel sauce is boiling. I will definitely be doing this again!
Week 9: Canva & Caramel– This week was dedicated to learning about another creative tool- Canva. I created a graphic to show the steps to make caramel sauce. It was very user friendly and I plan to look into getting the free educator account for Canva.
Overall I would say I had a successful learning project and was able to learn the basics of canning, as well as try out a variety of recipes. It definitely opened my eyes to what is possible to learn online, as well as different creative tools that can be used to create content. This is not the end of my learning journey on canning!
Summary of Learning
I used a platform called genially for my summary of learning. A coworker of mine uses this platform often so I wanted to get more familiar with it. I highly recommend it! It was super easy to use and the different tools you can create are endless.
For my summary of learning I created a graphic that highlighted some of my key learnings. Then for each topic you can click the button and view a short video of me explaining some key takeaways. It was difficult to condense everything into less than 6 minutes but I did it! Also excuse my raspy voice, I am battling some sickness.
Sleuthing Skills
Kaelyn and I teach in the same school division and have known each other for many years. We have kids similar in age, live just down the street from one another, and our husbands are the administrators at our local high school. Needless to say I know her pretty well, but I have never took the time to “creep” her online. Here is what I found out!
*For the purpose of this assignment Kaelyn and I deleted one another on Facebook so we could see what others see on a private profile*
Here is what a quick search for “Kaelyn Turberfield” on Google showed:
- Pinterest: The first thing that turned up was her Pinterest page. I was surprised how much info I got from just this account. Just from her Pinterest boards I could conclude she is a teacher, has 3 kids, enjoys cooking- I even found her address on one of her board titles. (Don’t worry- I let her know so she could change the privacy settings on this!)
- Blog: Her blog was also one of the first things to pop up and she had a lot of info about herself on the “about me” page.
- St Agnes school: The staff directory for the school Kaelyn teaches Grade 1 at also came up in my search results.
- Obituary: I found multiple obituaries for her and her husband’s grandparents.
- Concentus Citizenship Education: It was clear Kaelyn had a strong role in this programming. Many results came up for her involvement in this project, going back to 2020.
- Her annual salary: I was able to see her annual salary from a board report from 2014/2015.
I’m not sure my Facebook sleuthing was entirely accurate, because we had a total of 57 mutual friends so I was still able to see a lot of her content even though we were no longer friends on Facebook. Her “about info” was locked up and I wasn’t able to see anything there. I was mostly able to see some of her photos. The only way I could tell from her Facebook that she was a teacher came from this post (Again I think I was only able to see this because she had tagged some of my friends in this post).
Well that was a fun sleuthing activity-time to add my friend back on Facebook lol!
Canva & Caramel
I enjoyed making the caramel sauce so much that for this week’s post I wanted to create something that other people could follow to make their own caramel sauce. I wanted to try Canva because I find recipes are easiest to follow when they are on one page, and rather than a video I like to have the directions written down. I don’t have experience with Canva so this was my first project and I found it very user friendly! The biggest challenge was finding a free template to use, many of the ones I liked required payment. But I did find out that teachers can get a pro account for free! I haven’t had a chance to set that up but I plan to try it in the future.
I split the process into 6 easy steps. I included a headline, brief description, and photo for each step. My hope is that it is intriguing enough for draw attention, but simple enough that people can read it quickly and decide if it is a recipe they would try. Let me know if you think I achieved my goal!
Here is my final product:
Caramel Magic!
This week I tried out a recipe I found on TikTok. While exploring the platform a few weeks ago I saved this video because it looked super easy and great for beginners. Also who doesn’t love caramel sauce!?
All of the canning recipes I have tried have been SO time consuming. This was something I didn’t anticipate when I chose this for my learning project. It is very time consuming and all the prep work takes awhile. So I was excited to try this one because although it took 3 hours to cook, the prep time was less than 5 minutes! With just sweetened condensed milk in a water bath, I created some delicious caramel sauce! I couldn’t believe how easy it was- it was almost magic! The slow heat was enough to caramelize the milk and make it the perfect consistency. The only thing I wish I had done differently was used smaller jars. I only had 500ml jars so it required a lot more water in order to immerse the jar. This resulted in the cooking time being more than 3 hours because it took so long to boil. As you can see my kids also loved it! Apple slices and caramel might be their new favourite snack.
Teaching Digital Literacy
When I think about teaching digital literacy, the one common element I keep reflecting on is critical thinking. Critical thinking is a life skill that would not only help students in being digitally literate but in so many other aspects of their life. I think if we put more emphasis on that, specifically teaching to digital literacy would be so much more powerful. Critical thinking is a skill that is talked about in the front matter of our curriculum. Here is an example from the Grade 3 Social Studies curriculum:
I think one of the biggest challenges with teaching about digital literacy and fake news, is that many adults don’t even have these skills. It scares me to think about some of the information students may be getting from home, and then when they come to our classrooms we may have to do some unlearning before we can begin developing these digital literacy skills in them. The New York Times writes a great article talking about evaluating our sources and how we can help students develop this skill. This is also a very helpful article in understanding how fake news spreads based on a tweet made by a regular citizen with only 40 Twitter followers.
In order to teach students to think critically about what they see online, it’s helpful for them to understand why and how fake news spreads. Reflecting on this article one thing I noticed is how many opportunities there were for the facts to be checked, yet nobody bothered to do that. They just took what they saw as truth and then continued to spread the message. An activity like this video can be helpful for students (and adults!) to start thinking critically about the news we see.
It can be daunting to think about how important the skill of digital literacy is and the role we have as educators to help students develop this. I think it is important to start at at young age, start the conversation early. It would also be helpful to have resources and learning opportunities for parents so they can also strengthen their digital literacy skills.
Hello World!
This week our assignment was to try out a coding project. I am very unfamiliar with coding and have absolutely ZERO experience working with any type of coding. I thought Scratch coding looked easy enough but I lasted about 20 minutes before I gave up in frustration. I could not figure it out, even with trying to find tutorial videos. It was too complex for my non-coding brain. So I moved on to Hour of Code and chose a Grade 2 level project called “Hello World!” which matched my ability level perfectly (Lol!)
I really liked this platform because it walked me through every single step. For someone like me who knows nothing, I really appreciated the tutorial videos that came up at different stages. They also give directions for what you need to do. The Scratch coding was way too open-ended. There was so much to do I couldn’t figure out what to do or how to do it. With hour of code I just followed the directions and was able to complete the project.
I would definitely use Hour of Code in my classroom or with young students, it would be a great introduction to coding. But I do think many kids could create some cool projects on Scratch, and I have way more respect for this kids now that I experienced how complex it really is!
The value of a good, old fashioned, hard copy book
This week I wanted to dive into a question that has been on my mind since the beginning of this project- is online really the BEST way to learn about canning? This question came up because I have seen so many online platforms suggesting recipe books for canning. It got me thinking about what can be learned online and what might need to be supplemented with something more “traditional” such as a hard copy recipe book.
I went back to some of the sources I have been learning from to see how many recommend purchasing a recipe book, which ones are referenced most often, and if they suggest any reason for purchasing a recipe book.
This Ball canning book came up multiple times, as well as other versions. Ball seems to be a very reputable brand when it comes to canning, and many people suggested these are a necessity for canning, especially when it comes to safety and making sure you are following the proper steps.
Another one that seemed to come up regularly was this book specific to pressure canning.
Something that came up often with the topic of pressure canning was the issue of food safety. Almost all accounts or blogs that talked about pressure canning, recommended at least one recipe book to ensure you are following the steps exactly.
My own opinion is that in order to get the most information and ensure you are canning correctly, online is a great place to get ideas, learn about the process, and connect with others. When it comes down to canning in your own kitchen, a book is a really great way to keep track of your steps and make sure you are doing it correctly.
Digital Citizenship and the Curriculum
Ribbles‘ 9 elements of digital citizenship are something every classroom teacher should be familiar with. I don’t think we do enough to educate teachers on what types of digital citizenship skills they should be instilling in their students. Students come to us knowing more about technology than we do, yet they don’t understand the responsibility that comes along with that. Too often we just expect that because they are savvy with the new technology, they have the skills they need. These 9 elements very clearly lay out the important things that need to be addressed.
- Digital Access: The issues of equitable distribution of technology can fit seamlessly into the Social Studies curriculum. It would tie into the Resources and Wealth outcomes more most grade levels. Specifically, in grade 6 RW6.1: Examine and analyze factors that contribute to quality of life, including material and non-material factors. Students could explore the difference between needs/wants and discuss the role of technology in that.
- Digital Commerce: The first thing I think of then I read this one is incorporating it into the Mathematics curriculum. This is about buying, selling, and using money.
- Digital Communication and Collaboration: This fits seamlessly into the ELA curriculum. It would cover the compose and create outcomes but also comprehend and respond. The Grade 8 ELA curriculum specific addresses issues of identity, social justice, and efficacy.
- Digital Etiquette: This would fit into any outcome, and comes along with some of the skills we want our students to have that are not specifically addressed in the curriculum. Things such as respect, consideration for others, and empathy.
- Digital Fluency: Compose and create outcomes address various forms of literacy and multimedia.
- Digital Health and Welfare: This one is something I think could be better addressed in our Health curriculum. There are many Health outcomes that address overall health and wellbeing, but I think every grade should have an outcome specific to technology.
- Digital Law and Digital Rights and Responsibilities: Social Studies curriculums often address law, rights and responsibilities. An examples is the grade 4 curriculum PA4.2 which specifically addresses rules, laws, rights, and responsibilities.
- Digital Security and Privacy: This is another one that I don’t think is specifically addressed in the curriculum. It is something that should be addressed in all grade levels.
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