MC's 336 Blog

This is what I came up with for my final sketchnote. What I hoped to achieve with this sketch was to visualize how technology and education are intertwined. For example, a student cannot use technology as a tool without digital awareness. Or student-centred learning cannot happen without developing the core competencies beforehand. All of this to say that technology is a really powerful tool for the classroom, as it offers unique experiences for students to be creative and independent. However, it is still important to educate our classes on the power of the internet and how to use it safely. Furthermore, we as educators cannot solely rely on tech to teach for us; we always need to be prepared and have content ready to be delivered physically. To me, technology is a tool to help assist, but not teach on my behalf.

After today’s class, I immediately went online and started deleting and deactivating accounts that I made forever ago. It made me realize how much of a digital footprint we build throughout our lives without even thinking about it. As a future teacher, I know that students will likely search my name out of curiosity, because I’ve for sure done that, so I wanted to make sure that what they find reflects me in a light that I am okay with. For example, I had an old volleyball recruiting profile from high school that I couldn’t remove on my own. I actually ended up calling Bob from Illinois, who works for the company, to have it taken down, which shows how permanent online content can be. This was super eye-opening for me – I made that when I was in high school, and it’s still around.

At the same time, not everything online needs to be erased. There is still content like old university volleyball roster photos and achievements that I don’t necessarily want gone. Sure, they’re outdated, but they’re also not negative; in fact, they highlight moments that I’m proud of! As a future PHE teacher, this could even be a positive, as students may see my background in sport and better acknowledge the experience I bring to the classroom.

During my time as a high school student, it was at the peak of this huge shift in how much adolescents are using technology. Although AI hadn’t taken off yet (thank goodness), we were still navigating all of the new and addictive apps that were coming out (Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok). When discussing online consent and privacy, it stood out to me that when we post on these apps, we never really ask the people we tag or post to. In a high school setting, specifically, this is something that can have real consequences because most students aren’t conscious of the impact consent has in digital spaces. As a future teacher, I want to work digital citizenship into my curriculum so that students are in the know about topics that matter but often fly under the radar. Here is an example of a resource created by Abbey Gillette, an SD 62 teacher.

Overall, from everything we covered this week, my main takeaway was that a digital footprint isn’t something we need to “clean up,” but something we need to shape intentionally. Starting with our students who are the most impressionable as they navigate the ins and outs of digital citizenship.

This Blog Post is an original thought and has been edited for spelling, grammar and fluidity with ChatGPT.

OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (GPT-5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/

Are there any digital accessibility practices that you often see being missed? Are there any that you know YOU often miss?

Voice Memo transcription:

Reading about assistive technology and intentionality in technology made me realize how often digital accessibility is treated as an afterthought in the classroom rather than as a foundation. And while many teachers are familiar with adding captions or texts, there are often more subtle practises that are frequently overlooked. One of these is meaningful link text. So, instead of writing descriptive links like download the course outline, It is common to see vague phrases like click here. For users who navigate this by just pulling up a list of links, generic words like “click here” makes it difficult to understand where each link leads. Another overlooked practice that the assistive technology article talked about was the use of proper heading structures.
And sometimes we like to use these to make it more appealing to see where information is going and to break it up. But it’s not always done correctly, and people reading our blogs really rely on these structures to navigate the content officially. So they must be present.


Why do you think many digital accessibility practices aren’t more well-known or commonly used?

Voice Memo transcription:

I think many digital accessibility practices aren’t more widely known because accessibility is often framed as a technical add-on rather than a core principle in the design of technology. In teacher education, accessibility can almost feel like another requirement layered on top of our already rather demanding workload, but when educators aren’t juggling their curriculum, their assessment, and cluster management, accessibility can kind of seem more like a secondary aspect rather than foundational. There is also a misconception that accessibility only benefits a minority group of students, but in reality, accessible design supports everyone. 
From learners who access content on mobile devices, students who are in noisy environments who rely on captions, or maybe those with injuries that affect their ability to use a mouse. However, accessibility barriers are invisible to those who don’t expect them or encounter them on a daily basis; it becomes really easy to assume that content is inclusive, just because it appears organized.

This is a transcript from a Voice Memo

So this week, instead of having class, we were encouraged to attend a Pro D Day workshop for professional development. The one that I chose was an introduction for K to 7 French immersion teachers. I chose this one because although I’m not necessarily planning on teaching K to grade 7, I still thought that they would offer some really good resources, and honestly, they could definitely be used at the grade 9 level or even just core French, because this is for French immersion students, and they already know the language, but for core French students, I think this would be super digestible for those all the way until probably about grade 10 or 11. 


This Pro D workshop was presented by Idéllo’s Sophie Dion and Heather Daly. Essentially, to sum up what it is, it’s a monthly newsletter, and each month has different resources that highlight the specific events surrounding that month. For example, this month highlights Black History Month as well as the Olympic Games.

It is a resource that is completely funded by the Ministry of Education, and within each newsletter, it’s broken down into learning targets. For example, math, literacy, science, social studies, and art. 
And they even have sections for core French, intensive French, and French immersion.

I think this is a really awesome resource because it breaks down french information; in the past, the langauge has been very colonized. 
And it’s learning purpose use to be giving grammar tests over and over until a student could obtain the content. However, Idéllo is breaking down learning into fun and engaging ways. I know that if I were back in grade 7, I would have loved getting one of these monthly newsletters to keep in class.

Something I could see myself doing in my future classroom is getting a subscription each month from Idéllo and getting a physical copy, and kind of having a bookshelf in the classroom where students can go read. Each month, past and present. And I don’t know, just kind of build a network of resources because this is pretty interesting stuff, like, who wouldn’t like to know about the Olympics that are happening right now? 


This is the link to the entire 9 page newsletter by Idéllo

The following is a transcript of a voice note I recorded following our visit to PSII. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to upload the video as an MP4 – I would love to learn how to do that in this course:)

So today we visited the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, and I thought it was a pretty neat concept. I had never considered that you could take all these competencies and not associate like a grade or a rigid structure to them, and instead take the foundations of what each subject is about, the competency and what those achieve, and just turn everything into like a student centred approach, where it’s all driven by their own inquiry. Um, I thought it was really neat specifically. 
They were talking about languages because I’m going to be a languages teacher and how that one boy wanted to learn Serbian, but no one at the school, no, knew how to teach Serbian, and so instead he went and did his own research, and that was his inquiry project, and then taught everyone else Serbian, um, and the example that Jeff gave was that he put, um, Serbian words around the whole school. Like wall and door. Um, and he he progressed really fast. 
So I thought that was super neat. I remember back to when I took French and it was just all like grammar tests over and over and teachers thought that if they could just pound like grammar into your system, that it would just click and you could be able to do it like a robot. But honestly, like it made people just despise languages and French and just the whole kind of colonial system, but I think, like, if I had this approach, I would have taken something I’m passionate about. 
I’m pretty passionate about like sports and athletics and I could have done something with French, like learning the French terms for volleyball. Um, because they’re different, like, um, a passer in, um, like English volleyball is the person that takes the 1st contact that bumps the ball. But in Montreal and in Quebec. 
The passer is the setter who takes the 2nd contact and passes to the hitters. Um, It’s just something I picked up when I did um, the Explorer program for 5 weeks in Quebec in 2023. But yeah, I was super impressed by this learning style. 
Um, I think the only thing that I would personally struggle with is a big part of my identity in school was athletics. And being on a team, I was on volleyball team basketball team, soccer team, ultimate team, and it wasn’t always the sports that drew me to these places, but it was more the people and the instant friendships and camaraderie and life skills you just gain from being on a sports team. Um, I wish I asked if the students had the opportunity to go to another school, like after school situation, and be a part of a different schools team. 
But, yeah, it was, it was very interesting and I did like how they could go to like the Y or Craig X for free and they had built-in programs that a past student came back to give them like personal training program. And I think that is so awesome, but I don’t think that learning style would have worked for me. I think from a more like academic and competency standpoint. 
It would have been great to have all these opportunities to make something I’m passionate, like an inquiry project, but I do think that maybe just because of so much of my personal identity came from team sports, I wouldn’t have necessarily flourished to my full extent of the school. Um, I was curious about the funding. I asked Jeff. 
I was like, so what? Like, where does your funding come from? And he said that about 50% comes from the Ministry of Education, and then the rest is up to tuition, which is $8000 a year. 
Um, I know public schools are free, but, like, the ratio and just what kids are, like, able to do at this school is so impressive that I do think like $8000 will go a long way, like that is a good, a steal, almost, for the education and stuff they’re learning here. Um, If I had a child and was going through this program, I think that putting them in this space for like grade 9 would be really awesome and help them like kind of acclimatize and be creative and then take that and move them into like more of the public school setting for the senior levels because I do think it’s important. Like universities really do look at grades, and I know sometimes people that go into more like STEM programs like really count on those high marks um. 
Um, but also just for the sports team aspect, like I said, but overall, I could definitely see myself applying some of these practises into my classroom, like giving students like a foundational base of knowledge, but then letting them pick how they want to show what they’ve learned because I do agree that I don’t think learning should just be pulling a bunch of marks and averaging them out, but just seeing how they’ve grown. over time. But yeah, those were my thoughts on the visit today and uh, super, super awesome. And yeah, I really appreciate the visit.