This week, we participated in an EdCamp – a virtual conference style discussion concerning a chosen topic related to learning and student development. Our group focused on outdoor learning, as it pertains to different subjects, including cross-curricular applications, benefits, and challenges for students.

Overall, the EdCamp was a very efficient way to engage with colleagues virtually, without planning an event requiring a venue, registration list, guest speakers, technology, and other conference logistics. Our group was able to vote on a topic and begin a discussion within 15 minutes, in breakout rooms, and engage in professional conversation as we would sitting in a conference room. I think that EdCamps would be an exceptional tool for teachers (and students alike) to use on Pro D days, or with international colleagues. It provided the perfect opportunity for a focused discussion and minimal preparation, unlike a conference. One drawback to EdCamp is the inability to be in the same room, engaging in a tactile way with materials and developing professional relationships in person. The other concern would be to ensure equitable access to a device so all individuals can attend virtually. I think it would be important to engage with both EdCamp style conferences and in person style conferences to ensure adequate professional development.

Our session on Outdoor Learning was very productive – including discussion highlights as follows:

• Intentionality of promoting our students’ engagement with content and material outdoors.
• High potential for cross-curricular involvement between subject areas (ex. PHE and physics class doing an outdoor lab together)
• Important for students to learn resilience, preparation and skills through outdoor learning and being outside.

All in all – a productive EdCamp with colleagues that provided us all with tools for practicums and beyond.

This week, we discussed the importance and application of coding and computation in the classroom as it relates to problem solving and student development. Further, we looked at the use of games and gameplay in the classroom and their impacts on traditionally ‘boring’ subjects.

Coding and Computation

In-class, we explored some code-making using Studio Code’s “Code with Anna and Elsa” tutorial. I found the program relatively easy to use, with supportive instructional videos and prompts. In addition to stepwise instruction, the program also provides correctional prompts and informs the user if they have performed the task correctly – similar to what a teacher’s role would be when a student is learning a task. I could see this program being exceptionally useful at a middle school (or perhaps even Elementary) level to introduce computer skills, coding, and digital literacy. It includes well-known characters that kids would engage well with, and also is accessible to learners by way of written instruction, verbal instruction, and chunked material that is easy to work through at your own pace. Overall – useful tool for computer specific classes at a junior level, or beginner computer science or math classes at a secondary level. In the context of my subject areas, I would find this hard to authentically incorporate at a secondary level in classes that were not computer science or math specific, as this program specifically does not engage with science, English or French content. However, I do see clear applications for junior math classes, as it encourages development of BC Curriculum Competencies of critical thinking, decision making, and communication.

Below is a screenshot of a code example I completed in class today.

Gaming

For subjects like science and math, the use of gameplay could offer a significant outlet for engagement and interest for some students. Traditional delivery of science and math content often feels complex and overwhelming, often delivered using classical modes of note-taking and unit tests. Although I do believe that both test-writing and note-taking are valuable skills for our students to develop, I think the use of gameplay could alleviate the stress that often coincides with math and science classes. Games could be incorporated into the classroom as a daily 10min activity, offering a break and an outlet for students who are feeling overwhelmed by the content. Many of these educational games still promote development of core competencies such as decision making, communication, and collaboration, as outlined by the BC Curriculum for all subjects, and should therefore remain a valuable tool for any classroom. Math and science centered games or simulations, such as those published by Legends of Learning, PhET, and Gizmos can be used to support teaching of content by providing interactive visuals through which students can obtain knowledge from.

Exploring these resources today helped me gain some perspective concerning how gameplay and coding could be incorporated into my future classroom for mathematics (coding), science (gaming and simulations) or a mini digital literacy unit (both)! Something I would be highly considerate of as I incorporate more digital content into my classes, is students’ screen time. Despite digital games being exceptionally valuable tools, I find myself often reaching for hands-on, interactive learning amongst peers such as board games for math, labs for science, and skits or whole classroom games for language. All in all, I believe a balance of both styles of learning are equally important for well rounded student development.

Weekly Recap

This week, we learned about assistive technology and learning design. To ensure all of our learners can have equitable access to information, as educators we are responsible for creating and publishing content that is multi-modal and accessible in various modes (with alternative text, visual images, audio descriptions, etc.). As demonstrated in this blog post, some important considerations included enabling accessibility of photo and video by way of captions and alternative text. Further, careful attention to color choices in such a way that will pass a colour contrast checker test, so that individuals perceiving colour in different ways can still access your published content. Two models – SAMR and Triple-E – were discussed in terms of evaluating created content for efficacy in learning. Important considerations included attention to engagement for students, tech modifications, and use of tech tools to redefine and extend students’ knowledge of the specific content. Finally, different forms of assistive tech (iPads, PhET, MathConnect, Co:Writer, etc.) were discussed for use in our future classrooms.

Commonly Missed Digital Accessibility Practices

Enabling accessible photo and video is something I find is often missed in classrooms. The majority of our lessons as educators are made available to students who have visual access to powerpoints, worksheets, articles, and documentaries or short videos. This is something I often neglect to include in my papers and (until today) my blog posts, but will be a crucial thing to carry forward for my future students and learners.

Digital Accessibility Practices and Tools

One digital accessibility practices that surprised me was colour contrast checking. Notably in science, where much of our material is colourful and vibrant in presentation, using contrast checkers should be something we integrate more often to ensure accessibility. Some of the tools I liked in particular listed under the Assistive Technologies were those embedded in Microsoft and Google Suite, given that most students are somewhat familiar with these platforms already. I think many students would benefit from using voice-to-text or read-aloud tools to support them as they conduct research and brainstorm ideas for paper writing, lab reports, or projects. Kurzweil is also a wonderful tool I am now aware of and would love to explore the ways in which it could be implemented or integrated into schools for students who benefit from writing and test taking help. Some things I am curious about concerning this tech include privacy concerns, costs, and accessibility for all students in terms of available resources. Can all students who want this support gain access to an iPad or laptop with downloaded software? Is it beyond the school district budgets? Is it easy to teach and learn how to use? Will this replace the support provided by education assistants (EAs)? Personally, I think EAs are critical to student success in more ways that just reading and scribing, by way of building student relationships and personal connections, which is something these tech tools cannot do. However, they could be very helpful as support tools for EAs and students to use together.

Moving forward, I think these are exceptionally important considerations for future educators to ensure their students can learn to the best of their ability in their classrooms.

This week, I attended Student AI Literacy Lessons K-12 with Cari Wilson, run as a part of the provincial professional development sessions.

To begin the session, Cari reviewed a brief history of AI, which essentially began in the 1940s when the idea arose that computers may surpass human intelligence. Technology and AI in the decades that followed brought rapid growth and development of AI, resulting in increasing demand for adaptation and learning on behalf of businesses, schools, and individuals. The rate at which these changes are occurring is baffling… it only took ChatGPT 5 days to reach one million users! In order to guide us through this learning, Cari spent the next part of her session outlining primary areas of importance for teachers and students using AI, and our responsibilities that coincide with them, as follows.

• Privacy – do our students protect their personal information while engaging with GenAI?
• Ethics – are the AI platforms we use operating responsibly, ethically, and fairly?
• Equity – do all students and teachers have access to the highest paid version of AI?
• Hallucinations – are our students educated enough to differentiate and identify hallucinations while using AI?
• Bias – are our students aware of bias inherently present in AI, the internet, and other forms of published information? Are they learning about bias in general?
• Deep Fakes – how can we teach ourselves and our students to identify whether media (photo, video) are real or not?
• Environmental Impacts – what is our country doing to mitigate environmental impacts of data labs? Why should our students know about this?

The final part of the session was spent outlining several resources and guidelines for teachers to support them in educating their students to use AI as a tool, in a safe, ethical and wise manner. A series of lessons has been posted by Focused Education, which provides a breakdown of the topics above for primary, intermediate, and secondary levels.

It is structured in a manner that requires teachers to provide one lesson a month about AI (with the exception of December, March and June), and is scaffolded through to grade 12. This way, students are learning a little more about AI every year, in a consistent, structured manner. This resource provides lesson outlines and pre-existing materials that teachers can deliver through their classrooms. The Teacher’s Guide is exceptionally useful and definitely something I will be saving to implement in my future classroom. Something I would add to this AI lesson model at a secondary level specifically, is the need to review research methods. Students learning how to write scientific or APA-style papers should also understand how to use (or not use) AI how to support their research, and be provided with other, non-AI platforms through which they can find peer-reviewed articles and research. This will support students as they cross the bridge to university, and encourage them to use ethical, established research platforms for their work, rather than relying solely on AI.

Overall, I found this session very useful and will be carrying several aspects of learning forward into my future classrooms as I embark on my own career in the field of education.

Images were generated by UnSplash and from Focused Education.

This week, we discussed the applications and implications of Generative AI. Initial discussion surrounded the notion that information provided by GenAI may not always be reliable, and the consequences of neglecting to fact-check generated information or examine references GenAI has chosen may be severe when one is using this information in a career or professional space. From a student perspective, we discussed that GenAI is now becoming a quick go-to resource for studying, completing assignments, writing papers, and creating projects. We discussed certain assignments, such as standard five-paragraph essays, reading summaries, worksheets, multiple choice open-book quizzes, lab reports, or biography reports are easily deciphered by GenAI and have high potential to generate quality output. Other forms of assignments, such as personal reflections, specific analyses, presentations, creative writing or project work, interviews, collaborative work, or any oral or in-class work are more difficult for students to run through GenAI and receive quality output. Final discussion surrounded the ethical issues surrounding the use of AI; data privacy, cultural and geographical biases, generational access, critical thinking skill development, and environmental impacts are all serious issues concerning the rising uses of GenAI.

Major Limitations of AI

One of the major limitations of AI include lack of reliability. As educators using GenAI to assist or generate lesson plans, our role becomes quite comprehensive in verifying validity of claims, references, and the material produced. This process can be time consuming, and to some surpasses the point of bothering to use AI in the first place. Using GenAI to create teaching tools offers a wide variety of exciting opportunities but also requires a commitment to verifying work and personalizing lessons plans before teaching. In addition to potential misinformation, generating lessons strictly using AI has been shown to offer low engagement instruction and activities, and neglected to include diverse perspectives and people (Trust et al, 2025). Additionally, there remains the issue of data privacy, as recent studies have revealed storage of personal information, including student numbers, health data, passwords, or social security information is often an issue when GenAI tools are used without discretion (National Education Association, 2025).

How well does GenAI do with Secondary Science?

To explore potential uses for GenAI in my teaching area, I asked Microsoft CoPilot to do some analysis and content generation for Anatomy and Physiology 12. Focusing on the cardiovascular systems unit, I entered the following prompt: “Please generate a lesson plan for a 1hr lesson about the cardiovascular system including a 30min activity to help Canadian Anatomy and Physiology 12 students remember what they learned in the instruction portion of this lesson”.

CoPilot presented me with 25min of direct instruction outlining anatomy, blood flow, and types of blood vessels, and purpose of the cardiovascular system. Next, was a learning activity outlining pre-made station cards, with which students would build a physical pathway on the floor and “walk” the path of a red blood cell through the heart. Finally, a diagram labelling activity was suggested to conclude the class. I also asked CoPilot to generate a worksheet for this content, that I would be able to handout to students.

Overall, I think the skeleton of this lesson plan isn’t horrible. A short lesson followed by 35min of interactive learning is a solid start. The learning activities include elements of kinesthetic and visual learning, which I like, and includes a good amount of key vocabulary. There was no evident misinformation.

However, what was very apparent to me that was lacking from this lesson – depth, critical thinking, and visuals. Learning cardiovascular anatomy requires a solid understanding of where structures are, not simply their names. Further, the anatomical structures CoPilot listed, though correct, left out key players such as papillary muscles, atrioventricular bundle, SA and AV nodes, as well as carotid, brachial, and subclavian arteries, and R/L directionality applied when labelling. Without a strong visual component to this lesson (not provided by AI), students would be left royally confused about where each of these structures are located, which also affects their ability to understand their function. The questions posed in the worksheet did not comprehensively grasp upper level Bloom’s Taxonomy style questions, inquiring only about explicit function or differences. Questions such as “IF the atrioventricular valve was defective, WHAT would the IMPACT on blood flow be?” offer an element of critical thinking and require an understanding of anatomical structure and function.

A diagram such as the one below, depicts more depth and appropriately labelled structures. Overall, I think that GenAI offered a solid foundation for building a cardiovascular system lesson, lacking primarily in depth, critical thinking questions, and visual aids.

All images were generated using individual screenshots of Microsoft CoPilot, or provided publicly from Knowunity.

References

National Education Association. (2025). Student and Educator Data Privacy | NEA. Nea.org. https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/student-engagement/tools-tips/student-and-educator-data-privacy

‌Trust, T., Maloy, R., Xu, C., & Pelletier, K. (2025). Civic education in the age of AI:
Should we trust AI-generated lesson plans? Contemporary Issues in Technology
and Teacher Education, 25(3), 418-442.