Golf with Lucas

Category: EDCI 336 (Page 2 of 3)

This is a category for the EdTech course. Please add this category in addition to the relevant edtech assignment category(ies).

Weekly Reflection 4: Rich McCue

October 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Here is my tutorial video for how to use and play the website 24/7 Blackjack. I know this is not exactly an educational resource but it was the first thing that came to mind. I was quite surprised with how easy it was for me to record this video and then upload it. And now that I have the software on my computer, it will be faster and easier every time as I don’t have to endure the setup process.

When thinking about whether or not this would be relevant in the grade I want to teach, I would say most likely not. I have really enjoyed my time in link2practice around the grade 1/2’s. The activities that we do in the classroom are very simple. They use building blocks, white boards, felts and crayons and much more. Their access to internet is basically none in the classroom. Even if I did use it to explain a concept to a class of kids that young, there is not much benefit with it as opposed to just explaining it to them in person. In fact, explaining something to these young kids in real time might be better because I would be able to see what and how they are thinking.

I do however think there are certain ages and certain ways that other multi-media can be used so that we can create more engaging lessons and tutorials. I think the biggest one would be the Powerpoints and how we have to try to balance the amount of words and pictures we use. If I was in a classroom, and the teacher pulled up a powerpoint that was all text and then proceeded to read the text word for word, I would be mentally checked out so fast as I could just read everything on the slide and then stop paying attention. In contrast, if the presenter included some main points but also pictures to support them and then was able to elaborate more, I would have to pay attention in order to catch everything.

Free Inquiry 4: More Fun

October 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I got out to play golf for the first time in two weeks today. I had low expectations for myself and honestly, I think I met them. Again, there was aspirations to play 18 but we ended up only played 9 holes and I finished +10. I bogeyed every hole except for the 6th where I ended up with a double bogey. The craziest part about that double bogey is that it came on the heels of my best drive of the day. I hit it dead straight down the middle and then completely whiffed my next shot. Classic.

My friend Connor managed to capture this image of me on the 4th hole after my tee shot went right. I ended up in a not so favourable spot but it is what it is. The course I play at has a ton of trees and is very narrow. So any shots that stray left or right are almost guaranteed to end up in a bad spot. I did not end up playing the shot as it is pictured.

My driver didn’t hurt me as bad as it did last round. It actually felt like it might be headed in a good direction. But only time will tell. My irons were solid today, I was able to strike the ball well and actually feel like I was compressing them which was nice. My short game was not bad. There were a few short chips that I used my 60 degree wedge on and they ended up working out. Putting was a different story that I don’t really want to talk about. I can not remember the last time I saw a putt that was over 10 feet go in the cup.

Driver 6/10, Irons 7/10, Short Game 8/10, Putter 1/10

Here’s a bonus picture of my friends Grady (left) and Connor (right) in the lounge after the round enjoying a nice warm coffee.

Free Inquiry Post 3: Regression

October 8, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I got out to play golf at Royal Colwood on October 1st. The weather was great and I was feeling confident about my abilities, until I got on the first tee box. Not much went well for me in this round. The biggest positive about my time on the golf course was that I got to play a full 18 holes and spend time with my friends.

Let’s start with the driver… I am lost with this club. I can not seem to figure it out. Every time I swing it, I am slicing it hard right and it either goes out of bounds or just loses tons of distance and is ineffective. I need to figure this out quickly or else my desire to play is going to go out the window. I think my problem is that I am swinging “over the top” of the ball and it causes my terrible ball flight. I found a few videos that I plan to watch before my next round: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzYJ_3sAgSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On7K89a1Buw

Both of these videos include definitions and drills to help fix my problem.

My irons, short game and putting were all average too. I had a couple of putts that I just gave up on and didn’t take my time with so that obviously never works. And towards the end of the round I started to fatigue and when that happens everything just kind of falls apart. I only made 3 pars the entire round and sprinkled in many double bogeys on my way to shoot 91. Not great. But at least I had fun.

Ratings: Driver 2/10, Irons 6/10, Short game 6/10 Putting 5/10

Weekly Reflection 3: Jesse Miller

September 25, 2023 / / 0 Comments

In class today, Jesse Miller was able to connect with us remotely via Zoom to give us a presentation on topics surrounding digital literacy and some of the things we may need to look out for as educators. Jesse was very well spoken and made excellent points that I were both thought provoking and relatable. Two points in particular stood out to me and those were when he was talking about the failed link suggesting violent video games spawn violent children and also when he talked about his own kids and his opinion on whether or not they should be able to access social media.

Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/jTqg-Civt0U

I have been playing video games such as Call of Duty and Halo since I was 12. I have some of my fondest memories with my friends on these games and would not trade those memories in for anything. When Jesse mentioned how the suggestion of violent video games being the cause for school shootings is ill-informed, I was quite happy to hear that. His point about how kids in European countries and elsewhere on the globe play the same games but the frequency of school shootings being much lower was very impactful. For people to simply believe that what a kid sees on their Xbox is creating the need to commit violent acts is ignorant in my opinion and means they are probably against video games as a whole. These people are blind to the other factors (gun laws, mental health concerns) and are looking for a scapegoat, therefore they blame it on these games. As I mentioned earlier, my friends and I have been playing these games for years and in my eyes, we all turned out alright.

The second point that was cool to hear was his opinions on his 15 and 8 year old children’s access to social media. He mentioned how there should not be an umbrella ruling for kids of all ages and that his answer would vary depending on what child he was asked about. I support this statement wholeheartedly. I believe that a kid in grade 2 has no business accessing Instagram, Twitter etc. as their developing brains do not need the added baggage that would come with those apps. However, Jesse said he lets his 15 year-old on the apps and believes its good for them to begin to learn the ins and outs of the app. This makes sense to me because in world that is seemingly moving toward being more and more digital, at some point kids should start to learn not only how to use these apps but also how to be safe on them.

All in all, I really enjoyed and appreciated listening to Jesse and thank him for taking the time to talk with us!

Free Inquiry: Rained Out

September 25, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I was able to get out and play 9 holes on Sunday but was a little bit disappointed with the weather. We played about 3 holes before the rain started to come down and the wind started to pick up. There was a small part of me that wanted to keep going and play 18, but that just was not in the cards. Regardless, I thought the round went okay. Here is my scorecard:

The square boxes mean I made a bogey (+1 on the hole) and the double squares mean a double bogey (+2 on the hole). As you can see I was doing very well until the last two holes. I am a frequent maker of double and triple bogeys so to not have any going onto the eighth hole was a good feeling. And then everything collapsed as both my drives on 8 and 9 went into the trees and I was unable to save myself. However, I like to take the positives away and the fact that I was playing pretty steadily until then is great.

Moving forward, I am going to rate the different aspects of my golf game on a scale of one to ten. Those different aspects are my tee shots, irons, short game (chipping, pitching) and putting. My driver has been in shambles lately and Sunday was no different. I took a total of seven drives and 1 of them went straight with the rest having a heavy left to right movement. My irons were quite good and there is not much to complain about there. Short game and putting are always things that elude me but I feel like they were not too bad. Although I had four putts for birdie (-1 on the hole) and I didn’t make a single one.

Driver: 5/10, Irons: 8/10, Short game: 7/10, Putting: 7/10

I think I am going to give it one more round before I start looking for help/resources and make massive changes to my driver swing because I used to be half decent with it so I know it’s in there!

Golfing Inquiry Project

September 21, 2023 / / 0 Comments

For my free inquiry project I decided to stick to a hobby of mine and that is playing golf! Playing golf with my friends is something that I love to do. My two friends and I have memberships at Royal Colwood and through the summer we played about 3 times a week. Despite all of this time spent golfing, I am not very good and that frustrates me. I have for sure improved a little bit over the last few years but I usually find myself shooting anywhere from 87 to 95 with my lowest score being an 84. For those that might not know golf, those are okay scores but nowhere near what is considered good.

My vision for this project is to simply play golf, and document how I do! I will post updates from each round I play and include photos and videos. I also want to post updates on skills that I am practicing and working to improve. For example, if I finish a round and think my putting could have used work, I will research some putting drills or YouTube videos that touch on that subject and post them to my blog along with media of me putting those drills into practice. The beautiful part about golf is that there is always something to work on and there is always someone that has something to say on the matter.

I am hopefully going golfing this weekend so hopefully I will be able to make my first post about how well (or terribly) I played.

Weekly Reflection 2: Social Media, Movies and Resources

September 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments
Photo by dole777 on Unsplash

One of the big ideas that really stood out to me in class from September 18th was the idea of as educators, what we are putting on social media. I have been on social media for about 10 years now and have seen it change and grow in terms of the different networks, what gets posted and who can access what. I have never put much thought into who would ever see my online presence because I have yet to be in a position where I may have people looking me up. As far as I’m concerned, the only people that have ever looked me up so far in my life have been my friends or family (and potentially an employer). But now, as I begin my journey into education and look to start my career, that will most likely change as mentioned in class. There may potentially be employers, students or parents that are curious as to what my social medias look like. For that reason, it is a great time to start thinking about the way I use social media going forward instead of simply just posting for the sake of posting. I’m not sure I plan on making any massive changes to the way I operate (most of my accounts are private anyway), but it is just something to be more cognizant of.

Shifting gears now to the movie “Most Likely to Succeed,” there was one idea that I pulled from it that really stuck with me. That idea was featured toward the end when it came to the showcase for High Tech High and how it was open to parents and other family to be able to come in and view the projects that kids had been working. Early on in our program here at UVic, we have spent a little bit of time focussing on assessment of students and different ways to perform it. In my opinion, this showcase system is an amazing for students to be assessed because it inspires the students to put maximum effort into their project in hopes of impressing their families. It’s one thing to work on a project for a teacher in hopes of achieving a certain grade, but to work on a project knowing my parents were going to see and judge it would drive me to do my best.

Finally, in class we discussed resources and how we may access them as we become teachers. Of course there is the internet, teacher stores or maybe even that long list of open resources that was shown in class but one of the most important resources we have as soon-to-be teachers is other teachers. As of this blog post, I have only spent one day in an actual classroom observing but I already feel like just by asking my mentor teacher a few questions about her own resources, it eased my mind on some of the anxiety I had in terms of accessing materials. She gave me a few great ideas for worksheets and toys and just by spending time in her classroom, I got a better sense of some of the physical resources needed to make a classroom feel like a classroom.

Weekly Reflection 1

September 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Wow! My first post on my brand new website, this is very exciting. I would like to say that the setup process was as easy as the tutorial made it out to seem but unfortunately, that was not the case. I was continuously locked out of my own website (this was my fault) and once I was in, I found myself getting lost often (also my fault). However, I am slowly starting to figure this all out and look forward to a time when I can log on, make a post and smile all without breaking a sweat.

When thinking about my Free Inquiry project, I have decided to go in the direction of one of hobbies, golf. For some, it may be beneficial to choose a topic that is new to them. And although I thought about some topics like that, I figured I would go back to something that I knew. In terms of the direction I want to take the project, I want to create a timeline on my golf game and track my progress to see if there is any progress being made through blog updates, videos and resources I have found useful. Being good at golf is something I have been chasing for many years and it has eluded me. Hopefully with this project in mind, it will hold me accountable to not only play more golf, but actually put effort into improving. With that being said, golf is not a game of perfect so I do not expect to be Tiger Woods by the end of this.

I am looking forward to this class for a few reasons. The first reason is that I feel as if the world is becoming much more tech reliant at a very rapid pace and in order to keep up, you must be somewhat tech savvy. Learning how to use tech in a teaching environment to enhance mine and my students experience will be something that will benefit me for a long time. Additionally, I like how this class is only once a week. It’s like watching your favourite NFL team, you wait all week for Sunday to come and then when it does, you’re ecstatic. But then it ends and you have to wait 7 more days for the next game. During those 7 days however, the anticipation builds and builds. That is what it is like to attend EdTech!

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints
Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

September 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

  1. Do you want to be online vs. offline?
  2. Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
  3. Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
  4. Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

  • Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
  • Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “EdTech” category or sub-categories, Free Inquiry and EdTech Inquiry). We have also pre-loaded the Teacher Education competencies as categories should you wish to use them to document your learning. If you would like to add more course categories, please do so (e.g., add EDCI 306A with no space for Music Ed, etc.)
  • See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the course categories assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
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  • Under Appearance,
    • Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, etc.)
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  • Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to use the course topic as the category as opposed to the course number as those outside of your program would not be familiar with the number (e.g., we use “EdTech” instead of “edci336).

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging:

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