Learning about Inquiry Based Teaching from Jeff Hopkins was very informative and eye opening. I’m not entirely sure how well I would have done at a high school like PSII. Having all that support all the time however would have been amazing for pursuing inquiry in a path I wanted. I would be worried that I would have done all Science or Biology themed inquiry and missed out on some of what I was “forced” to learn in Socials or English. It was really cool to use Hypothesis to annotate that blog post, I liked being able to see everyone else’s questions in preparation for the seminar. Hypothesis would be a great tool for a group of students to critique a published paper as a quick overview before writing a report. The ability to edit literally anything puts it apart from Google Docs or Track Changes in a Word doc, which have a more limited scope.

I do love the Trello format PSII uses for coursework organization. I am a big user of agendas and to do lists! It is just so satisfying to cross off what you have finished! I put literally everything I need to do or buy into a list and it’s been working for 26 years (perhaps more like the last 15). My favourite app for just a to do list is the Microsoft To Do, because it allows me to easily add categories and sync between devices. Trello however is great for school. I like that I can make a huge giant list of all my homework for the term, and the stuff I want to accomplish each week I can put into the doing category. I also like seeing what I have finished, which makes me feel very accomplished as slowly the left side gets smaller and the right side gets bigger. I will definitely continue to use Trello throughout the rest of this degree.

 

I had a look at Curation this week as well. I have been using Feedly a bit to try and increase my range of reading. It is too easy to go down a rabbit hole of Instagram where I feel like my brain is starting to melt. My favourite blog to follow on Feedly right now is the Lonely Planet Travel News. I love to travel (as so many people do) and since we really can’t right now, it’s fun to read and experience different places vicariously through the articles! For example, yesterday an article from James Gabriel Martin talked about how a Lord of the Rings filming location has been reopened to the public after 11 years! It’s not like I can go visit it any time soon but maybe one day now the option is there! Another good article was 6 bucket list destinations at risk of disappearance due to climate change. It was a great description of a lot of science on climate change while showing beautiful pictures of these amazing locations. I’ve learned to unfollow some blogs on Feedly as they rarely post new articles, and just follow the active accounts.

I am going to start using Diigo as a bookmarks method as well! Initially it looked like a combination of Hypothesis, Google Docs and bookmarks and I was not thrilled to use yet another Chrome extension. I soon realized how useful it would be for research papers however. I like where you can keep it as a private list and highlight useful sections for yourself! When I write a paper, I normally make a new folder within bookmarks to cite later, but it takes a while to find the section of the paper I wanted to focus on for my research when you have like 15 papers to use. When you can highlight a few paragraphs and attach a note it makes it simple to come back and reread the important parts of the paper you need.