Teaching Portfolio

a sample highlighting my teaching experiences

What are the issues currently facing Airdrie youth today? English 10-1 Inquiry project.
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Youth created a survey to gather feedback from their peers in High School on vaping to support their inquiry.
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Using Design Thinking, students ideated real life issues in their community and then designed inquiry topics to explore. In groups, they collaboratively reached out to experts and then researched, wrote and designed a magazine using Lucid Press to communicate their findings and ideas. Many groups collected data from peers through online surveys, emails, phone calls, and research.

Gamification

How do games play a role in connecting people?
How do games foster community?

Game Unit

Using Design Thinking as an ideating tool, this was a cross-curricular Grade 8 unit, connecting Social Studies (Renaissance), Health (Gaming & Addictions), Language Arts (Communication, Writing/Editing, Digital Literacy) and Art (Design). Please see the Unit Plan here in google docs. Students researched gaming history and then developed, designed & tested games. Building upon students’ strengths, students designed online games, board games and even physical gym games. We connected globally with a Japanese language classroom in Hawaii to share and critique game designs.

Minecraft Edu supports all subject areas.
Creating Student Collaborative Assessment Practices.
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Film Studies & English 10 collaboratively designed assessment rubrics for their own film creations, and in how to analyze films when viewing.

Geographic Inquiry Magazine: Grade 7 Cross Curricular Inquiry. How do Humans impact Airdrie?

Our Grade 7 Humanities team collaboratively developed an Inquiry Unit connecting Social Studies, Language Arts, Science and Phys.Ed. This question formed an overarching umbrella to our study. We began with a tour of our community of Airdrie which supported data collection. We photographed, examined, reflected and questioned our surroundings. Gathering this data, we used the Design Thinking process to organize our observations into themes and learners developed their own inquiry questions. Learners then chose a topic to individually research and write a magazine article upon which was then compiled into a class magazine. See our Airdrie Today interview here.

Please also see Grade 7 Humanities School Space Re-design Inquiry.

Alberta Teachers’ Association Instructor

I helped facilitate experiential Professional Learning experiences for Alberta Educators. Topics included Project Based Learning, Fostering a Maker Mentality, Creativity and the Blanket Exercise (Truth & Reconciliation).

Visual Art. I believe the arts foster self-expression, identity, cultural sharing and community connections. Here are a few examples of student work from my Visual Art options over the years.

Airdrie Life Magazine article on Art Metal Design here: Art Class.

RVS CONVERGENCE. Connecting community art & learners in celebration of the Fine Arts.

Together with Mark Turner, and Community of Practice colleagues Aisha Boyd and Katt Hryciew, RVS Learning Specialists and Creative Airdrie, we developed RVS Convergence. An innovative live art challenge which brought together over 100 RVS learners in one spot along with local artists in a live art challenge. Please check out our Convergence website for further details. This repeated the following year in partnership with Ambrose University.

Airdrie Life magazine article on RVS Convergence.

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Grade 6 Hands-on Investigation of Trees
Fostering Online & Face to Face Communities.

Minecraft Education and Digital Literacy Skills

Documenting our learning
Numeracy with perimeter challengees
Learning the basics with building our name with blocks
Collaborating with peers
Minecraft Education

Utilizing Minecraft Education as a vehicle, learners can learn extensive Digital Literacy and Citizenship skills, as well as practice critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and learning through play. Younger learners practice logging into devices with emails, how to take images, save and then upload documents to their Google Drive. Learners can also reflect with journals. In addition, learners can collaborate with peers to design and build together.

I also have experience using the following technological tools:

  • Google Suite
  • Moodle LMS & Google Classroom
  • Basic Coding (Minecraft Edu, Scratch)
  • Adobe programs
  • VideoScribe & Animoto
  • Prezi
  • iMovie
  • PowToon
  • Youtube
  • Lucidpress & Lucidchart
  • Augmented Reality
  • WordPress & Weebly website design
  • Pinterest
  • Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint
  • Smartboards/Apple Tv
  • Adapted Art tools

An example of using VideoScribe as a communication tool for a Graduate Class:

Turner, Alison (2015). Community Connections [Youtube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/GF50l46X0_M

Airdrie Life magazine article