angela’s blog

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Inquiry Reflection

December 13, 2023 / / 0 Comments

My sheet music stares me in the face as I reflect upon the process of learning the chords. It is an unrelenting reminder of what should have been done last month and what could have been done if I had just booked the piano room more often. At the same time, it is a page full of potential, something I want to learn and have wanted to learn for over a year now. It is also a symbol of achievement, since I know the meaning of every notation on this sheet of paper.

Reading piano sheet music has been something I’d wanted to learn since I was sixteen, and now I can finally do it. It opens a world of music, and I can learn almost any song I wish to. I knew that the learning process of reading sheet music was going to take a long time, so I set aside the months of September, October and the first half of November to solidify my understanding. Then, I set a goal to learn the song Sadness and Sorrow from the Naruto anime on the piano. In my head, once I had learned to read sheet music, piano would be fairly easy. This is because until this point, I had learned music from YouTube tutorials, and had no idea what keys I was pushing, which was challenging.

Now that I have an understanding of sheet music in relation to piano, the instrument makes more sense, but it is still challenging to learn songs and chords. In hindsight, I should have set a goal where I learn the first part of the song, since it was very challenging to me and I could only book the piano room for 2 hours per week (I managed to sneak in a few times when it was empty).

My blog posts were less frequent than what they could have been and ended up merging some weeks of work together. I am proud of how I edited a few of my videos, I wasn’t expecting to have as much fun with it as I did.

I look forward to learning the rest of this song and many more.

Naruto Piano: 5th & 6th Measure + Playthrough

December 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

In this video, I demonstrate the 5th & 6th measures from the song, as well as a playthrough of what I have learned thus far. I found the chords to be challenging to remember and a little bit confusing. I’m still working on quickening my pace with them and in the video I play them quite slow. I look forward to when I can play it smoother. I also included a final playthrough of what I have learned and included that at the end of the video.

Here is my video, the editing isn’t as great as my others:

https://youtu.be/FYgfR-y3rYg?si=DtmvUBOuL1VYu_Sn

Naruto Piano: Part 1

December 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I have edited the recording of my first attempt to learn the Naruto song on the piano. It was both challenging and frustrating, yet rewarding. It was my first time learning piano from sheet music since in the past I only ever watched YouTube tutorials and memorized the movements. I am so happy that I now know what each piano key represents in music notes. In this video, I learned the first three measures of the song and showcased my learning process. Here is my video:

https://youtu.be/_vuo1IMNqPg?si=5igryaa-ryZEix4n

Preparing for the Piano

December 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I asked a few classmates about some strategies I could use to prepare myself to learn piano songs from sheet music. One of my classmates mentioned that writing music note letters above the note helped them to learn songs faster. So, before touching the piano, I wrote the music letters above each note in pen. We’ve been practicing this in our music class, so it was fairly familiar to me. That said, I had yet to learn bass clef notation, but it is simpler than it seems. I used this image to help me with my notations:

File:Bass and Treble clef.svg

Here is the page of the sheet music that I made notations for:

I am very glad that my classmate gave me this advice because I would be so lost at the piano without it.

I also learned the E minor scale because my classmates advised me to. In hindsight, I am glad that I learned it because it provided me with more understanding of piano music theory, but while I was working on it I honestly did not see a point to it. I used this YouTube video to learn the scale:

https://youtu.be/2ohBudb7bsc?si=JlyhBwYLoGGYUG2F

Here is the very good and very professional video of my learning that I created:

https://youtu.be/pKm21UFc5_I?si=cQdBXEnjl7uufgCo

BCEdAccess Reflection

December 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

“Every student comes with an invisible backpack, you as well.” Said Tracy from BCEdAccess, our guest speaker from this week’s class. This class was particularly interesting to me as someone with a learning disability that was only diagnosed after my second year of university. I think it is incredibly important to expose future teachers to guest speakers such as Tracy and Kaori, who can speak upon their experiences with the education system.

They also spoke about the designation letter system and provided the class with advice to help our futures in education. They taught us the designation letter system, where students are categorized by letter based on their disability type. This system seems outdated to me. Here is a link to the Abbotsford school district list: Abbotsford School District Learning Support Services. They advised us to read student’s IEP‘s before the beginning of the year so that we are prepared for sensitivities and suchlike when the term begins. They made an important note saying that technology isn’t accessible to everyone, and that this became apparent during Covid-19, when online school rose in popularity.

Pattern Blocks: Mix Art and Math!

November 25, 2023 / / 0 Comments

For our math class, we were given some resources to read and watch through that can be used as tools to teach our students about fractions. I read about pattern blocks, a system where students are provided with visual shapes that are made up of equilateral triangles. Here is a visual from wikipedia:

I thought it was interesting because it allows for both a visual and a manipulative. My train of thought kept going and I wondered if I could spot patterns like this in my living room (I sure can). Then, I wondered about if there are art pieces using pattern blocks, and then I wondered about an activity where I could have my students create their own art using the pattern blocks that they could cut out of construction paper. I love art, it has always been a favourite and fun subject for me, so a crossover between math (a subject I’ve struggled with) and art would be really cool. This way, if some students are interested in art, it may help their proficiency in math, since they may be counting the triangles throughout the process or the instructor could request that students provide fractional forms of the shapes displayed. Here’s a parent who did this with their children: patternblockart.

Weekly Reflections: Artificial Intelligence

November 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Science Venture:

  • An outreach STEM program that works with youth. Summer camp opportunities I may look into it if I choose not to be a lifeguard. Opportunity for on-campus employment or work in different areas of Vancouver Island.

Group Project

  • Should discuss with the tech group how we will present our project, the presentation is on the 27th of November. 3-5 minute presentation showcasing the process of the project.
  • common sense education: shows reviews on some software, tells what skills the tool could be used for, shows pedagogical ratings

AI Discussion

  • AI can generate images, prompts, game strategies
  • AI was made available to the public in 2023, which is a paradigm shift
  • Something interesting: ChatGPT can operate in other languages but has less information in those languages. Can have implicit bias.
  • ChatGPT can also generate rubrics
  • outputs of AI are not currently under copyright, copyright can only be held by individuals.

Interacting with ChatGPT:

I have been struggling with lower back pain in barbell squats. I have experienced a lower back injury in the past and asked ChatGPT about some form tips to prevent injury, and it mentioned some good tips.

I also asked ChatGPT about how to make a springboard diving learn-to-dive lesson plan and it generated good main acitivities but made the lesson too advanced by incorporating backwards dives on the first lesson. I think it would be a good tool to use as a skeleton for the lesson or a checklist to ensure that everything is incorporated.

Inquiry Progress: Week Four

October 30, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This week I have been solidifying the information I’ve learned about reading music. I’ve done this by reviewing my worksheets and discussing music theory with some of my more experienced classmates. I’ve been using a few tricks such as FACE to remember which music notes are placed where on a sheet. To showcase some of my learning, I thought it would be a great idea to animate a video that illustrated the memory acronyms. I was inspired to do this from our class with Rich McCue, where we learned about video making and digital presentations. Here’s the video that I created:

This was something for me to review and to experiment with the software. I hope to create more digital pieces that will help me in the future.

Weekly Reflections: Working with Graphics

October 30, 2023 / / 0 Comments
  • Teachers are often looking for interactive graphic activities, but it’s not that hard to create them. Think about this for yourself, but also apply it to future students, such as making posters – why might one create graphics for teaching?
    • we can make visuals that are “culturally relevant” to the students to build healthy relationships
    • words combined with visuals are more memorable for the students (cognitive theory of multimedia learning)
  • To make graphics, we can make use of tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Powerpoint.
    • we can also make worksheets with PowerPoint and awards for the students.

For our lab component, we experimented with these applications and created graphics to save with the class. Here’s what I created:

I took this picture of a nice Miata a few weeks ago and brought in some characters from the Studio Ghibli movies. I love how the Jiji‘s bow matches the car and Totoro‘s lighting aligns with the sunlight in the original image.

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