Author: mayaparkins (Page 2 of 2)

When creating digital content for students or the general population, it is important, sometime even the law, to ensure that it is accessible to everyone. There are many way in which you can alter your digital content to be accessible to those around you.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that your content is accessible, and one that I feel is overlooked, by ensuring that you are using colours that everyone will be able to perceive. I feel that many people forget that while content should look aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it is also important to create something that everyone can see with little strain to their eyes. If you are creating a website, you can check you site using a colour contrast checker. In the classroom that I work in on Wednesdays, there is a student who is red-green colour blind. Meaning that when he looks at the picture below, he cannot read the numbers in the coloured circle.

To help him and others who are colour blind or struggle to see colours, it is important to use colours and fonts with high contrast. If I decided to change my text colour to a grey, it would be very difficult to read because there would be very little contrast between the background and the text. So making sure that you are using forms of media that have large colour contrast will help the people viewing your work. Learning different ways to accommodate colour blindness in the classroom, both using media and in everyday tasks, is something that I would love to talk to other teachers about.

Another way to help create an assessable form of media is to have photos with alternative text. This means that along with the visual photo, there is a text description that will be read aloud by a screen reader if someone who is visually impaired is listening to the media you have created instead of reading it. Also, this is a useful tool for when the photo cannot load because the alternative text will appear when the photo is not visible. This is something that I did not know was a possibility, and I will start using alt-text more often.

Example of an accessible photo

One of the most important things to do when creating accessible content is to ensure that there are different ways students can view video footage. Making sure that there is video and audio when using a YouTube video or another site ensures that the content is accessible to everyone. Putting the subtitles option for students who are hard of hearing, are not able to listen to the video, or who do not speak English as their fist language, will allow them to still enjoy the content. I know that I appreciate having subtitles when watching a video to help me focus and absorb what is being said.

Example of an accessible video

When thinking of learning opportunities for Elementary and Middle School students, 3D design and printing is not something that is commonly brought up. However, even if you cannot gain access to a 3D printer, getting your students used to 3D design at a young age would be a vital skill for them to learn for the future. Integrating 3D design into your teaching would help students to cultivate their creative minds and enhance their computer literacy skills. When teaching geometry, or even simple shapes, to learners, teachers can bring in 3D Design to help students understand different shapes and dimensions in a fun and creative way.

Photo from Unsplash

When learning about 3D shapes, many students, including myself, struggle with wrapping their brains around the concept. While you could get a box of 3D shapes out for students to play around with when they are learning about 3D shapes and structures, this is a difficult medium to expand when students require more practice to gain a full understanding of the topic and how they create the structures all around us. You could have the students use Tinker to explore different 3D shapes and see what creations they can create. For older students, you could ask them to create a table, or another object in the classroom, using only the shapes available in Tinker. This would have students work on how they would use the 3D shapes to create everyday objects.

Screenshot of my 3D designs using Tinker

While implementing 3D design and printing in the classroom is a great way to help your students understand, using Tinker is a difficult program to learn for younger students and therefore, it would take time and patience to help the students in feeling confident in using the site. The design that I made in our class time took a long time to properly organize after taking time to understand how Tinker worked. Also, because many schools do not have access to a 3D printer, it may not make sense to have students create a 3D design if their designs cannot come to life. If this method would not work in your classroom, perhaps having students create something in Minecraft or another similar site could work well to support their understanding of the 3D concepts they are learning about. However, I wonder if monitoring their use of these sites may be difficult in a classroom setting. It would be interesting to know if teachers have used Minecraft or another site in their classrooms.

Generative AI is something that I had very little knowledge about. I have hear about AI in the news and the worries that surround the topic; however, I have never actually attempted to use Gen AI. Now that I have had the opportunity to experiment with AI myself, I have discovered a fascination for it and all it is able to accomplish. However, now that I have learnt what AI is and what it is capable of, I have come to understand that my assumptions of what Artificial Intelligence is as a whole was incorrect.

When I thought of AI, the first thing that always came to mind was a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe known was J.A.R.V.I.S. J.A.R.V.I.S was an AI created to help Tony Stark run his company and to aid him in solving complex scientific and mathematical problems who was made to seem as if he was a sentient computer. Because of this portrayal of AI, I believed that Artificial Intelligence meant a fully sentient computer at your disposal to use.

Gif made from a Youtube video using Screencast

This is not the case. Gen AI pulls from data which already exists from the internet and therefore cannot be sentient. This is one of the major limitations of Generative AI. While there is a plethora of information available on the internet, a lot of the data and knowledge is from a Western White perspective.

Screenshot of ChatGPT conversation

When I asked ChatGPT to ‘tell me about the Vietnam war’, they provided a brief summary of the conflict and then provided some of the key points of the war. While all the information collected is correct, it is from the United States perspective. Yet, if you look back at my question, I did not ask for the American experience of the Vietnam war. This is an example of how Gen AI biased in the information gathering and in the responses. To help fix this, you would need to phrase the question with more detail to ensure that you are gaining the results through a less biased lens.

If you are planning on having your students use Generative AI in your classroom, it is important that the students understand how to properly phrase their questions and that they ensure that they are not taking the information they gained as facts. After they have learnt how to properly use AI to support their learning and work, Gen AI would be a useful tool to implement regularly in the classroom.

One of the ways that I feel would be the best use of AI in the classroom is to aid students in discovering ideas for assignments and their writing. When provided with a set of criteria and a general prompt, many student struggle to create tangible ideas for them to write about. If students are allowed to use AI in the classroom, they would be able to generate an idea quicker and therefore would be able to spend more time on the actual writing assignment. I would be very interested to see how teachers are utilizing AI in their classrooms and if they find it a useful tool or if it is something that hinders their students creative minds