Category Archives: ETEC

What now, brown cow?

Yesterday I handed in my last assignments for my last course in my Master of Educational Technology degree through the University of British Columbia. While I won’t graduate until May, it marks the end of an era – just shy of six years I have been plucking away at courses through UBC, first with myContinue reading “What now, brown cow?”

What NotebookLM Remediates (and other LLM tools too for that matter)

Imagined as a rousing political speech, with patriotic music slowly swelling in the background. Colleagues, I know many of you are excited about NotebookLM, especially that uncannily almost-human podcast feature. We upload our readings, videos, and professional documents, then receive instant synthesis supporting multimodality and differentiated instruction. But I want us to consider what’s happeningContinue reading “What NotebookLM Remediates (and other LLM tools too for that matter)”

Why I Made Ed Tech Specialists Compare Search Results for My Professional Development Session on New Materialism

As a teacher-librarian, I’m constantly making decisions about which databases to subscribe to, which search tools to recommend, which encyclopedias to point students toward. These decisions often get framed as “neutral” by just providing access to information, offering students “the right resources.” But are they? This question started nagging at me during IP 2 whereContinue reading “Why I Made Ed Tech Specialists Compare Search Results for My Professional Development Session on New Materialism”

Ursula Franklin and Prescriptive Technologies

An assignment in which I didn’t quite follow the instructions properly, but came away with a greater understanding because of it. This video was made with the help of Adobe Podcasts and additional images and text were added in CapCut. References Black, E. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust : The strategic alliance between Nazi GermanyContinue reading “Ursula Franklin and Prescriptive Technologies”

TikTok-ing Education

When I read this assignment outline, I immediately thought of @etymologynerd. Adam Aleksic’s posts are uniquely meta. He explains the history of our spoken and printed words and shows how that history is shaped by the media we use. In doing so, he invites viewers to understand how we’re shaped by language, how language shapesContinue reading “TikTok-ing Education”

AI Essentials for Educators

Okay, so my video is a bit longer than 5 minutes, but I swear there’s a reason! My video tour is presented as a mock news segment with Artie Smarts, an animated robot newscaster. I went with this format to keep things conversational and fun while still walking through the project in detail, drawing onContinue reading “AI Essentials for Educators”

Assignment 2 – Part 2 – Reflection Time

I love a good digital story—that’s the teacher‑librarian in me. So when Part II called for one, I went big. I split the module into three chunks: a gentle, non‑academic primer on LLM limitations; Shannon Vallor’s short talk on AI as a mirror; a practical on‑ramp via a choose‑your‑own‑adventure (CYOA) story; and then some hands onContinue reading “Assignment 2 – Part 2 – Reflection Time”

Designing a Learning Environment

Hey readers! I’ve just finished my first stab at Assignment 2 in my Learning Technologies: Selection, Design, and Application course. It has been a learning experience full of ups and downs. But I see something of utility shaping up. You can get a login link to my course sandbox on our course Canvas page (sorryContinue reading “Designing a Learning Environment”

Using AI Text Levelling Tools

Condensing text has always struck me as one of gen-AI’s genuine strengths—especially with passages only a page or two long. Because colleagues and I constantly wrestle with teaching complex ideas to readers at wildly different levels, I decided to run a little experiment. I grabbed a section from an open Canadian-history textbook on Winnipeg’s waterContinue reading “Using AI Text Levelling Tools”