Learning pod share & digital citizenship/privacy
Learning Pods
This week I watched 4 learning pod videos looking at a wide variety as to how ed tech can be implemented into the classroom. The four presentations I engaged with offered a diverse look at modern EdTech:
Pod 3 (Fitness Tech & Tracking Apps): Explored whether apps promote healthy habits or fuel unhealthy competition and anxiety. This groups explanation on strategies to implement to reduce comparison and low self esteem could be implemented across multiple subjects/classes.
Pod 6 (Digital Platforms in PHE): Analyzed how platforms support skill development, reflection, and student voice in Physical and Health Education. Digital journaling seems like an good way to have students anonymously track their progress throughout the semester.
Pod 15 (Slido for Engagement): Evaluated the effectiveness of real-time polling to promote active learning. I could see myself using the quiz integration feature into my future lessons as a tool that my students can use for study/review.
Pod 11 (Film in Classrooms): Discussed the pedagogy of using film as a primary text for inquiry and narrative building. The highlight from this presentation was my fellow teachers candidates resource showing what films you could show to a class for each subject.
I really liked the idea of critically reflecting on each pod video to have to come up with a question for that group. This allowed me to look at both the positives as well as potential drawbacks (i.e. tracking apps can inadvertently gamify health in a way that creates unhealthy competition. If we prioritize data (steps, calories, or points) over the process of learning, we risk increasing student anxiety).
Digital Citizenship/Privacy
The online citizenship discussion offered an essential perspective on clarifying that uncanny advertisements result from sophisticated tracking methods like browser fingerprinting, data brokers, and lookalike modeling rather than phones and devices listening to us. We discovered that such audio recording would be impractical due to battery and data constraints, instead, algorithms predict our interests by analyzing social graphs and location data. This topic underscores critical privacy and security concerns, particularly regarding biometric data in fitness applications as discussed from pod 3 and 6, and emphasize our responsibility as educators to guide students through these hidden digital landscapes. As I transition into my practicum, it is partly my responsibility to model proper digital protocol by teaching students to manage their footprints through tools like shielded browsers such as Brave or Firefox and by disabling cross app tracking. My focus remains on ensuring students can provide genuine informed consent and protecting them from cyberbullying while leveraging digital platforms for reflection and skill growth.