My name is Amanda, I am going into my fourth year at UVic. I am currently completing a Bachelor of Education. I am interested in teaching the primary grades. Before beginning my Bachelor of Education, I worked with children quite consistently. I was a dance teacher and tumbling coach for around 8 years. This allowed me to learn about how to work with children. I have also now completed a 3-week and 6-week practicum through my program. These were amazing experiences for me as I was able to work in a Kindergarten class and a grade 3/4 split class. This allowed me to develop my skills as a teacher.

I am very interested in social media and how it effects students. I haven’t seen firsthand how it can effect students because I have only had experiences working with younger students. I am very interested in personalized learning because of how beneficial it can be for all students. I really like how easy digital tools can make it for me to personalize students learning. I have able to use tools such as Canva, and PowerPoint during my practicum for many different things. I was able to create worksheets for students using Canva. I was also able to differentiate the worksheets so they were applicable to both grade levels in the class. I think that it is very important for students to have digital literacy because there are so many things that are done digitally now. It puts students at an advantage when they have some digital literacy. I was in a grade 3/4 class which had a very large range of abilities. It was incredibly important for me to create differentiated plans for both grades but also for the student abilities within the different grade levels. I had multiple students who needed additional scaffolding through their lessons, or students who needed to be challenged beyond the standard lessons. This was much easier when using digital tools like Canva as I was able to make changes to my worksheets and lessons very efficiently.

One experience that I have that I would consider a personalized learning network is through my Cohort. Our cohort has been together for 2 full years and we communicate online and face to face. We all learn together and we help each other learn consistently. There are many instances through our schoolyear where we are messaging one another through our group chat and we are able to help each other. We are all learning together and often work through difficult assignments or situations together. It is very refreshing to have a group of people that all have a very similar goal that we are working towards together. It also allows us to learn from each other which is incredibly beneficial.