{"id":5741,"date":"2026-02-15T12:20:43","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/2026\/02\/15\/weekly-reflection-blog-post-5-focused-education-virtual-pd-day\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T12:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:20:43","slug":"weekly-reflection-blog-post-5-focused-education-virtual-pd-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/2026\/02\/15\/weekly-reflection-blog-post-5-focused-education-virtual-pd-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Reflection Blog Post #5: Focused Education Virtual PD Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two virtual PD sessions I attended this week were \u201cThe Digital Classroom for K-7\u201d and \u201cLive It! Bilingual Place-based Learning K-7\u201d. The first PD session was about Focused Education\u2019s digital classroom<\/a>, and the second PD session was about Live It Earth<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Digital Classroom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Image created by ChatGPT 5.2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This AI-generated image is a visual representation of my experience exploring the Digital Classroom. If you look closely at various word spellings within the image, you may realize it is also a Grade-A example of AI slop.<\/p>\n

The Positives:<\/em> The digital classroom is a powerful, if not fully comprehensive, digital library for K-7. It contains resources about everything ranging from the history of math, to music and art topics. Most importantly, many of the resources contain activities and lesson guides for teachers to utilize.<\/p>\n

The Cons: <\/em>The large scale of the digital classroom can make it difficult to navigate towards what you\u2019re looking for, and many of the written resources are long and a little bit difficult to sift through. However, this is most likely a matter of becoming familiar with the site itself.<\/p>\n

Live It Earth<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Image created by ChatGPT 5.2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The above AI-generated image is a visual expression of my experience exploring Live It Earth \u2013 now let me explain.<\/p>\n

The Positives:<\/em> The Live It Earth resources we got to explore during the PD were incredibly engaging and well-crafted. Several times throughout the session, I (and many others, I\u2019m sure) found myself so enraptured and intrigued by the videos on science, geography, and the environment that I forgot I was in a PD sessions and was incredibly disappointed that we had to move on from them. This experience reflects that the resources they provide are designed to be stimulating and fun for K-7 students, who often struggle with intrinsic motivation.<\/p>\n

The Cons:<\/em> While watching the videos may be fun and intrinsically motivating enough that students engage with, think, and inquire about their curricular ties naturally, I do think that some of the resources and topics encourage watching, not learning. This is something we have talked about in our science pedagogy class recently, in regard to demonstrations. Just because a demonstration (or digital resource, in this case) is memorable and fun to engage with does not mean it in instructionally rich. While teachers can fix this by pausing for class discussion or with other activities, I would like to see more frequent pauses to directly engage with deeper thinking.<\/p>\n

I should also note, I was not able to access the resources on my own, and the cons I experienced may be a result of only having time for a small slice of the many resources Live It Earth provides.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two virtual PD sessions I attended this week were \u201cThe Digital Classroom for K-7\u201d and \u201cLive It! Bilingual Place-based Learning K-7\u201d. The first PD session was about Focused Education\u2019s digital classroom, and the second PD session was about Live… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}