[Week 6,7,8] Weekly Reflection October 30th, 2026
WEEK 6-7-8 WEEKLY REFLECTION
Catching up: A Quick Update
I have to admit, I have not been as diligent with keeping up with posting my weekly reflections lately. Between the amount of homework in my other classes, plus balancing extra-curricular commitments such as dance, I’ve had a hard time finding the time to write my reflections, which has now caused me to be 2 weeks behind. I am grouping weeks 6 through 8 (today) together in this post to cover everything we’ve been working on and discussing the past few weeks.
Week 6: Educational Technology Media and Pod Sharing (October 16th)
During week 6, we were asked to get into our learning pods in order to create a piece of media that relates to education and technology. To make the most of our time, our group decided to get a head start on our main educational technology project assignment. The goal of this project is to research and explore at a topic, tool, or even an issue in educational technology and present our findings through either a short audio/video or in a podcast style. For our week 6 in-class assignment we decided to create an infographic on Canva.
Our topic for our big group project is, “How does accessible technology help guide students learning in a classroom setting and why is it important to include it?” However, when we got our feedback from Collin, he pointed out that we had several design and accessibility aspects that were not particularly strong. Our choice of layout was too crowded, our white font was hard to see/read, and Canva at times cannot be accessible to everyone. Despite the harsh feedback, it was a very informative reminder about what to avoid going forward.
Week 7: Research and Development (October 23rd)
In week 7, we booked our meeting with Collin to review our progress with our project. The meeting went very well and he gave us a clear idea of what our next steps should be with this project. During the class on October 23rd, we dove into a discussion surrounding the topic of AI and technology. We were asked to determine “how could we completely ruin technology, or what is the worst thing that could happen with tech in the classroom?” In the learning pod, we identified different AI-related scenarios such as a student being expelled, the elimination of hands on learning, and becoming so reliant on technology that it does everything for you as our main concerns.
After considering the many different things that could go wrong as a consequence of AI in the classroom, it was unnerving to contemplate the negative consequences that could arise with this advance of technology.
Week 8 (Today): Technology Intergrated Assesments (October 30th)
Today in week 8, our class shifted focus to the concept of integrated assessments. We started the class by discussing what assesments actually mean, the different types of assessments, and critiquing grading systems.
The main activity involved Collin instructing the class to download a spreadsheet containing 100 students’ grades and thereafter, calculate each student’s final average. These grades were randomly assigned and were not attached to anyone’s actual grade. Collin was intentionally very vague with his instructions because he wanted the class to experiment with this process on our own.
The process was quite difficult and frustrating given we had no idea how to weight the different grades attributed to each student. For example, we were trying to figure out what overall grade percentage to assign to midterms and the final as compared to other assignments/projects. At the end of the exercise, we all came back to the main part of the Zoom meeting where Collin revealed that he had purposefully created the spreadsheet so that every student would have a 75% average overall.
The purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate why teachers should never rely solely on a spreadsheet formula to evaluate a student’s grade. Collin revealed that standard gradebooks often blur the line between a student’s knowledge/understanding of a subject matter and behavioural factors. For example, showing up late is deemed a behavoural issue that does not reflect a student’s knowledge, but a lot of the times, teachers fail to account for this.
A message Collin left us with that really inspired me was that “grades often include things that have nothing to do with learning.” This message allowed me to reflect on the kind of teacher I want to be in the future. Moving forward, I want to ensure that I keep these two things separate and understand that behavioural issues should not necessarily impact a student’s grade. Instead, I should consider behavioral challenges as an opportunity to provide mentorship and support.