Personally, I thought the use of digital resources were just simply tools to enhance the physical class and the learning environment. But looking at the digital classroom page by FOCUSED, this view shifts a bit. I was caught off-guard by seeing all sorts of resources from various organizations with different focus areas and perspectives all on one platform. It was amazing to see their diversity, but also the direct applicability to the classroom. This is particularly great, because we are always asked to have a few educational ideas in our back pocket for when things do not fall into how we plan them to be. I also really liked how inclusive these resources can be, having texts, sounds and images to make learning more vivid and accessible for all students regardless of their individual needs. In this reflection, I want to focus on one of those resource, KNOWBC.com, to discuss how I might implement this in my future classroom.

First off, I think KNOWBC.com is an excellent resource, because it discusses a lot of information about the province we live in. Many times and from my personal experience in elementary school, I felt that we are learning a very vague European history or American history with a little splash of Canadian point of view (POV) embedded. However, if this tool is to be used, there can be an entire unit dedicated to learning about the land we live in and to spark appreciation and connection each students can make with the land. Also, the very front page starts with a discussion of an Indigenous novel, which shows the appreciation for the Indigenous culture and I really appreciate it.

Another page that caught my attention was a digital textbook about Kelowna. I lived in Kamloops, near Kelowna, for a number of years and have learned and heard a quite a good sum of information about Kelowna. However, what this resource had to offer was a lot more than just that. I skimmed through the reading, but went deep with the timeline of Kelowna, which had fascinating information about the place and the Okanagan region. I had never known that Kelowna was also part of a fur trade and I always thought that was something of a much northern provinces and cities.

Overall, I do think that these digital resources will come in very handy in the future, with hopes that the districts will buy the program for the teachers. Regardless, I am also feeling hopeful that there could be more resources like this that I could search and find for my benefit.

+ SD62 Digital Resources

Also to quickly mention, the presentation for SD62 educational technology was very interesting. I particularly liked how all the resources and platforms are compiled into one Virtual Library Learning Commons! For a long time, I thought each of those resources were something that teachers have to dig and find on our own, but it makes me realize that we have a lot of support available and resources we can fall back to, if we can’t come up with something new or we’re stuck on developing any ideas.