Week Four: Here's a Video!

This week I decided to put my research into my Genius Hour topic about animals in captivity into a Powtoon video. I wanted to be able to show what I have learned about using a tool like Powtoon, but also show all the interesting things I am finding out about animals in captivity.

Enjoy and thanks or watching!

Week 3: PowToon and Starting to Research

In class today we got to use a new tool called PowToon. I still don't fully understand all the things you can do with this tool, but I really enjoy it so far and will definitely use it for future projects and even as a teacher. I love how you can customize so many parts of it from the different images you have on it or the music you have in the background. I can't wait to continue playing with this tool and think I might use it for a Language Arts project this semester where we have to create some type of video to explain a personal story about reading or writing!

As for my research I began by googling animals in captivity and the first thing that came up was Peta's website. From this website it mainly talks about zoos and how they can never replicate the wild habitat of animals no matter how great the zoo is. The animals in zoos are usually stopped from doing many things that are important to them in the wild such as running, climbing, and being around other animals of their kind.

A video that Peta showed to display how poorly animals are sometimes treated in zoos is about a Chimpanzee that was found in horrible conditions at a zoo and later rescued and placed in a sanctuary.

Peta. (March 27, 2015). Rescue of Iris the Chimpanzee. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcsE9WKYW6A

The video is a very touching look into the horrible conditions that some animals are put in captivity and the impacts that it has on them. Iris had under developed legs and was smearing her own feces on the walls out of boredom. From this research I am finding myself more and more interested in the aspect of zoo captivity and may choose to focus on this for my Genius Hour so I can go deeper into the topic. From this beginning research I think that some aspects that animals need in captivity to to support their emotional well-being is a environment that can resemble their natural habitat as closely as possible. Animals need adequate space to run and climb, opportunities to interact with animals of their own kind and pick a mate, and other things that are important to them in the wild. I am really interested to research more to see what could be done for animals living in captivity to make sure their emotional well-being is supported. 

The beginning of my Genius Hour Project

This week in class we had to come up with a starting question for our Genius Hour project. At first I was nervous at this task because I had no idea what type of question I would want to explore for the rest of the class. However, after watching a video in class it really helped me think of ideas of what I would want to research. In the video it shows a photo of plastic in the Ocean and for some reason this got me thinking about the well-being of animals and how captivity may impact them. This summer as a part of my job I had to go on a field trip to a Zoo and it was quite shocking how poorly the animals were treating. Therefore from this I came up with the question of "How do we support the emotional well-being of animals living in captivity?". I am so interested in this topic and am excited to look more deeply into it. My motivation for researching this topic is to gain a better understanding of how captivity impacts animals, and how their lives can be improved within captivity. Also, I am interesting to learn how different animals may have different needs while in captivity or if some animals are more affected than others. After doing a simple Google search on animal captivity I found that the definition is animals that are under the care of humans. I also found that captivity can be a general term for many different types of captivity such as zoos, farms, testing labs, or even peoples homes. My next step in this assignment is to start researching and collecting information on animal captivity. I may also want to single in on a certain type of captivity setting if I find myself more interested in one. 

Fieseler. (February 2, 2014). Monkey in Captivity. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2crmo32

Welcome to Teachers College

Hi everyone my name is Kaylene and I am in my 5th an final year at Brock University for Concurrent Education. That means I am in Teachers College this year and get to take really great classes that will give me practical knowledge and resources that will become useful to me in my practicum and future career! I am really glad we got to take a technology class because in today's classrooms technology is is very important. Students are surrounded by technology everyday and it is important that as teachers we know how to teach them in ways that are relevant and interesting to them. In this class I hope to gain more knowledge on how to take advantage of the technology we have to make lessons more engaging and interesting to all my students! A useful resource I was able to get from this course on Sakai already was about QR Codes and how they can be used for a variety of activities. I had heard of QR Codes before, but am glad that through this course I can learn more about how to actually use them to be effective in a classroom setting.

Thanks for reading!

Copy Right

As a teacher it is essential to set a good example for our students when it comes to copyright. Copyright notices are not required and any photo created is protected by copyright. It is important to know and follow the rules of copyright because people want to be able to protect their work. The most important thing to teach students would be to appreciate original ideas and to give credit where credit is due, making copyright important to teach. It is important to teach our students the importance of copyright and the basics of how it is done so that they can honour others work and that their work will also be given that same credit in the future.

Bradshaw. (June 11, 2014). Classroom Laptops Computers Boy. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2cSo6J4

Ribeiro. (June 30, 2008). Children at School. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z#/media/File:Children_at_school_(8720604364).jpg