Mr. Boryskiewich's Teaching Blog

Time has continued to march on, and now I find myself, staring March in the face, realizing that my time of University classes is quickly coming to a close.  It is time to reflect in my final blog post for my class "Internet for Educators", and at this time, I do not know what lies in store yet for my blog, if it continues on past this point or not, however, as I ponder the question, a line from my favourite show rings in my ear "If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story".  (Bonus marks if you somehow know what tv show this obscure line is from. I have added a vague hint elsewhere in the post regarding an episode name from the show as well) (edit: as I searched that quote on Google, turns out it was being quoted on the show from Orson Welles)   This week in class, we had the privilege to have a fella by the name of Dean Shareski (this guy is the real deal, he's even verified on Twitter ) present to the class.   Throughout his presen...

  Worried about how much information I'm about to throw at you with a title like that?  Well take a breath, we'll get through it, and who knows, maybe it'll be less than you think! We had Chris Fredrickson and Shannon Magee, who are Web-Based Course Consultants for the Manitoba Government, and boy oh boy did they come prepared for an awesome presentation for the class!  Did you make it this far? Are you holding on for what's to come? Bracing yourself to get through this?  Well, I have great news if you have made it this far, although they discussed a bunch of useful information, such as gamification, use of blended learning (online and in-class), and different collaborative tools (such as blogs) we have already touched on these topics briefly in prior blog posts so I am not going to much cover these, and I'm going to focus on a tool that they have provided, called Brightspace. Brightspace is a learning management system l, similar to those that you might be familiar...

 Happy Daytona Day! I'm sure as many of you have learned throughout the blog, I am a big fan of sports, and I'm sure it would seem reasonable that last Sunday, Superbowl Sunday, would be one of my favorite days of the year, but in fact, you'd be mistaken as Daytona Day, one week after the SuperBowl, is often more of an exciting day for me.  So, with that said, as DW would say " Boogity Boogity Boogity, let's go racing boys and girls " and let's get into my weekly blog post! Now as I'm sure you noticed, my weekly blog posts had a little bit of a hiccup, in that last week was missed, but fear not! We're back, and I won't be missing any more weeks, and I hope my filler blog posts have been enough to keep you entertained and occupied! I am going to be discussing a couple takeaways from over the last two weeks of classes, so please excuse any jumping back and forth between the weeks, I will do my best to keep it all straight (but it's Daytona Da...

 By now you probably think you have some sort of idea who I am, but to make it easier for you to get to know the essentials about me, I have created an infographic as a CV so you can see just how exciting of a person I am!  I tried my hand at being artistic, which turns out, not my forte, but that did not stop me from trying my best to make it look pretty for all you readers! 

I'm turning back the clock hands here a little bit, I'm sure you all remember my blog post " Am I a Robot? " (I'll admit, not my best title) where I made sure I reminded you that the main thing I bring to my classroom is my stunning good looks?  Well, if you all remember, we had a speaker in the class named Kirsten Thompson who runs a blog called Fishbowl Teaching , and since her presentation in the class, I have been following along her blog and taking advantage of seeing how a real professional runs their blog, compared to an amateur like me.  Kirsten is " the divisional Coordinator of ICT for the Mountain View School Division; overseeing technology programming and purchasing for approximately 3000 stakeholders.  I am a Microsoft Education Trainer as well as a Level 1 Google Certified Educator with over 200 hours of combined professional development on how to assist educators in the use of these tools ." or, as I said, a pro.  There is always an incred...

 I have done it! I have listened to my first ever Podcast! I even got through more than one episode!  I picked The #PhysEd Show Podcast  on my phone through Apple Podcasts.  Now.  I found this particular task, incredibly difficult.  I know and understand that Podcasts can be an amazing resource and beneficial, however, personally, I really struggle listening to Podcasts, almost to the point where I do not enjoy it. I have tried many different times, however, without visuals, regardless of how interesting the topic is to me, my attention drifts away rapidly. With that said, as mentioned, I was able to get through several episodes of The #PhysEdShow Podcast, and I'm going to get into what it was about, why I chose it, and how it can be beneficial to me and my classroom. I'm sure by the name, you can tell, this Podcast is directed at physical education, and it is, it is directed at physical education teachers and although there are currently only 14 episodes, ...

 I like pictures.  Do you like pictures? Pictures are nice, aren't they?  I'm going to let you take a quick guess on what could help certain students learn in your classroom, think about, got it? That's right! Pictures.  Okay, you're right, pictures on their own may not necessarily enhance learning, but pictures with text, they definitely could, somebody should come up with a name for those... maybe... infographics?   That is right! We're talking about infographics in the classroom and once again, as you all come here to do so, you're going to hear my opinion and as you can probably see by the thumbnail for this blog post, see my very own infographic that I created using Piktochart . Personally, I love infographics in a classroom, both as a student and as a teacher! Sure, sometimes as a student they're just something to look at and read when you don't feel like paying attention, but guess what, I was still learning something (even if it was off the topic...

 As a physical education teacher, I had to get a little more creative this year in the classroom as many traditional games and sports were unable to be played due to this little thing going on around the world that has slightly put us in a pandemic.  So, in my phys ed class, we did workouts, students had resistance bands and yoga mats and I would lead them through a workout in class.  This quickly became a lot of work as I tried to find workouts and exercises that were reasonable and beneficial to the students.  So with a quick search, I quickly came across  HASfit Youtube Channel , a handy resource that I quickly started to utilize in my class.   This channel has been excellent for not only designing workouts if I am to lead them through it myself, but I could also play the video in class and have the students follow along directly from the video.  There are different playlists on their channel to focus on specific body parts for a workout or if ...

 I'm sure you're all very confused, jumping from 2 to 8, I promise I know how to count, I know the proper order, but sometimes life gets crazy so here we are, and let's get crazy! I'm sure throughout my blog posts you have seen my selfless plugs to my own Twitter Account (Which you can follow here ) and some of the shoutouts from the accounts I have followed since creating the account, which if you click the previous link, you can see that it is still a relatively new profile.   I am almost certain each and every one of my regulars here is just on the edge of their seat to hear about my experience and thoughts on this relatively new website named Twitter  (if you haven't checked it out yet, maybe it is time to do so).  Well, before I give you the good, the bad, the future, and preferences about it, I must confess that I have lied to you and I can't hold it back anymore... The truth is... I have been on Twitter since February of 2012 with my personal account, how...

 Going into a classroom today is incredibly different than it was, even 10 years ago.  Let's just say as a completely random example that a certain someone was in the second half of their grade 10, 10 years ago, in February 2011.  Can you imagine something like that? Definitely, that is something that is difficult to get my head around for sure, but nevertheless what did school look like for the student 10 years ago? what about the teacher?  Sure we, as students had our computer rooms, we could type on a computer pretty proficiently, could text behind our backs using T9 on the old RZR or KRZR, whichever was your preference.  We had started to see an emergence of BlackBerry phones and a rare spotting of an iPhone could be seen throughout the hallways but were far from the prevalence we see today.  Our teachers knew had to use the computers, got some news from it in the morning (or during class depending on how close they were to retirement and how little the...