Week 6 Reflection

This week, I attended two Focused Ed webinars where I learnt more about the resources that Focused Ed offers online to teachers and students. Focused Ed is a Canadian organization that provides teachers, students, schools and districts with education resources.

1. The Digital Classroom for K-7
2. The Digital Classroom for 8-12

During these webinars, I learnt about useful resources for elementary and secondary school, such as textbooks, online search tools, and databases. The host briefly showed and summarized each resource and its benefits. Not only are they beneficial to teachers, but they are also student-friendly and incorporate UDL strategies. They have included text-to-speech, simplified text, advanced text, images, videos and interactive content. There was a wide variety of subjects, including Indigenous history and culture, bilingual texts, and Canadian studies. I can definitely see myself utilizing these resources in the classroom to meet the BC Curriculum.

What stood out to me was the resources’ diversity. For example, I witnessed a kindergarten book being read aloud in a child’s voice. I was later shown a secondary textbook that had the option to be in simplified or advanced text, so students could select what they prefer. All of this is provided online through Focused Ed. I can imagine that, as a teacher on call, this would be very useful to support current learning in the classroom.