May 26, 2023
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Have a quote you would like to submit for next week’s Staff Update? Click here to share the words of wisdom that inspired you most recently.
Micro:bit Maker-in-Residence Series @ Lang Innovation Lab
Please join the Innovation Team after school on Monday, May 29, for the second session of the second Maker-in-Residence series in the Lang Innovation Lab.
Tess Butler-Ulrich is working towards her master of education at OTU, with a focus on making and STEAM education.
The subject of this series is microprocessors such as micro:bits. For this workshop, we will continue working with the micro:bit and go over how to connect it to a device, inputs and outputs, as well as setting up micro:bit. We will also explore coding through a series of challenges and debugging activities such as creating a simple shape using the LEDs on the micro:bit or writing a short message using the LEDs.
Missed the first session? No worries! We’d love to see you there!
Please sign up here if you are interested in joining us.
Animatronics Workshop
Want to create and play with animatronics? In this hands-on workshop, former Disney imagineer, Paul Dietz, will lead you in building simple talking paper robots that can tell the stories of history, science and culture.
Animatronics offers learners a way to tell their own stories, engage in STEAM, and directly supports the curriculum as a tool for students to dive deeply into a subject and bring it to life. In the process, students learn to work creatively across both technical and artistic disciplines, imagining characters, writing scripts, building mechanisms, performing voices and programming movements. It is a fun way to extend critical thinking, creativity and communication in any classroom.
Please join the Learning Innovation Team in the Lang Innovation Lab on Tuesday, May 30, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Sign up here if you are interested in joining us.
F1 Year-Long Learning Theme Activities During Exam Week (June 12 to 16)
For the culmination of the F1 Truth and Reconciliation Year-Long Learning Theme, here is the schedule for all F1 students:
Monday, June 12: No scheduled programming
Tuesday, June 13: At UTS all day
Wednesday, June 14: At UTS all day
Thursday, June 15: Full day field trip to Crawford Lake Conservation Area. Further details will be shared via parent/guardian field trip permission form, closer to this date.
Help needed! Would you like to help supervise this field trip and spend a lovely day outdoors? Please let Richard Cook and Cresencia know.
Friday, June 16: No scheduled programming
Details will be shared with students through the F1 Year-Long Learning Theme Google Classroom.
Participation in all Learning Theme activities is a requirement of the UTS Foundation diploma.
F2 Sustainability Year-Long Learning Theme Campaigns (May 30 to June 2)
Want to learn a bit about sustainability from the F2s? All staff and students are invited to wander through the Multipurpose room during the lunch period each day from Tuesday, May 30 through to Friday, June 2.
Please come and support the F2s in their sustainability campaign efforts, and your students (of any grade). This is part of their Year-Long Learning Theme learning.
New research on Youth, Digital Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship
MediaSmarts has released Digital Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship, the fifth in a series of reports from Phase IV of Young Canadians in a Wireless World, the most comprehensive ongoing study of its kind in Canada.
This report shares findings related to verifying information online, learning digital media literacy skills and ethical digital citizenship.
AI in Education: Resources and Updates
New material added to our AI Apps and AI Resources docs, including:
Glaze - a tool to help artists to prevent their artistic styles from being learned and mimicked by new AI-art models such as MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, etc.
How AI could save (not destroy) education - May 2023 TED Talk by Sal Khan (CEO, Khan Academy)
CIS Ontario Chat GPT webinars
Athletics Calendars
Silver Linings
Have a silver lining you would like to submit for next week’s Staff Update? Click here to share something that brought you joy recently.
