CUEBC Pro-D post-conference

For my provincial professional development day, I attended the Computer Using Educator of British Columbia conference at Fleetwood Park Secondary. 

The conference was exciting, and we had an emotional keynote. The keynote speaker is Carol Todd, a teacher at School District 43 and the mother of Amanda Todd. For those unaware, Amanda Todd was a teenage girl who committed suicide in 2012 due to online harassment and blackmail. Many might have seen the YouTube video Amanda posted right before her death, and it was a powerful video of her telling her side of the situation despite all the harassment everyone was directed to her. The keynote was very powerful, and I have nothing to say about it. It brought about the importance of digital tattoos and how once something is on the internet, it will forever be on there.

The first workshop I attended was on building a successful esports program in your school district. The presenter details the benefits he has seen in implementing such programs and how he did it successfully. It gave me a lot of things to think about, as I love playing video games, and the idea of esports slowly becoming more legitimized in Canada is cool.

The second workshop was on robotics for all ages. I learned much about the different robotics products on their market and their pros and cons here. While the presenter had some biases, he showed many cool creations other students made.

The last workshop I attended was about AI and how we can introduce it in a classroom setting. This one was the most enlightening as teachers all chimed in with their experience with AI and how they have tried to work with it so that students can use it but not abuse it. Some of the interesting AI that I have learned is, for Work, there is a text-to-speech function that works wonders, elevenLabs a voice AI which can use your voice and convert text to speech. We also explored the difference between ChatGPT 3.5 vs 4.0 and how to use it with BingChat.

Overall, the conference was a lot of fun, and I had a blast meeting all these teachers.