Tuesday, August 19th 2025

Our school's Responsible Use Policy provides a vital framework for building a safe and positive digital community. This year, my goal is to bring that framework to life for our students in a new and interactive way.

To help them connect with these principles on a deeper level, I'm using Mizou AI to build a simple AI chatbot called the "Digital Navigator." It walks students through the core ideas of our RUP using friendly, real-world scenarios.

This tool serves as a pre-assessment, enabling me to identify where our students are already strong and where they require additional support. It provides a valuable starting point for our digital citizenship lessons by revealing:

🔹 Key concepts, like copyright or cyberbullying, that need further exploration.
🔹 How students interpret the guidelines in practical situations.
🔹 Opportunities to build on their existing understanding.

I hope that this approach is an effective way to transform an essential policy into an engaging launchpad for meaningful classroom conversations.

🔗 Prompt I used to build the chatbot: bit.ly/rupaiprompt

Thursday, August 14th, 2025

Our team is excited to share a new workflow we've developed for teaching digital design. We transferred the newly updated Canva Essentials Course from the Canva Design School directly on Padlet, creating a seamless learning environment where students can complete lessons and post their creations all in one place.

Using Padlet as our LMS for this has been a game-changer. Students simply add their work as a post under each section, creating a dynamic gallery that showcases their progress and makes assessment a breeze.

The course is designed to empower students to bring their creative ideas to life. We focus on building a strong foundation in digital design, helping them develop efficient and collaborative work habits from the start.

Throughout the modules, students will learn to:

🧭 Confidently get around the Canva workspace and its powerful features.
🖼️ Skillfully transform pre-made templates into unique, personalized designs.
🎨 Artfully combine graphics, photos, and other visual elements to create impact.
🔠 Apply principles of typography to make their text clear and compelling.
🤲 Work together on projects in real-time and share their final products effortlessly.

Our goal is to help students move from being passive consumers of media to confident, capable creators.

🔗 If you would like to use this Padlet, you can locate the template of it here: bit.ly/CanvaEssentials2025