L. Leavett-Brown's EDCI 336 Blog

Albert Bandura and Bobo Doll sprites with Pixelorama

Month: February 2026

Topic 7 – Assistive Tech & Intentionality in Technology Enabled Learning Design

27 February 2026 /

The Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

This week, we looked at making the content we produce more accessible. We also were introduced to a tool that allowed us to see how accessible our content is. This is the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. I used this tool on last week’s Reflection post, and found that I had received a 3.9 out of 10 as an Accessibility Impact score (AIM).

This picture is a screenshot of the WAVE report of last week’s Reflection post. It shows that I have a whole heap of deficiencies – bollocks!

This provided me with information that would be more useful if I knew how to change the colours of the hyperlink text. I tried; I failed. This also shows me that YouTube videos are not very accessible because the automatic captions are inaccurate. That may be true, but because editing captions is a lot of work for little reward, YouTube auto-captions must suffice.

SAMR and the Triple E Frameword

SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition and it is a tool for assessing new technologies do for education. The Triple E framework of Engage, Enhance and Extend is a way of determining the educational usefulness of a technology. Previously, I have used intuition and observation to see how useful I think a technology may be, but I can see this as a more scientific way to assess this.

Photograph – Karl-Heinz Löblich

©Public Domain. This picture shows two members of the Wehrmacht, an Oberkanonier and an Obergefreiter (senior gunner and lance bombardier) smoking cigarettes with a captured French African soldier (Zouave?) as they sit on a bench in 1940. This photograph comes from an album in my private collection that belonged to Obergefreiter Karl-Heinz Löblich, who died on 6 November 1942 at Chataldon, Northern Ossetia. This album is meaningful to me whose grandfather served as a captain in the Royal Artillery. http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/2010/uichteritz_wk1u2_sa.htm

Accessibility Shortcomings I Often See

The biggest failing that I see in presentations is that they often contain slides that are loaded with text and with visuals that are either absent or do not advance the message that is being presented. Last year, I endured a presentation by a guest speaker and it was the model of a poorly designed presentation. All the slides used an unchanging and monotonous Canva template and were filled with text that nobody read. It certainly didn’t help that the presenter delivered her talk in the dullest and flattest tone she could manage. I don’t remember anything from that presentation and I excused myself from the second half.

Why are accessibility practices not more widely used?

In the case I mentioned above, I believe that some teachers do not understand how to present what they are teaching in such a way as to make their audience receive it. We have not had a course that taught us about class management or how to put together and deliver a good presentation. It has been mentioned in passing in some of the courses, but never as the focus of the lesson. Teachers may also feel that finding relevant and useful visuals is more difficult than simply pasting their material onto a slide and then burbling away at their students. As for accessibility aids not being employed more generally, I believe that many people are not aware of the things that reduce the ability of students to access their content.

Topic 7 – Free Inquiry

23 February 2026 /

It has been slow getting back to creating Bandura. Because he was a real person, I find that I have to be far more exact. After several attempts to draw his face, I have an iteration with which I feel the least dissatisfied. I have moved the other iterations and the Bobo doll (which I am using for scale) to the bottom layer. When it comes to rendering this, I shall make this layer invisible.

I find that once I have completed all the frames, I can see where improvements are necessary by turning on the animation in the preview window (top right in the first image). This highlights things like misshapeness, incorrectly inserted frames and details moving about independent of the thing they are supposed to be on. In this case, Bandura’s eyebrows were creeping about like caterpillars. You can see this in the animation below:

The neck is flapping about a lot with the head as it is at this stage. This is because I was planning to draw the suit over the neck and so I did not care if it was messy. By the end of Reading Break, I had competed most of Bandura, excluding his arms:

The arms I shall draw on a separate layer over the body. This will leave the body available for when I animate the final GIFs. This model still needs shading, but I am fairly pleased with it structurally.

Topic 6 – Province EdTech ProD Day

13 February 2026 /

For this post, I wanted to show clips from the presentation that covered the points I chose, but my screen recorder failed to capture the sound. In all honesty, the presentation did not raise anything new that I had not already heard at UVic, except for some details that were mentioned in passing. The two points I wanted to cover were:

  1. The use of AI servers to heat buildings; and
  2. The resources that were provided at the end of the presentation.

AI Servers Heating Buildings

This is an interesting and seemingly intuitive way to use the heat that is produced by AI data centres. It turns the problem of excess heat into a money-making resource. This is an improvement on other solutions, such as building data centres under the sea in order to cool them. Such a use of the heat means that fewer resources are required overall. Because buildings are receiving their heat from this source, they do not have to waste the energy that they would have used if they employed a traditional method of heating. I was quite surprised at how much of America’s electrical power is from gas and coal. I was not surprised that electricity prices had risen near data centres, although I would not have guessed that it was 267% higher than five years ago.

I think that this technology is a great way to turn a problem into a boon. I do not see many problems with it except that, for heating, it would only be useful for those buildings that were close and that it would not be as useful when the data centres were located in a hot climate. Perhaps another way of using the heat as an energy source is possible in this situation.

Resources

https://focusedresources.ca/education#ai-lessons

The first link that Cari Wilson shared was to the Focused Education Resources page, which has resources, including slideshows and other tools. A quick look at the resource did not turn up anything that immediately struck me as the thing for which I had been yearning. There was no damascene moment, but I remain optimistic that, in time or with a deeper dive, I shall be able to find something useful. The problem for me is that I am looking for material that supports the things I want to teach, and I do not see anything that does that.

https://focusedresources.sharepoint.com/:p:/s/ExternalSharing/IQDqdOvcybVNTbm9F5dYAZRXAZklj92zpc9JqrgGi7WyE-E?rtime=W0DFLSlr3kg

This is a slideshow for teaching about the impact of AI on the environment and on one’s health. The slides early in the presentation are good because they are not too text heavy. It rather lets itself down at the end in this regard. If I were to teach this as a lesson, I would want to rework all the slides in Google Slides or PowerPoint in order to make them more engaging.

2. Pain

6 February 2026 /

My plan moving forward is to create the models that I shall use to build the animations. As I showed in the last post, the Bobo doll has been created, but I still need Dr Bandura, Mini-Me Dr Brown and two delinquent children. I have started my attempts at Dr Bandura but, so far, I am not satisfied. I started with a Goolge image search:

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=355ad82f6dcff9a7&sxsrf=ANbL-n6wnXY50WaXyqanOFuHUvBywhKLPw:1770448725891&udm=2&fbs=ADc_l-aN0CWEZBOHjofHoaMMDiKpaEWjvZ2Py1XXV8d8KvlI3p-ML-906rRL_m6h4jR-tdAeyw6pOVABma0FfM0NmtARdcuGnZVoiSrEQCt2b10nLjOqaGyNmf2lwTZco6lpYG6jkrYtzOQEXyWwSk4XNE4djwgopl4b9D1C9oC8CnUZud3WHW1ctJvaKNzdIIn__gFFA-M_Wf1RUd8x1f1WnqrzbHpRNQ&q=albert+bandura&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7h5m768aSAxWyJjQIHSU-PfcQtKgLegQIFhAB&biw=1421&bih=695&dpr=1.3

This provided me with plenty of pictures from different angles, but I have decided to start with the front. I took one of the portraits, straightened out the face and superimposed grid lines in Gimp.

The grid squares represent 2×2 pixels on my Pixelorama canvas. I tried to recreate this as pixel art and I played with the colouring.

It is not a good likeness. The white-haired face is the original. The one on the left is where I tried to make the colouring closer to the original, but I think that it doesn’t look like anything when it is small: too indistinct. You can see the scale of it by comparing it to the Bobo doll where it appears in the preview window.

I thought that scaling down the original to the size of the pixel art might help. It has given me some ideas on how to move forward and it has also helped with the proportions, but I do not think a direct copy is desirable. The face needs to be slightly cartoony for it to be recognisable as a face at this size. Also, the complex colouration of the photograph would require a lot more work to animate with little reward.

I could only get the pixels to be distinct viewing it through the Gimp editing software and making a screenshot. Image viewers tend to blur the pixels together.

Topic 5 – Creating & Curating Digital Resources

6 February 2026 /

Today, we looked at ways of keeping track of digital resources and curating content. The resource I am most likely to use is Google Keep, because it is part of the Google suite of apps that I already use. That being said, I tend to use Google Calendar for scheduling and the Notes app on my phone for keeping track random information, so Google Keep and similar software serve to fill a need that I do not have.

Currently, I frequently use Google Drive to hold materials that I have created. I started using this when I was in Korea and was sharing lessons a games that I had created. I posted links to them in the (now defunct) waygook.org forum for fellow ESL teachers to download. I have used Microsoft Copilot for this recently, but I find that the sharing of files is not as easy.

Google Classroom is certainly a tool that I would like to use. It is something that I shall have to look at more closely during reading break. I believe that it will be most useful to me for posting assignments and keeping parents informed. I am a little worried that it might be seen by others as a way for them to have round-the-clock access to me.

This is how Gemini improved what I wrote:

Reflection on Digital Resource Management

Today’s session focused on various methods for tracking digital resources and curating educational content. While exploring several platforms, I found Google Keep to be the most practical option due to its seamless integration with the Google Workspace apps I currently employ. However, since I already utilize Google Calendar for scheduling and a native mobile application for miscellaneous notes, Google Keep occupies a niche that—for my current workflow—is already largely addressed.

Current Workflow and File Sharing

Presently, I rely heavily on Google Drive to manage and store my instructional materials. This practice originated during my time teaching in Korea, where I shared lesson plans and educational games with the ESL community via the waygook.org forum. While I have recently experimented with Microsoft Copilot for similar tasks, I have found its file-sharing capabilities to be less intuitive than those offered by the Google ecosystem.

Future Implementation: Google Classroom

I am keen to integrate Google Classroom into my professional practice and intend to explore its features more thoroughly during the upcoming reading break. I anticipate it will be an invaluable tool for:

  • Distributing and managing student assignments.
  • Maintaining transparent communication with parents.

Despite these advantages, I do harbour some reservations regarding work-life boundaries. I am concerned that adopting such a platform might inadvertently create an expectation of “round-the-clock” availability to students and their families.

Here it is in Old English:

Hæbbun wē tōdæg scēawode hū mann mæg his hord gegaderian and his bōccræftas wel healdan.

Þone cræft þe ic mæst lufie is Google Keep, for þæm þe hē is dæl þæra tōla þe ic ǣr gearwode.

Swā þēah, ic brūce mīnes dægrīmes tō tīde weordunge, and ic wrīte mīne lytlan ǣrendgewritu on mīnum sēolfontācnunge; for þon ne þearf ic þone nīwan cræft tō þissum þingum.

Nū brūce ic Google Drive oft, þǣr ic mīne lār-timber healde.

Ic angann þis tō dōnne þā ic wæs on Corealande, and ic dælde mīne lāra and mīne plegan mid ōðrum gōdum mægestrum on þæm brādum folc-stede Waygook.

On þissum dagum hæbbe ic Microsoft Copilot fandode, ac mē þyncþ þæt þā gerynu nē synt swā ēaþe tō dælenne swā on þæm gōdan Google.

Google Classroom is sōðlīce tōl þone ic wille lurnian.

Ic sceal þæt gēorne scēawian on mīnre ræding-reste.

Ic gelīefe þæt hit biþ mē swīðe gōd tō rædenne þā weorc þāra cilda and tō cȳðenne þone mægeþ-rǣd þæm fæderum and mōdrum.

Ac mē is sum lytel drēdrǣd on mōde: þæt mænigfeald fole wēne þæt hīe mægen mē findan and mid mē sprecan on ǣlcre tīde, gē on dæge gē on nihte.

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