· What are your thoughts on hybrid learning (in person and at home) compared to when you are in your learning groups (at school for all classes). Which format do you prefer, and why?

I think it really depends on the class that I’m in. For some classes, the hybrid method is hard for keeping up, such as drama, which primarily needs to be in person to work, but most are fairly suited for it. In terms of schedule and getting to and from school, the hybrid learning at the same time as a learning group is very difficult to maintain because it’s a lot of back and forth and it seems unnecessary to be in class for only two hours, so the mix of both is not great in my opinion. The learning groups are good because we’re constantly learning and it’s easier not to forget things in between, but it’s also important to take breaks between that to not get burnt out and lose focus. I really like the hybrid learning because we get the chance to work on assignments on our own time and in the comfort of our own home instead of being chained to a desk, and we also get breaks from in-class lessons, like mentioned above. For these reasons, for the most part I prefer the hybrid learning on its own.

· How has technology benefited you during the hybrid learning experience?

Technology has benefited me with hybrid learning because it allows me to very easily work on any digital assignment I have whenever I’m at home. I have a laptop, which means that it’s a lot easier to do most of my assignments because many of them involve lots of writing, which is difficult to complete on a phone or other small device. Having this technology also means that I can easily contact my teachers and peers to ask for information or help with work using multiple platforms, which has helped me get out of a few difficult spots.

· How has technology impeded you during the hybrid learning experience?

There were multiple times when I had an assignment that involved using specific aspects of technology, and I either couldn’t figure out the program, or it malfunctioned. For instance, there was a project that I was part way through, and my laptop crashed out of nowhere, meaning I lost all of my data. I had to restart the project from almost scratch and memory, which was stressful for me. Technology isn’t always perfect, so putting all of my faith in it was my downfall in certain situations.

· Is there anything that you hope remains a part of school that was new because of hybrid learning after the pandemic is over and school returns to normal?

I hope that teachers still use certain aspects of Teams as part of their learning materials, such as the Assignments tab. Not that the entire program needs to be as integral a piece of our learning as it has been, but I do appreciate that feature on Teams because it gives all the resources and information needed for that assignment, as well as the due date, which helps me because I sometimes forget due dates. It’s also very present on Teams, and it’s a very convenient way to hand in work, rather than hard copies in person or emails, so I would like if that was still a primary way of completing work in the future.

· Link to 2 Projects in school/TALONS that used digital technology, and explain how the use of that digital technology enhanced your project. Ideas include In-Depth, Eminent, Zip, individual class projects in Talons or other subjects…

In-Depth Learning Centre: My topic was ASL (American Sign Language), so it would have been very difficult for me to present my learning without signing. But, because of the deaf culture I can’t actually “teach” it. This would have been an issue, but since I was using a digital presentation, it was a lot easier to work around it. I chose to also show proof from an official dictionary alongside videos of my own signing, and this was very easy to do because using technology I could very easily place them side by side in a convenient fashion for the viewer.

Ella Fitzgerald Learning Centre (Eminent): Using technology to complete this project was beneficial because it allowed me to easily organize all of my information in a way that I could see clearly how I had laid it out. Also, in this project I used a timeline, and using a website to create it was much easier than it would have been to make it by hand, and it was also very clean and even, making it look really nice, and it was so easy to just move an image of this to my presentation. So, technology made the important part of this project really easy to complete.