STEM to STEAM to STREAM?

 Someone I know has a pet peeve about the acronyms I will use in the title of this week's blog post. This individual complains that if we add too many elements to STEM, it dilutes the original purpose of combining Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

At the risk of provoking ire, I wanted to play with this idea a bit.

I've often seen the A added to indicate the Arts - in my mind, purposeful, aesthetic designs can help STEM projects find mass appeal. I searched for a more official rationale, and the AI-generated answer cited this website as fodder for its response. According to Griddly Kids (which is a seller of STEM and STEAM toys and activities, so not necessarily an academic reference):

The rationale behind adding the arts to STEM lies in the way art impacts cognitive development. Studies show that activities like drawing, painting, and music can enhance brain functions, including memory, attention, and spatial-temporal skills. These skills are incredibly valuable in STEM fields where complex problem-solving and innovative thinking are required.

Moreover, the arts encourage students to explore their curiosity and express themselves uniquely, which can lead to more profound and original scientific inquiries and technological advancements.

Other reasons for the A include these I found:

• Discovery Education says "By adding the “A” (the Arts) to STEM, we can infuse creativity throughout the S-T-E-M and create a new way to look at STEM disciplines that girls can connect with and fully enjoy. It will also spark girls’ curiosity and show them how they can use STEM skills in areas they may not have considered before.
• an Edutopia article said the A was added in 2006 by Georgette Yakman and it's about creativity
• on RedDotBlog, they list research findings from a 2022 study that suggests arts and sciences should intertwine
• KidSparkEducation (another vendor) lists 4 reasons for including the arts
• 
  

I've even seen R added to the acronym. The R stands for Reading (or, as I've heard it, Research). This could be integrated into the science portion of the acronym, but I want to talk about how my recent lesson on research skills (hopefully) helped our STEM project.

The Challenge

In STEM this school year, we've been exploring a lot with the new Chomp Saw. We learned how to operate it safely, and the primary division students and I undertook two simple mini-projects: creating the first letter of our names and demonstrating how to connect cardboard without glue or tape. All of this is leading up to our STEM challenge: to use the Chomp Saw (technology) to design a "pigloo" (engineering) that will fit in the cage (math) for our pet skinny pigs to use and enjoy (science). 

The Research 

The science involves strong and stable structures, but it also involves understanding what is safe for the skinny pigs. I used our school's virtual library to pull a couple of articles from the databases and digital  encyclopedias we have access to in order to learn more about the animals we are trying to consider in our designs.

Dot jot or point form notes is a particular skill that many students don't have a lot of experience with creating. It's a useful technique to know and teacher-librarians are uniquely positioned to teach it.

I designed a graphic organizer for us to use so that together, we could gather notes for the project.

It was important to me that students not just copy down everything they read without question. That's why the right-side column is dedicated to our thoughts about the information we read. If we want to promote critical thinking, we must set up conditions that allow students to wonder and question. 

One of the students asked, "Don't you already know lots about skinny pigs?" I replied that we can always learn more. We learn more by reading (or research) and we can learn more through scientific observation. For instance, I tried out a bigger, roomier plastic shelter for the guinea pigs at school this week. They shunned it in favour of their smaller, more opaque habitat. All of the skinny pigs lately have been dragging their sleep sacks to act as doors or carpets for their hideouts; I hope the students notice this behaviour and consider it when they design their own cardboard creations. 

I'm excited to share photos of the students' designs and builds when they are done. Whatever we call this period, it's an educational time together. 

Social Studies Learning - From Dull to Dynamic

 Last week felt like "Meeting Week" - I had at least one meeting every day last week, (coordinating the translators we hire for parent-teacher interviews on Monday; CSLJ editorial board meeting on Tuesday, staff meeting on Wednesday, admin team SIP meeting all morning on Thursday, and a UNESCO MIL Alliance regional chapter meeting on Friday). However, I don't want to focus on the meetings for my reflection. I'd rather examine how I've been working to invigorate social studies lessons.

No offense to any social studies teachers out there, but the feedback I hear from both students and teachers is that social studies isn't the most thrilling subject. This is unfortunate because the subject has such potential to be fascinating. I try hard to infuse social studies teaching with my own personal philosophy of education (part of which is this: learning is fundamental - FUN before "da mental").

Grade 6 Social Studies - Getting Active by Crossing the Burble Swamp

As part of our school's reorganization, I took on a Grade 6 social studies class as the primary teacher. Currently, our unit is on Canadian Communities, Past and Present. I decided to resurrect a favourite activity of mine that I co-taught last year with Nelani Kokularajan's Grade 6s and have done a few other times in the past: Crossing the Burble Swamp. I learned about this challenge many years ago as part of my Drama AQ. It's a very kinesthetic way to teach about push and pull factors related to migration. Students are crowded into a small area of the space and invited to go elsewhere, with a spacious and comfortable option in sight, but a version of "the floor is lava" is in effect. The papers that can get them across are scarce. How do they deal with it?

The students were very engaged, and the discussion was rich and meaningful. I'm also improving at facilitating this task in a way that prioritizes safety and making connections. When they had to write their reflections during the following class, they missed some of the connections we had mentioned before. I marked their work this weekend and will give them a second chance to add to their answers.

Grade 3-4 Social Studies - Explicit Instruction on Test-Taking

I'm also involved in co-teaching some social studies lessons with the Grade 3-4s and the Grade 2-3s. The Grade 3-4 teacher was concerned that her students had done poorly on a recent evaluation, so I contributed by filming a "How To Study for a Test" video for them on Google Classroom, and providing a test of my own design to cover the same content but with a different twist.

A side note: I tried to use Generative AI in an ethical way by having it generate a blank map of Ontario with its three main landform regions for students to label. I don't know if it's just that my prompts were ineffective, but the results that two of the tools we are permitted to use in my board were abysmal. I actually used one of these defective images as a bonus question for the test, inviting students to explain to me what the problem was with the visual.

Grade 2-3 Social Studies - Centering Ourselves 

The Grade 2-3 lesson began on a dynamic note from the start because of the way the homeroom teacher, Kerri Commisso, approached it. The question was simple: "Where are we?" and it proved to be an excellent diagnostic tool to see how much students knew about various regions and their relation to each other. For each spot, a circle was made so that students could see how a city is part of a province, for example, and that a province is bigger than a city. I wish I grabbed a copy of the final diagram that Mrs. Commisso and the students generated, because it was so meaningful to them.

Other Innovative Ideas for Social Studies Learning

In the past, I've tried to make social studies lessons interesting by doing things such as teacher-in-role, building large scale maps out of fabric, encouraging inquiry projects for the Heritage Fair event that resonate personally with students, and conducting scavenger hunts to reinforce map reading skills.

On Wednesday, November 19, 2025, I will be part of a panel in a series of webinars that OSLA runs called School Libraries Connect. The November session is called "Think Outside the Book: Innovative Program Ideas for Your SLLC". Not only will I mention ideas such as this, I'll talk about how I come up with the ideas. It's free for OSLA members but registration is required. Hope to see you there!

Spooky Season Co-Teaching

 I am so blessed to be able to work with Connie Chan. One day in the future, I will dedicate an entire post just on her, but for today's post, I want to focus on the work we have been doing with our multilingual learners. Connie and I have ESL as part of our teaching responsibilities. This year, we decided to coordinate our efforts, especially because we share some of our junior division students.

I'm usually not a "holiday activity" type of teacher. I'm often worried about prioritizing some festivities over others and accidentally alienating or offending people. This year, Connie and I leaned into some traditional October tasks and the students really loved them.

Pumpkin Carving

Connie purchased two pumpkins and together the Junior ESL class voted on which face to replicate and carved it. This coincided nicely with the non-fiction book writing assignment that they are undertaking. Connie wrote a sample non-fiction book about pumpkins that we read as a group to identify non-fiction text features and prepare them with helpful vocabulary.

My contribution to this carving involved word review (carving / voting), contemplative questions that lent themselves well to potential future STEM challenges (Why do we carve pumpkins? What other fruits would be good to carve?), documenting via photographs and offering a larger space to complete the carving. We also did some impromptu research to discover if skinny pigs are allowed to eat pumpkin.

Connie will follow up this event today (Monday, November 3) by seasoning and roasting the pumpkin seeds for the students to eat. I won't be there at that time, because I'll be teaching Guidance Education during those periods, but I know that the students will have a great time. They love to eat!

Halloween Hunt for Treats

I assembled some treat bags for all the students I see for ESL instruction and I included Connie's junior division ESL students into the mix. However, the students had to earn these goodies with some authentic reading using directional words.

Rather than hide the actual treat bags, I hid a giant stuffed turtle that each student had to locate based on their personalized clue. While individual students were searching, the rest of the students were creating "silly sentences" using dice, as well as playing a simple version of Battleship with house locations and Halloween subjects. Connie did a great job of monitoring the conversations between partners.

The students had a great time and there was a lot of learning that occurred. Thanks Connie for pushing me out of my "holiday-free zone" to embrace the current environment for engaging tasks.

More Reflections from #GlobalMILWeek Conference

 As promised, here are my reflections from the final day of the recent conference.

Minds Over AI 2025: MIL in Digital Spaces UNESCO Conference

Friday, October 24, 2025

8:45 a.m. = Cultivating Critical Minds in a World Influenced by AI

Summary: 

Members of the North America and Europe Chapter of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance shared the time slot to share ways their various countries and affiliates cultivate critical thinking.

3 Key Points:

1. Canada offers the Digital Citizenship Contribution Program, which funds work by different organizations to help combat disinformation. I did some analysis on who receives funding and provided a quick overview of five recipients (CIVIX, York University, Simon Fraser University, Metropolitan University in the UK, and Media Smarts). 

2. Anna, Estrella, and Irene shared their 3-country research project related to AI-related lessons and the insights from the participants. (This project was also described at the IMLRS Conference in the Azores.)

3. Sherri described the fun ways children interact and play with AI, and mentioned her Kids Talk Media podcast

So What? Now What?

We were concerned that no one would show up to our early morning session. It turned out that it was a full house! I was mostly satisfied with my portion of the presentation, although I regret not providing a timely segue between our sections by mentioning that AML had applied for a DCCP grant to attempt a Canadian replica of the study that Anna, Estrella, Yonty and Irene had conducted. That would have tied things together nicely. I also didn't have the chance to mention that this year is the 20th anniversary of celebrating Media Literacy Week in Canada (ahead of both the US and the UN). I was pleased with my timing and my pace. Each of us in the group had ten minutes to share, and I finished my contribution in eight minutes.

Yonty was a fantastic group moderator. He had the challenging task of ensuring that we all respected our time slots and managed questions from the audience during the Q&A. 

Neil Andersen, the president of AML, often tells of how the richest learning in conferences comes in the "liminal spaces", outside of the formal presentations. This was even true in our session. I was rather impressed with the live translators who handled our session, so after the talk, I went to go speak with them and thank them for their service. I learned a lot about live translation by speaking to them. I was absolutely delighted when they told me that I was the perfect speaker for them, because I spoke at 80 words per minute. How could they tell? They explained that most people speak at between 80-150 words per minute but the way I spoke was ideal, because at my rate, they could easily capture all the ideas shared. My other question to them was whether AI was a threat to their profession. They shared that AI cannot yet do what they provide, because for an "immediate" translation such as the type they provide, it takes an AI bot about 20 seconds to produce, which has too much of a time delay. However, they shared that they use AI to help hone their own skills and they realize that with this use, it results in teaching the AI to improve itself.

There were several questions posed to the group of us. I fielded a question on protecting students and my answer dealt with two pivotal philosophies of the Association for Media Literacy: the tendency not to label media texts as good or bad, but rather as interesting, as well as teaching through and about. I said it was important for educators to teach students how AI works, and reiterated a point made by Dora the day before about even demonstrating how AI works without the use of technology. 

Media Artifacts

https://www.unesco.org/en/weeks/media-information-literacy-2025/programme

Link to Day 2 Program of Conference

Our title slide

Yonty begins the session

Introducing the panel

My talk (thank you Estrella for taking this shot!)

Anna describes their collaborative project

Estrella outlines one of the tasks

Irene introduces herself

The room became even more full than in this shot!

Sheri providing examples of AI

The translators and I pose after our work was done

The whole team

10:10 a.m. = Connecting AI Literacy and Content Provenance Technology for a Safer Digital Information Landscape

Summary:

A panel, featuring BBC Media Action and other groups, talked about AI use in the news.

3 Key Points:

1. Informing the audience when AI is used in news production is another form of literacy. Content creators in Latin America are reluctant to use AI in their work because they feel it undermines their relationship with the audience. 

2. C2PA is a solution used for misinformation related to the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is on the frontlines of fighting disinformation, because there were 191 Russian operatives detected in 2025 that reached 84 million views.

3. Digital replicants can still sway opinions, even when viewers know that it's not real.

So What? Now What?

The Latin American representative (whose name I don't recall) on this panel made some good points about the use of AI in meme culture. I will probably use some of her comments in my own talk on memes at a future conference (if my proposal is accepted). 

To be honest, I learned more during the small group discussion portion of this talk. One of the people that was in our group was Lisa Reppell, who works for Microsoft. She explained to the rest of us that C2PA is about content credentials. We possess the ability to embed in images data such as whether it is original, doctored, or completely generated by AI. She said that this has real-world implications, such as if insurance companies need their clients to send images of their insurance claims; with C2PA and cryptography, it's easier to check for authenticity. 

Media Artifacts:

https://contentcredentials.org/

https://c2pa.org/

Websites Lisa shared about understanding Content Credentials.

The speakers from this session

11:50 a.m. = Media Literacy and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical and Creative Approach for the K-12 Classroom

Summary:

Daniela and Mariana from Program De Educacao Midiatica / Instituto Palavra Aberta in Brazil shared their work with elementary and secondary school students.

3 Key Points:

1. The NGO was originally focused on promoting and defending press freedom (Educamedia) but have expanded their reach, to include shaping public policy and providing professional development for educators, with impressive statistics.

2. Media literacy comes in many shapes and forms. It goes beyond fact checking. There is not a single right way to "do" media literacy. They tend to take a holistic approach.

3. Their program considers things like confidence, safety, balance and ethics. Mariana took us through several activities and lessons similar to the ones they've offered, such as "generate an image of a Brazilian adult person of indigenous origin", or searching for Mogadishu vs Muqdishu (Somalia's capital city, using the English vs local spelling). In their program, they decided to have media literacy instruction reside with the computer science and social studies teachers. They also have teachers who take their certification program create and share ML units, like the teacher who made the "Slightly Impossible Animals" project.

So What? Now What?

I had been looking forward to this session for the entire conference, and they did not disappoint. I was very excited to see how Brazil framed up its AI literacy / media literacy approach, because Canadian School Libraries just launched its Digital Media Literacy Toolkit this week and there are some similarities (but not enough to look like we "copied" each other). 

It made me happy to see that some of the AI related tasks resembled some of the tasks I've done with my students or developed on behalf of my school board. The indigenous representation task was very similar to the one I did with my Grade 6 Social Studies students related to Canadian identity. I found it fascinating that in Ontario / Canada, we situate AI and media literacy within the Language Arts / English / Literacy domain, whereas Brazil chose Computer Science and Social Studies. 

Mariana provided some great prompting questions on the "Pope slide". I really like how she suggested that some things need new vocabulary so that they can be shown to be not "all evil", such as "synthetic AI" vs "deep fake". 

I appreciated how generous the presenters were with their resources. They gave us the link to open resources in English, such as an eBook on AI fundamentals, teacher-facing materials like four mini-courses, and student resources that integrate into curriculum. I will need to email Mariana to thank her and continue the conversation.

Visual Media Artifacts:

Their framework

Digital autonomy

Fits perfectly with "through vs about"

The Somalia example

Great probing questions

Who teaches this, when, and where?

2:25 p.m. = Shaping a Digital World for All: Peace and Inclusivity in the AI Age

Summary:

The "Your Brain on ChatGPT" talk was rescheduled for just before this panel. On this panel, Zareen Ali, Endy Bayuni, H.E. Mauricio Jaramillo, Edna Sorgelsen and Danielle Boyer shared how AI can worsen or fix inequalities.

3 Key Points:

1. The brain demonstrates the least about of connectivity when using ChatGPT. There is less ownership felt by people when they use ChatGPT to complete tasks, and 80% of participants in the research study that were in the ChatGPT groupo could not provide a quote from the essay they wrote 60 seconds after completing the essay. 

2. Zareen quoted Audre Lord with "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house", but she said that there are attempts to try to optimize these tools of bug US colonial corporations for social good.

3. Danielle Boyer is a youth robotics inventor who is working to save her Indigenous language. She said that AI should only be used with Indigenous language with extreme care. She says that regular AI bots are trained by data scraping and that they misrepresent things because ChatGPT will write fake words and definitions for Anishinaabe. Her bot was developed with a team of elders and she got consent from her community; her bot is neither a translator, nor influenced by corporate interests because she uses voices from her own community. Ethical technology is possible if it is done "with us, by us" (us being Indigenous groups). 

4. Representation is very important because it brings stories into the mainstream. Drag queen Edna described the importance of the TV show Drag Race, because it was a source of queer stories. Edna reminded us that when things are flattened, it distorts reality. AI can amplify misinformation, causing harm to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. 

So What? Now What?

I'm glad that they were able to squeeze in the ChatGPT talk. She dispelled several myths, such as that AI eases the cognitive load, AI saves time, and AI enhances people's skills.

I didn't realize that Anishinaabe was considered an endangered language. I recognized Danielle's greeting and closing (Anii / Miigwetch). I would love to speak to her to learn more about her bot, and if there's anything we can do to support her work. 

Visual Media Artifacts:

4:15 p.m. = Closing Ceremony

Summary:

Many important dignitaries took to the stage to give speeches and youth awards were distributed.

So What? Now What?

The president of Colombia was scheduled to appear, but didn't come. After the closing ceremonies, I attended an informative tour of the city thanks to Gerardo Nieto, the director of Fundacion Festicine Kids. I need to email Gerardo to thank him again for everything.

Visual Media Artifacts:

Big thanks to everyone for making this conference possible!