Final Blog

Through this course I have both had difficulties and some very eyeopening moments. I think me not being as tech savvy and lack of excitement for new advances of technology really made this very difficult at times to process the information. That along with a demanding work schedule at a high stress job and a full course load for the semester. But anyways I had some very big takeaways from this course, and they are not all tech and content related. The first is that to be an effective teacher you need to be all in on student learning. While this may be a very “well duh” kind of statement, I kind of saw this through this semester and this course. There were times that these assignments seemed very easy on the surface, but to do a good job one needed to devout nearly three hours a week to complete them properly. Well that was easier said than done when you are taking the Methods course while also working at the hospital 5-6 days a week. I found that teaching is a lot of work and time management is very difficult when you are actually in the classroom for courses. I was constantly sacrificing precious time for my “online only” courses whereas in the past I could easily manage to put time aside each day for each course and finish in a comfortable amount of time. I finally see why many teachers who go back to school only take one class a semester. The second takeaway is that I really need to get better at being up to date on technology. For the most part I felt I understood how to do many of the assignments but there were some that I just had to go through hoops to try to understand how to complete them. The video assignment was by far the hardest assignment for me. I have never been a blogger or Youtuber, and splicing a video took me forever to figure it out. I think I should have been more comfortable at it as much as I watch videos and use them, but it was truly a humbling experience to say the least. A final takeaway is how technology can make teaching easier and more effective. I have used numerous programs learned in this course and utilized them in my Methods observations and teaching opportunities, and they made my life a lot easier than just teaching through direct instruction. As a social studies teacher, primary sources are very effective and vital in lessons, and just talking about them is not usually enough to get the point across. There is a famous line in film theory called “show don’t tell” and it revolves around how a visual story needs to be shown more than told to be an effective narrative. Well social studies is more effective when there are visuals over just words. So this class showed (no pun intended) that there are countless ways to effectively show these sources to students in highly engaging ways.
Oddly enough I think the video assignment was my favorite. It was not because it was fun, it was not, it was because it got me out of my comfort zone and forced me to experiment and find a way to complete the assignment. It was challenging for me to complete, and I learned a lot from it. It probably is the most beneficial assignment sense video recording is required in EdTPA assignments and this was a step in that direction. I think the most fun assignment was making the quizzes assignments. Something about trivia always interests me.
I think incorporating Canva into a classroom probably would save me more time and money in the long run than just doing the old way of posterboard and construction paper for projects. It will be a hard transition but probably a more thrifty and effective one. Another one would be experimenting with different power point programs. I love Google Slides but there are more slide show programs than Google Slides that do different things. I think only using one way of slide show presentation is not effective teaching and leads to complacency. Personally I am going to try Nearpod more than I would have if I never taken this class. I think the interactivity during presentations should be something to consider going forward.
This has been a very fun and insightful course. Thank you for your time