Module 4- Smartboard Lesson

After completing my first little teaching experience, I took a deep breath. While it was fairly basic in the instructions for what we needed to do, the execution and the feelings that came with it were new and challenging in certain ways. It was a very good small-scale look at how teachers function on a day to day basis, which both taught me a lot and scared me a little too. There is so much more work that goes on behind the scenes than what I initially considered. There is much more that a teacher does to prepare before a lesson than only teaching it.

            With this project, I was assigned to make my first lesson plan, a task that I had little to no familiarity with. Thankfully we had a template to follow, without which I would have been completely lost. As I continued through this part of the assignment, I was met with many different pieces that I did not realize were a part of every class. Each class I have gone through has had planning of some sort, and realizing all the little complexities that I may have to address and cover in it was a bit overwhelming. However, it was also really cool to acknowledge the work that goes into planning and performing a class.

            After completing this portion of the assignment, we had to make a Smartboard presentation. Having been around Smartboards most of my educational career, I was comfortable with maneuvering its tools and such. However, there were many more layers that I did not really understand. I had to sift through all the tools that this program provided, picking and choosing the ones that I though were necessary and appropriate for my lesson. I also wanted to choose some that would be creative, interactive, and fun for my students to work with. After choosing everything, I had to tailor the tools and pages to what I wanted to accomplish in teaching during these five minutes.

            The final element of this project was the presentation. After completing this portion, I realized just how important it was that I had planned beforehand and worked within an outline that I had prepared. This proved critical, both in time management and also how to emphasize our “Engage-Connect-Launch” focus for beginning a class. There were so many events that took place in the presentation that I could not practice for, especially in how the students responded to my prompts and interactions. That being said, my outline and preparation helped me to get a good hold of where I wanted to go and to be able to cut out pieces that I would not have time for.

Overall, this first experience of planning a lesson and then carrying out my lesson plan taught me that there are many more intricacies that are involved in the preparation and presentation of a class period. I learned that it takes a lot of work at preparing to be ready to adapt to whatever a class happens to throw at you on any given day. It taught me that preparation is key, but is not the “end all” of how a teacher works in their daily work. 

Twitter Blog Post #1

When I first heard that many educators often used Twitter, I did not believe the claim. “Teachers spending large amounts of time on Twitter? That has to be unheard of!” None of my former teachers ever used Twitter, and with this fact came my perceptions, accurate as they may be at times, about Twitter and the activities on it. These thoughts came from the idea that Twitter was only used to complain about politics or watch what celebrities were up to lately. I never really considered the other ways it could be used, but through the last couple weeks I have had my eyes opened a little bit to the ideas, opinions, and advice that circulates this social media for man different educators.

            To begin with, there are a whole host of teachers who share their techniques and ideas on Twitter for everyone to look at. I began my “teacher Twitter” career by following a number of other educators in various fields. As I perused through the information that was shared either through basic posts or retweets of articles, I was met with a wealth of knowledge that I really did not expect to receive on a site such as Twitter. I found advice for classroom work and experiences. There were certain posts that blew me away with the insight I found there. The advice that was given by certain people had me copying them down so that I could keep that in mind as well. I appreciated seeing people that I agreed with on teaching philosophy as well as those that made me consider the differences. Witnessing pieces of experience from current educators was a greatly beneficial piece to my experience.

            Along with that there were many pages that I followed which focused on different parts of education, ranging from technology in education, to views on teaching, to just general educational conferences that were occurring. I was able to see different areas of education in an advertising, yet informative, manner. I appreciated the information that was given to me from these pages and also the connection they had to what I had been learning about in Tech Ed class this semester.

            One last key piece to my experience on Twitter was the connection that these educators had to each other. There was a network of educators that all followed each other and, whether it was the reality in real life or not, had a personal connection and knew who each other was online. While there are arguments to be had on the depths of these “relationships”, for their purpose of sharing educational advice and techniques Twitter served very well.

            Overall, my experience on Twitter thus far has exceeded what I expected coming in. I have found different pages that I can look at for techniques or technology that I may want to pay attention to for my classrooms in the future. Along with that, I have been able to see advice on teaching come from both current educators and my peers, the next generation of teachers. All in all, it has been a beneficial experience for me.