Well, the course is finally over. I admit, 6 weeks has totally flown by. I've learned a lot in a course that spanned just barely over a month. This course introduced me to a lot of cool, new digital tools that I'm excited to use in my future classroom.
My favourites that stick out to me so far are:
- Wordle
- PowToon
- Animoto
- Paper.li
I've also loved learning more about the flipped and blended classroom. These concepts, by far, have been the most interesting part of this course. However, we barely spent time learning how to implement them in the classroom! In fact, we just touched upon them in one of the online modules above.
I genuinely wished we spent less time on Genius Hour and more time learning how we could actually use these tools to teach. This course primarily focused on introducing us to a slew of online tools and resources but failed to actually show how to incorporate these tools in our future lessons. I would love to adopt a blended style of into my future classroom but I don't feel like this course taught me how to properly. Am I being a little over critical? Maybe... but it feels like something I've missed out on learning.
What I do appreciate is being exposed to all of these online resources. I plan on returning to some of these videos and tools to later incorporate them into my own teaching style.
Overall, I definitely picked up some great tips and techniques from this course. I do hope to improve my comfort level using technology and this course was a great start in doing so.
What I do appreciate is being exposed to all of these online resources. I plan on returning to some of these videos and tools to later incorporate them into my own teaching style.
Overall, I definitely picked up some great tips and techniques from this course. I do hope to improve my comfort level using technology and this course was a great start in doing so.
Hi Laura!
ReplyDeleteSorry you feel dissapointed in the course outcomes!
While we didn't spend a great deal of time explicitly explaining how to implement technology in the classroom, the course was designed to model how to do so. So the incorporation of the flipped classroom, and introducing a wide variety of tools you could use to build learning artifacts that would benefit students outside of class, but that (in turn) students could also use to demonstrate their learning.
The activities we participate in are designed to model how you could implement technology in the class. Everything we design and deliver, is something you can take and modify for your own classroom and your instructional goals.
Maybe we need to make those connections more explicit in the future. Thank you for your honest feedback. :)
Dave