![]() Chapter Eight 1.Have you had any distance education or blended course experiences? Try to remember what were the benefits and the disadvantages of that experience. If you have not had either type of course, try to imagine what it would be like and what characteristics of it you would like and which ones you would not. Why? The 2020-2021 school year was the year where I was doing distance education as a student and was teaching in a blended classroom setting. I will have to say that both come with their challenges and perks. As a student, I really appreciated distance education due to the flexibility it provided. I was able to conquer the classroom setting as an educator while setting time aside to work on graduate work. My distance education classroom was set up to where a student can access their work whenever and wherever they are. One of the greatest challenges I faced was not having a teacher teaching me face to face. This was my first time experiencing a classroom where I was going to have to do most of the teaching myself by reading material, researching, and looking at videos my professors assigned. Although it was set up in a flexible setting, I have always done better when being instructed what to do. I feel that as a student one must be more independent in their studies. Though this can pile up schoolwork and my professional duties all at once and become stressful. Teaching in the classroom this past year, I had to utilize a blended classroom to allow students to work independently in class while communicating through Google Classroom from home and even at school. It was the best way to incorporate partner work while social distancing. Project Reflection: This week’s projects consisted of a lot of video editing. We were to use screen capture while adding interactive activities for students to use. My lessons concentrated on teaching about rows and columns. I started with a simple Google Slide presentation that grew to a better and greater presentation. I enjoyed the process on how each video grew with the interactions our students could use. However, the editing part took a bit longer than expected. Narrowing project 7 to three minutes was very hard for me. It is my natural teacher instinct to talk and over teach. Recording myself helped me keep the lesson simple and to the point with enough instruction to keep students engaged. I enjoyed getting creative with the way I pointed out the rows and columns for each array example. These videos will most definitely be used in my classroom this coming up year. All of the recordings made me realize how they can be a great tool to use as a way to keep teachers accountable on how time is being utilized in their classroom. They are a fast and quick way to share with other teachers in your team, and use as an accountability check with one another. I plan to introduce this idea to my team as a way for us to see each teachers teaching methods and hopefully learn more from each other without having to leave our classrooms. The project that stood out to me the most was project 8. Edpuzzle was a new tool for me, and it is something I will be utilizing with my students this coming up year. The engagement of the videos are made meaningful by adding the comprehension questions throughout the video. Overall, all three projects were challenging yet educational. Weekly Projects: Project 6 Project 7 Project 8 Code: renboss
3 Comments
William Washington
7/4/2021 09:33:26 am
Paulette,
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Teresa Washington
7/4/2021 12:09:09 pm
Paulette, I must 100% agree with you and your observation that as we have more distance learning courses, the more students will have to be independent in their studies. I have noticed that as you get to the collegiate level that their are few educators and more instructors instructing studies on what to do, but not actually teaching the material. I have to pretty much teach myself. However, this does not work for everyone's learning style. I think there will need to be better policing of distance learning courses in order to endure that students are retaining the materials being taught. I commend you on your efforts to operate a blended classroom during a pandemic. We all had to adapt the best we can and learned so much along the way.
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Steven Winters
7/4/2021 09:41:09 pm
Paulette, I agree with you 100% regarding the perks and challendge of distance education as a student. The flexibility of online education has made it possible for me to earn an undergraduate degree and pursue a Masters. My job is too demanding for me to take traditional course. As for the challenge, it can be hard at times with out the face-to-face, but with communication with the teacher and students it can be done. Also, I also found it challenging to edit the video down to 3 minutes. I got it close as I possible could.
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AuthorPaulette Vargas |