For the most part I was able to implement my project as planned. I was able to incorporate video tutorials to our school website and add independent skill building exercises for the students who move faster than the rest of the class. However, my lessons with the students have been focusing on how to use the video tutorials to learn. For the past two weeks, I have been teaching my classes how to access the videos I put on the school website and how to use them. These are mostly first through fourth grade students and so video tutorials are a new concept for many of them and for many of the teachers. Now that they are familiar with the tools, I would like to work on them using them more independently.
I had wanted to 'flip' one of my lessons, but had trouble executing on this because I am not a regular classroom teacher who can assign homework. I see each class once a week and the teaches I asked to do a little lesson prep for our lab time by showing a video, forgot to do so. I'm really excited by the lesson format though and will try to tackle this challenge later in the year. Another challenge I have is sound in the computer lab. If all 26 students in my class watched the video tutorials on their computers, we would have too much noise. One or two students can watch these with their volumes down, but if I want students to be more independent with the video lessons, I need to have a class set of headphones.
I had wanted to 'flip' one of my lessons, but had trouble executing on this because I am not a regular classroom teacher who can assign homework. I see each class once a week and the teaches I asked to do a little lesson prep for our lab time by showing a video, forgot to do so. I'm really excited by the lesson format though and will try to tackle this challenge later in the year. Another challenge I have is sound in the computer lab. If all 26 students in my class watched the video tutorials on their computers, we would have too much noise. One or two students can watch these with their volumes down, but if I want students to be more independent with the video lessons, I need to have a class set of headphones.
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
Even though the students haven't used the video lessons independently yet, I am extremely happy to see them engaged in the tutorials. They are able to learn from the videos and our group lessons have run much smoother. Having many of the classroom teachers learn from the videos and use them for lessons in their classrooms on their own is also so exciting for me. The more practice the students have on the skills I introduce in the computer lab, the better they get and we can keep all students learning at a faster pace.
How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?
I think I tried to address two problems that where very different. I have the slower students and I have the faster students. Each is a problem of it's own. I focused mostly on the slower students and the extra skill building exercise were a second priority. I notice this is very common for teachers to put the more challenging work second, but I still would like to address this side of my project a little deeper.
What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
People learn technology in many different ways, but most are most comfortable exploring on their own or learning from friends. (Study) Reading this study done by the University of Western Ontario, really helped me understand how by pedagogical choices for this project would help me teach better. Quick tutorials are very handy. The shorter they are the better. These lessons can be used multiple times through out the school for staff and students and when schools can't afford PD such as Atomic Learning, why not create your own lessons that can be revisited over and over.
In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?
I am very excited in the results of this project. I might not try to address two problems at the same time, but I definitely liked trying to address both sides of this challenge. I am so thrilled in the results and look forward to expanding on my initial achievements.
