Seeing Through New Eyes

So my cohort from graduate school now has a blog! It can be found at Cohort 5 . Those of us involved with it are hoping that many more people from our cohort will participate.

I presented a lesson last night in a class. It was a great experience to design the lesson and use the pedagogy and learning theory I felt appropriate for it. I remembered to take into consideration most of the ideals of teaching through distance education, like remembering to wear plain clothes, and look at the camera and not at the students in my room, etc. After it was all over, I realized that even though I'd practiced my lesson and tried so hard to remember all the good dist. ed. practices, that there were still things that slipped through the cracks or that could have been done better. Now I know that when you teach anything, you always think afterwards what could have been better, but I now know for myself how scary it could be for a teacher to teach this way when they have been used to a face to face classroom. I am comfortable with the technology, and I had a few questions at first. It was just a good testimonial to me of the importance of 'drilling' the ideals of ...

As I finish up my final project for graduate school, I have found that everything I've learned makes so much more sense once it has been put to the test. I guess it is one of those ideas where if you practice what you preach, the preaching side is respected more. It has been fun and stressful all in one to work with others (who at times I have felt know more than I do) and do the developing of this training. I think I have learned just as much about the programs I am training on as I'll and others will be able to teach. Even though formal schooling will be ending, I hope to be able to continue with my education in many ways. One way will be to continue working on projects. I have a project going where I am in need of more collaboration with others for the content of it. I think I'll send out a request for help on this. I've contacted several teachers in the K-12 area, but haven't heard much back. Now with my school work closing I need to focus on this more.