Today I started a blog...

Photo creds because I'm a good Digital Citizen

I'm a teacher. We always tend to start a new term with an assignment, "Tell me how your holiday was..." blah blah.

Or write "A Day in the Life of..."... trying to be all creative and such.

But ... Today I started a blog.

I've always thought about blogging, but recently, during this COVID19 lock-down, I started doing free online courses on online learning and classroom strategies to incorporate, and all I could think of is, how do I change my learning activities to incorporate all the stuff I've been learning.

Blogging is one of the takeaways from my many courses - especially as a feedback tool, an evaluation of student learning, and pretty much getting the viewpoints of your kids to know how they're faring. But with this push into online learning, I thought, hey, if I want my kids to start blogging, then I might as well get some experience. I've always been a journal writer, because I like putting my thoughts on paper to sort out my thoughts and emotions, so here goes... my first ONLINE blog.

However, this is not going to be a personal blog about my life, love and relationships, schemes to take over the world etc. Instead, I want to use it to track my online learning in Digital Technology. At the heart of my teaching is improving my digital technology skills and incorporating them in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning. Since moving to Kuwait (yep, I'm a Jamaican living in the Middle East), I've been exposed to so many new teaching technologies that it has pushed me to develop my skills professionally as I have a natural tendency to explore digital tools. I'll be taking couple courses this summer (I'm indoors with nothing else to do), and as a hands-on learner, I thought it imperative that I try out what I plan to use in the upcoming ONLINE academic school year (fingers crossed that we'll still be online so I can try out all these new tools). 

I can get carried away, so let me get to the point. As I learn about new tools, I will try to remember to come and blog about them, as a reminder that this is what I want my students to do... "reflect on their learning". 

... Forget that, this first blog post will probably be long.

What have I learnt so far?

This digital technology obsession began really in January. I went to a workshop with the amazing Renee Hobbs in Muscat, Oman where I was exposed to the concept of Digital Literacy and this opened the door for me wanting to master digital technology. I came back to school and led a PD session. I NEVER volunteer for those things, but I was so inspired I was happy to share.

And then lock down and curfews happened. I was forced into learning new tools to keep the online classroom alive. Google Classroom was thankfully already a thing we used and so it was a matter of keeping that platform alive and engaging, and so I took on the challenge of learning a few new tools as well as implementing some that are tested and true.

So here are some of my faves:

1. 

If you want a lovely video to teach concepts that you have no idea how to illustrate and add video to, Edpuzzle is your friend. You know you love YouTube, but add the two together and you have one of the most perfect teaching tools. Embed questions to help keep the students engaged, and with the audiovisual aid, it certainly helps students learn at their own pace.

2.

I recently discovered this online tool (it also has an app), and I fell in love, because you can create interactive lessons that are so personalized to the content that you are teaching. Yes, it will be a tedious process putting the material together, but I love the way it allows students to get "hands-on". From dragging images around on the screen, to recording voice notes to explain an answer, this online tool helps present media in a variety of forms.

3.

Don't want to read short essays or collect slips of paper for exit tickets, have your students film a short video on Flipgrid. It's easy to use, easy to assess with a rubric, and students can find another way to express themselves without the typical writing. It even has filters and emojis to keep things interesting. 

I do have some other apps/tools I like to work with and that I think are perfect for an online learning environment but if I continue here, this will become a masters thesis. So let's take it one day at a time...

Or maybe I'll take a nap and then return. For now, I'll just list them so I can remember what I want to talk about.

Canva, Screencastify, Adobe Spark (can someone offer to teach me Adobe Illustrator and Procreate... as well as provide the iPad and the pencil :) Thanks!).

I made a mental list of some more apps as well as the book Create to Learn I plan to read by Renee Hobbs.

yeh this is a mouthful... maybe you might regret that Today I started a blog, lol.

toodles.

Debz