Week 2 Edu 642 Reflection

This week my thinking really changed on how I can make tools work for both online and face-to-face. Right now schools are announcing left and right that they will be starting the year fully online for the first semester. My school district is still giving the option for a face-to-face option but I would not be surprised if we were not ftf the entire time so I am rethinking my classroom and how I can make the transition for students and parents as seamless as possible. One of my favorite things so far is my Bitmoji classroom which I have really been developing to work with my Enrichment class. This week besides developing my Bitmoji classroom I made a video tutorial for students on how to use my Bitmoji classroom fully. I think this will help students and parents with how to access their information since the class is completely individualized. I would continue to do more videos to ensure students and parents know how to navigate the information on Haiku.

I also created a video highlighting things students need to be thinking about for their science bacteria project. I would make more assignment helpful tip videos. This will be a helpful way to ensure students don’t fall into common mistakes for big projects and is a way that they can rewatch directions. Short videos with demonstrations can also help with differentiation and ensuring students have their accommodations. To make these videos more interactive I would add them to EdPuzzle and have comprehension questions for students to answer. 

The tool that I ended up using is Zoom, I tried to use Loom, and I will be trying different tools. Zoom is easy to use while sharing a screen and showing your face in a video. The drawback of using zoom is some of the clarity. This is why I will be trying to find a user friendly program that does not limit the time for screen sharing. Loom did not work well with my Mac. I could not get it to reliably start and stop recording. This led me to being frustrated and wasting time. This past year I used Screencastify and was very pleased but the unlimited time feature is now a paid feature.