“Do You NOT Find This Difficult?”

After taking a look at the readings and videos that were shared with us this week, and thinking about the different tools that were mentioned this week in the class presentation, I think there are many different tools that people are just not aware of, so in turn I wasn’t made aware of them.

When I first started teaching, it was June 2021. We were just on the grasp of being done with Covid-19. I just finished my last semester of University over Zoom. I just accepted a temporary position to finish off the school year. The day I accepted and got my teaching schedule, the school went on a lock down and I was forced to start my teaching online. I was teaching children who had no idea who I was online when I didn’t really know how to teach yet (yes I did my internship and I got a degree, but it takes more then that to know how to teach) and I just went right into learning how to use Google classroom and Seesaw, since that is what the division used.

I started my full time contract the following September, where I was made to use Microsoft products, so I learned Microsoft Teams – very quickly because we always had kids out on quarantine. I thought I was a lucky one, until my class was in isolation at home that following January. I quickly decided I needed to find a way to make this learning they are forced to do more fun and not so pencil-to-paper. I immediately created my lessons on Planbook. I used Canva to make their daily plans (posted to Microsoft Teams every morning), I used Youtube videos as their brain warm-ups and they had a daily writing prompt. We would have class meetings every day. I would use Blooket for them to practice their Math facts. I used the interactive whiteboard to teach math. Yet, now looking back, I don’t feel like I used enough of the wonderful tools that are around us and I especially don’t feel like I use them enough now in my classroom.

In the Youtube Video “7 Best Easy to Learn Tech Tools for Teachers” by ClassPoint, they talked about some tech tools that I actually found a couple of tools that I want to try and integrate into my classroom – some as soon as the break is over. The three that stood out to me was Baamboozle, ClassPoint, and EdPuzzle. All three of these things would make the learning that is happening in my class take a step up and become a different experience for my students. They all seem fairly student-friendly, which is a giant bonus and a MUST for me. I teach 3rd grade. I have so many varying needs and not a lot of support. The amount of “Miss Potoma, it stopped working!” “Miss Potoma I don’t know what to do!” “Miss P, I need help!” “Miss P, it died!” can become exhausting, and for me, after trying to teach the students what to do, and running around helping, I just get so tired of even bothering to try and use technology.

If I was to ever go back to an online learning situation again, I feel like I am and would be so prepared for it. I always had people saying to me when I graduated “how do you find this easy? Are you struggling cause I am!” . I never found it difficult because it was all I had known. I had been doing online classes my entire university career with my summer classes. I had done my final year online, literally had to do presentations in Katia’s EDTC 400 online. All of the things I used to teach was made online. Now that I have had two years of “normal”, I would still be able to transfer all my in-person things over. I would be better equipped for online learning because of this class and the different PD’s that I have now had access to thanks to being in the Education field for a couple of years.

7 Best Easy to Use Tech Tools for Teachers. ClassPoint March 21, 2022.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbGgajnrOh4