21st Century Teaching...

I think that the central tenants of educating students using 21st century teaching skills are extremely valuable in theory. However, I find it hard to be able to incorporate such ideas into my classroom. Because of the population I work with and the lack of resources available to me, it is challenging to incorporate any sort of technology into our day to day classroom work. I believe that it is vitally important to encourage students to learn how to use technology more effectively and to assimilate those skills into teaching the standard curriculum; however, there is no possible way for me to do that at the school I currently work for. I do, however, feel as though I attempt to include other 21st century teaching skills by developing hands-on projects that engage the whole student, their creative abilities, and their intellect rather than only teaching through lecture and notes on the board.

Free Write

So far, I feel this class has encouraged me to develop how often I incorporate technology into my classroom as well as improved my ability to use different types of technology. While I appreciate the exposure to these new and, at times, challenging ideas, I am still unsure how much I like the idea of blogging. It remains odd to me that anybody can access what I am writing...it is hard for me to write openly and creatively when I know that it could not only be viewed by my teacher and classmates, but to anyone who would ever happen to stumble upon it. While that fact that this is even possible does amaze me, it also makes me apprehensive to write about a lot of things.

Video Lesson Experience

It was an interesting experience for me to hear myself teaching. While I enjoyed learning about video editing as part of this assignment, I feel like it's always somewhat awkward to listen and/or watch yourself doing anything. However, I think that this assignment can also work to improve my teaching skills because it allows me to evaluate how I am coming across to my students and what I can do to teach more effectively with the type of students I have in my classroom. I guess that the awkwardness of listening to myself is outweighed by the benefits I can receive from bringing a critical eye to my teaching style and abilities.