Week #6

             I attended a professional development session last Friday, that was not related to technology but was about teaching EAL students, and a quote that Amy Buehler shared resonated with me.

She said, "Always have a lesson planned that does not use technology, just in case."

             I believe it is of the utmost importance to include technology in our classes when possible, and appropriate. Technology must be infused into our lessons, so that it holds a purpose. During our PD, Amy had a PowerPoint and a video to show, and it did not work. She used this as a teachable moment to show us pre-service teachers that you must always have a an alternate plan or adapt the lesson in a way that does not use technology. I strongly agree that we must not become absolutely reliant on technology because there are times when we are unable to troubleshoot the problem, and find out what the issue is with our computer, projector, connection, etc. As a prospective teacher, I feel we must also be able to adapt quickly and "switch gears" when needed. In a classroom setting there might be times where we are unable to book the computer lab, or the server is down, etc. We must take these moments and adapt quickly, so the ultimate goal of learning is achieved.


Video Making
            This week in class has been very fun! We took one day to plan a video, and write down different parts that we wanted to include in our video. We also took the day to collect different props that we needed. I feel having a plan helped tremendously, as when we started videoing we all had a focus on what we wanted to achieve. It also helped with discussing different scenes prior to, so we did not waste time when it came to videoing. Now, we are currently working on editing the video clips. With my group we have had plenty of laughs, and we all said it reminded us of high school again when we had similar projects to do. We did not have a video recorder, but we used an iPhone instead and it worked great. We are currently in the process of editing the video on iMovie. We are having lots of fun with this project, and we can't wait to see the final product. Just to give you a heads up our video is titled #BUPARKINGPROBS, and I think our audience will enjoy it!

~Jenna