I felt the lesson Cynthia observed went fairly well even though I encountered technical difficulties mid-class.  To introduce the class on web site creation and repurposing information, I had the students do a prewriting activity where they were expected to analyze the ISU web site taking into account the information they had learned about visual analysis in previous classes and in their readings.  The prewriting activity was really successful in getting them to reflect on what they had learned about in visual analysis. 

Then, because we were running a little behind schedule, I decided to lead a discussion as a class on a list of questions about the analysis that I had originally planned for the students to do in pairs.  After hearing Cynthia’s impression of this decision and reflecting on it on my own, I decided the change was not a very effective decision in an attempt to save time.  If I would have left this activity as a pair discussion, it would not have taken any longer than a whole class discussion.  Another benefit would have been that it would have made the class more student-center, allowing all of my students to share what they had come up with during their analyses rather than just two or three in a whole class discussion.  In the future, I plan to analyze possible time-saving situations more closely and remember that making an activity teacher-centered does not automatically mean it will take less time than if the activity were student-centered.

After the prewriting activity and discussion, the You-Tube video I was planning on using as a tutorial on how to make a Google Site would not play. The plug-in that had been installed to play You-Tube videos the week before had been erased.  In hindsight, I should have verified that the video would play before class started.  This is something I plan to due in the future before I show videos using the web and not my own personal computer’s software.  

I had originally planned to show the You-Tube tutorial because I wanted my students to learn how to use You-Tube tutorials so they could access them when they were outside of the classroom if they needed help.  As a result of the technical difficulty, I emailed the students the link to the You-Tube tutorials because after a quick informal class survey, I found out the majority of them already have the You-Tube plug-in on their personal computers so they would be able to access the videos at home.  I also let them know that if they did have technical difficulties accessing the tutorials at home, they should first try to install the plug-in, and if that did not work, they could contact me by email so we could arrange a time to work on the technological issues.

As a result of the video not playing in class, I demonstrated what they would have learned from the You-Tube tutorial on my computer by creating my own Google Site and showing them how to modify and personalize it.  I felt that I was able to successfully deliver the concepts the students needed to create a personal web site just as the tutorial would have; however, I think if I had had a little more time to plan how I was going to carry out my demonstration, I would have  done things a little differently content-wise.  Instead of creating a personal homepage, I would have created and set up the web site by repurposing one of the brochures I was planning on passing out to my students later on in the class. By doing this, I would have modeled more closely what the students were going to do in a repurposing activity following my demonstration. 

I am proud of how calmly I dealt with the technological difficulty, but I wish my demonstration content had made a little more pedagogical sense.  I know, as I gain more experience in a classroom and reflect on it, I will develop better “teacher instincts”, and these instincts will help me to improve my impromptu decision making and overall teaching abilities.