Wow. Where do I even begin with reflecting on my experiences with hybrid teaching and preparing for an all-virtual student teaching classroom? First and foremost, it has been tough, but rewarding. Challenging, but with great takeaways. Full of trial and error. Trial and success. A whirlwind of emotions. When I first learned that I would be not only pre-student teaching but also student teaching virtually, I was heartbroken to say the least. It terrified me knowing that I would not have an actual in-person classroom experience. How would I learn any classroom management skills or form relationships with my students? While these particular teaching skills still need some fine-tuning, I feel that I have gained a lot of knowledge about using technology and implementing its wide variety of uses in my future classroom.
The past two semesters (Spring 2020 and Fall 2020) have allowed me explore educational technology tools that I do not believe I would have explored had we not moved to all-virtual learning. In essence, I guess you could say that this pandemic actually played a role in enhancing my technology skills. I have been able to explore so many tools the last few months that I will absolutely be integrating into my future class curriculum, virtual or not. Here are some of my favorites:
Jamboard: Jamboard is basically an online whiteboard system that allows people to collaborate in real time. It can be used for brainstorming, answering questions, or for group work.
Pear Deck: Pear Deck is an application that you can use in Google Slides to make the presentation interactive. You can provide questions or prompts for students to answer on their own screens in real time.
Edpuzzle: Edpuzzle is an assessment-centered tool that allows teachers to create interactive online videos. You can embed different kinds of questions, audio notes, audio tracks, or even comments on videos to supplement videos that you assign your students to watch. You can even grade students' answers via Edpuzzle!
Nearpod: Nearpod makes presentations interactive and limits distractions during a lesson by broadcasting content and learning exercises to students' devices as lessons are taking place. I use Nearpod for nearly every lesson!
Flipgrid: I consider Flipgrid to be a messageboard, if you will. Teachers can impose questions or topics and students make and post their own video responses. I love that you can add emojis to the video and reply to others via a typed comment!
Socrative: I like Socrative because it is a good student-response and surveying tool. You can make it anonymous or keep records of students' answers. I like the record-keeping feature because you can track the progress of your students' learning.
Kahoot: Man, I love Kahoot! This is probably my favorite ed. tech. tool. It is basically a game-based trivia quiz. Students gain or lose points depending on their answers. Teachers can make their own "trivia" questions or explore tons of other already created quizzes. I would have to say that this is one of the most engaging tools I have worked with-- kids get so competitive!!