EDU214 Reflections Spring 2021

Chrysanti Chandra

EDU214

Dr. Joni Flowers

Reflections

Spring 2021

Assignment 1 - 20 January 2021

What I learned: I mostly learned about myself for this assignment, as I was

self-reflecting of why I want to become a teacher and actively make decisions of

things about myself I want to share with the class.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I don’t think there were any weaknesses in this

assignment, since it was mostly an introductory assignment so we can get to know

each other in the class. I think the VARK test scores was a strength to get to know

our learning styles and needs ourselves. I think the VARK tool is very useful to learn

more about your own students and so teachers can cater to the class’ learning

needs.

Activity: An activity I would do is using using word processors for students to

type a short paragraph introducing themselves. This would be a great activity to be

done in the beginning of the year so the class can get to know one another better.

This would work well with students from, in my opinion, Grade 3 and above.

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Assignment 2 - 22 January 2021

What I learned: I learned about the things that are important in the

classroom. This assignment made me think what my dream classroom would look

like, and helped me visualize the necessary furniture, materials and tools to create

that. It also helped me self-reflect why those things are important for me to have in

the classroom and how it can benefit students.

Strengths & Weaknesses: A strength on this assignment is that it gives us a

chance to reflect on what we, as teachers, would want in our dream classroom. It

also gives us future ideas through looking at our classmate’s dream classroom, which

also helps us get to know each other too. A weakness for me was using google docs

to create the layout of my classroom, as I feel it was quite restrictive and not very

aesthetically pleasing. I hoped to have more freedom and tools to present my ideal

classroom.

Activity: An activity I would do at the beginning of the year is to re-design the

classroom by collaborating with the students. Using Google Forms I can create a

questionnaire to ask the students what they think about the classroom environment,

and what we can change to help them learn better or make the classroom feel more

comfortable. Listening to students’ input and listening to their voices is an important

aspect to cater to their learning needs.

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Assignment 2.2 - 25 January 2021

What I learned: I learned about different designs of certificates and flyers use

in schools. School flyers is relatively popular too in Australia and Indonesia, but

certificates are used sparingly in the classroom. It was interesting for me to do some

basic research of the different kinds of certificates that can be given out to students

in the American school system.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I don’t think there were any weaknesses in this

assignment. It was a fun assignment to do that allowed our creativity flow, which I

enjoyed. It was also fun to see my classmates’ designs too, it gave me great future

design ideas.

Activity: An activity I would do in the classroom is for the students to create

an informational poster in groups. This would be a great opportunity for

collaboration where students have to research, collate data and present them

visually. The poster would be done in either Microsoft Word or Canvas.

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Assignment 3 - 29 January 2021

What I learned: I learned about the requirements for Education majors as I

was reading more about the e-Portfolio requirements that is required not only in

EDU214, but for other EDU subjects too.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I think it’s great for us to start creating our

ePortfolio/website early on, especially in EDU214, so we can be prepared and be

more familiar with Weebly.

Activity: For an activity in the classroom, I would like the students to try and

create their own simple website as project that showcased their previous work. This

would be an end of the year project where they have collected some of the work

(e.g. posters, writing, presentations). It would be a great chance for students in

Grade 4 and above to explore Weebly and design the website in any way they like.

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Assignment 4 – 4 February 2021

What I learned: I learned the differences between Google Slides and MS

Powerpoint, the features that they both offer and the pros and cons between using

the two software. Personally, I use both software depending on the context and I

learned which one I prefer to use to create presentations (which is Google Slides). I

also learned a website, slidecarnival.com, where you can get different themes to use

for your Google Slides presentations for free.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I don’t think this assignment has any weaknesses

as it allows us students to compare and contrast the two different softwares. It also

helps us see which software is better for our own personal and classroom use, and

how we can integrate them within the classroom.

Activity: An activity I would do in the classroom is to work in groups to create

a Google Slides presentation. This would be great in classrooms of Grade 2 and

grades above, so they can be more familiar with the Google Slides software and how

it can change when there are multiple contributors to the document. They would

also learn how to export/download their slides into files to be submitted via a

dropbox or pptx file.

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Assignment 5 – 8 February 2021

What I learned: I familiarize myself more with Google Sheets and learned

different formulas that may be useful when collecting data of students. I learned that

I like manually inserting and creating the formulas, and also how nice it is organizing

data in the Google sheets. As I have some experience with using MS Spreadsheet

before, I also learned the similarities and differences with using the two softwares,

which I find to not be too different.

Strengths & Weaknesses: This was one of my favorite assignments because I

love using spreadsheets to collect data. I also like using formula so the data can be

calculated automatically and it was a good learning experience to be used in practice

as a teacher. The only weakness for me. I don’t think there was any weaknesses for

this assignment, and I hoped we get to explore Google Sheets more in the future.

Activity: As an activity, I would first have the students do the VARK test

invidiually and record their scores. Then, I would create a classroom Google Sheets

so all students in the classroom can contribute to putting in their own data. This

would be a great activity for Grade 4 classrooms and the grade above, so they can

contribute in collating data as a classroom. I would also teach them basic formulas

that can be used such as SUM and AVERAGE formula after everyone has put their

data in, so then we can take a look as a class at which learning style is the most

popular. This activity would also help me as a teacher to understand the learning

styles of the overall classroom which can inform my future lesson planning.

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Assignment 6 – 18 February 2021

What I learned: This was one of my favorite assignments, as I was able to

explore and learn about the different educational software that is available on the

internet. I learned different softwares that I personally like, and which ones are free

and open to the public and the ones that aren’t (e.g. need subcription, login

credentials). Personally, the only softwares that I am familiar with from the list was

quizlet, prezi, Brainpop, and Photoshop. So I learned about other different softwares

that can potentially be useful in the classroom setting.

Strengths & Weaknesses: The biggest strength of this assignment is the list of

softwares that we are given. We could also evaluate softwares that we already

know, which gives great flexibility for some students. I particularly liked learning

about the choices some of my classmates picked as I wasn’t familiar with a lot of

them, particularly the ones that are used in CCSD (such as myON and SmartyAnts). It

was great, as an international student, to better understand the softwares used in

CCSD and learn about my peers’ experiences. A weakness of this assignment for me

is not being able to look at some of the softwares because it needs a CCSD login or

you need to pay for it. I would love to have been able to see and learn more about

softwares use such as SmartyAnts. Abby noted that her daughter use the softwares

myON and SmartyAnts, and I was interested in hearing more about her experience

as a parent of a CCSD student using these softwares.

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Activity: An activity I would do in the classroom for a Geography lesson is for

the students to play the sheppardsoftware Geography level 1 game. Students will do

this individually (preferably after some previous lessons in US Geography), and use

this software as an engaging assessment. After they are finished with the game, they

will put in their scores (percentage correct) and the time they needed to finish the

game into a Google Sheets that I have made to collate the data altogether.

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Assignment 7 – 22 February 2021

What I learned: For this assignment, I learned about the different emerging

technology that are used in today’s classrooms. From personal experience, I knew

schools in Australia integrate tablets, laptops, chromebooks and smartboards, but I

was very interested in the emerging technology used in American school. There were

some useful applications that are popular in American school such as Nearpod and

Classrooms, which I would love to learn more about.

Strengths & Weaknesses: A strength of this assignment is that we have to

find a peer-reviewed journal article about an emerging technology use in classrooms.

Through finding and reading the journal articles ourselves, we are able to learn

through credible research. A weakness for me personally is that I find the topic to be

too general and vague, because ‘emerging technology’ can refer to a variety of

things. I think this assignment would be better and helpful if there were more

criterias to which we should look into, for example focusing on either hardware or

softwares as the technology, or picking a technology that caters to a specific learning

need of students.

Activity: An activity in the classroom I would use is learning Geography of US

states using iPads and the sheppardsoftware game. Each student will use an iPad and

try to complete the US Geography Level 1 game to the best of their ability, as an

assessment of the geographical knowledge from previous lessons. This would be

great for students in Grade 3 and above as they are learning about the US states.

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Assignment 8.1 – 25 February 2021

What I learned: Fortunately, I am also currently taking EDU203 Special

Education where we also learned about the different assistive technologies used to

help students with special needs. Through this assignment, I learned more in-depth

about a specific assistive technology, and that was virtual reality (VR). I’ve known VR

to be a gaming equipment and never really thought of it as an assistive technology.

After researching, I learned the different uses of VRs to help students with differing

special needs and how it can cater to the diverse needs of students.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I think this assignment is great because assitive

technology is such an important part in the classroom. There are so many different

forms of assistive technology and I wished we learned more about the common ones

that are used in the classroom. As I was researching VR, I realized that this

technology is not as accessible to the classrooms or in schools due to its cost and

difficulty to use.

Activity: An activity I would do in the classroom is for students to use tablets,

iPads or computers accesible in the classroom to research about assistive

technology. I would put the students in groups, so they can designate roles and tasks

between themselves. Each group would be responsible for their own research and

presentation. Each presentations would need a definition of assistive technology,

one assistive technology to focus on, and how it can assist students with special

needs. This activity would be great for Grade 5 students and promote collaboration

and research skills.

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Assignment 8.2 – 1 March 2021

What I learned: This assignment, I learned how accessible and easy it is to

collaborate a document with multiple people through Google Docs. I remember in

the early days of Google Docs, it was quite difficult to add things to the same

document when multiple users were online and contributing at the same time.

However, since then, I noticed that collaborating is much smoother and that the

documents are updated in live time than having the document autosave every

couple of seconds like it did before.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I think it’s great to create one big document with

all my classmates together, and collate all information into one. I can’t find any

weaknesses for this assignment.

Activity: In relation to this assignment, I would create an activity in the

classroom where students create one big document together. In one Google

Document that I share with the class, I would like each student to put in their name,

their age, a hobby and one fact about themselves. This would be a great activity to

be done in the beginning of the year where the class is still getting to know one

another. Then at the end of the activity, I will present the final document through

the smartboard or projector, and as a class read their introductions together. This

activity would be great for students in Grade 3 and above so they are more familiar

with Google Docs technology and collaborating with their peers.

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