Virtual Classroom Creation

First and foremost, my team and I created a website to use as a teaching tool in an elementary school classroom. This website, eclassroomtasks.wordpress.com, serves as a virtual classroom that offers students learning resources and practice for the concepts that they are learning about in class. The website has a section for each of the different subjects that students would theoretically be taking at school. Students are provided with learning material and practice activities, as well as additional resources that support their learning. We included these additional resources as a way of adapting the website for students who may be struggling with the material to be learned. One of my goals has been to differentiate my teaching, which relates to Competency 7. Having an online tool like this one already serves as a way of offering multiple means of representation and engagement, but I hope that the additional resources offer more support. This project took a lot of effort but seeing the final product that turned out to be very interactive as well as informational was very rewarding. With relation to the Professional Competencies, I definitely feel as though this media project helped me grow in Competency 8. More specifically, creating this website has made me think about how students can use technology to facilitate their own learning. This website would allow students to go online and interact with different kinds of media in order to support their learning and to put their knowledge into practice. Here’s an example of one of our instructional videos:

In order to create an effective website, my team and I had to assess the usefulness of certain mediums of information (such as video, audio, text) and judge which format would better suit our specific learning goals. This competency also asks teachers to keep in mind the competencies that students must develop, which I did keep in mind throughout the creation of the website. In another sense, because this project was so collaborative, I feel as though I grew in relation to Competency 11. My group members and I discussed at length our pedagogical choices and whether or not they had to be adapted or altered. I also took stock of how this teaching tool would fit into my teaching practice, and whether or not I would feel comfortable integrating this kind of technology into my classroom (I would!).

I hope to integrate this type of online community into my classroom, depending on the grade level and resources that children have access to at home. Because a computer is required, I would first have to ensure that all students do have access to one. I never thought that I would have the resources to use such a tool, but now that I’ve learned how to use WordPress, I’ve realized that I actually like creating an online space with different videos, images, information, and resources. Hopefully, my students would respond to it well and would like having to chance to guide their own learning at home.

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