My picture 🙂

The way I have laid out my reflection of my technology in-situ experience at Gordon Terrace is by using the Gibbs’ Reflective Learning Cycle outline.

Image from: https://helendenheld.com/tag/gibbs-reflective-learning-cycle/

DESCRIPTION: Myself and my year two cohort went to Gordon Terrace Elementary School on October 12th in the afternoon where we toured the school, library, and the makerspace for our Technology in-situ. During our time there we got to listen to the principle and librarian explain what the makerspace is used for, how it came about and what to expect from this room. We also got to ask questions about anything to do with teaching / technology, which was extremely helpful.  

The main reason we were there was to team up with the grade 1 / 2 classes and show them / teach them about the website called Epic Books. We got an hour to play around on the website with the students and give them an inside look into the Get Epic world.  

FEELINGS: The feelings I was feeling prior to the technology in-situ were excitement and nervousness, I felt these feelings because I was excited to be in a classroom setting and have the chance to teach young students about reading (online reading resources) and the nervousness feeling came from the unknown “how many students will I be working with?”, “what do I do if their computer does not work?”, “how to manage students with different preferences on books?”  

After the technology in-situ my feelings changed from excitement and nervousness to accomplishment and happiness. My feelings changed because all my unknown questions were answered, and it went better than I expected due to my students being engaged and whiling to learn about GetEpic.com.  

EVALUATION:  

Good: There were many good, positive parts to the technology in-situ, some examples being:  

  1. Touring a new school, I have not worked in yet.  
  2. Getting to ask the principal and librarian questions about teaching as well as the technology that is used in their school and what it looks like in their everyday school lives.  
  3. Teaching real students about GetEpic.com and being able to apply what we have learnt to real life classrooms.  
  4. Having a group discussion after the in-situ with my classmates to debrief our experiences.  

Bad: The good outweighed the bad by many, I would not even call some of the bad experiences “bad”, a better word would be “challenging”. The only challenge I was faced with was working with a student that was fully involved (touching the screen and keyboard keys, picking all the books to read and not sharing) and the other student who wanted to be fully involved but was too shy to say or act on anything. So, balancing this challenge in the moment was a bit difficult but I feel that in the end they both got a chance to read / look at a few books that interested them and no arguments happened between them either, which is always a good thing!  

ANALYSE: I feel that this technology in-situ was a huge learning lesson for me in so many ways. Even though I have been an EA in all the grades and most of the schools (except Gordon Terrace) I feel that every time you walk into a new school you are faced with new challenges and new experiences. The experiences I had faced in this in-situ were extremely beneficial due to me learning how to think on the spot when it comes to technology, a few examples being how to make sure the students that are using the same computer are both engaged and enjoying the lesson and how to keep students engaged when you are waiting for the login / pages to load.  

CONCLUSION: I feel that one thing I could have done differently in this in-situ was explain the website a little more in depth, such as pointing out the different age / reading levels, so they know what books to look for in the future when they login again to GetEpic.com. But I feel that I was listening and reading their body language and just got caught up in listening to the students read and finding books that caught their attention. So, I now know for next time to take the chance to point out some really great features that will benefit them in the future.  

ACTION PLAN: If I had a similar opportunity like this in the future, I think that I would study the website a little more in depth before showing it to the students. I would also have a few books already picked out (a variety of different genres) so we could move straight into the reading portion instead of possibly taking up too much time trying to find a book that interests the students.