Reflections
Over the last year and a half, COVID has changed me as an educator, particularly in terms of using technology in my classroom. Before COVID, my classroom used an interactive white board that required students to take turns or give answers that I in turn used to interact with the board. It was definitely more engaging than the old chalkboard style of teaching that I started with and it saved a lot of set up and clean up time. I was able to video record students and play back their performances for critique, share videos of different cultures and provide better visuals for my students. I dabbled in google sites, digital newsletters and blog posts, but at that time, even parents were still used to paper and phone call communication, instead of the digital means that I was moving towards.
COVID quarantine made everyone dive into the technology integration pool head first! I quickly learned to use video conferencing platforms, upped my game on the up keep of a google site and learned ways to make my distanced lessons interactive by using google products, Flipgrid and a number of other new platforms.
As we moved back into this past school year, my school was able to ensure that all students had a device, either a Chromebook or Ipad, which made technology integration so much easier! My students could all perform interactive tasks through Seesaw activities and google apps. Lessons were entirely paperless this year thanks to those tools. They made a lot of my activities more engaging, meaningful and fun for the students and I was able to give individual feedback more frequently. I also loved that I always had access to the evidence of learning my students created, instead of just a number grade in my grade book.
When I found out that a google for music education class would be offered this year I was very excited! The google apps have so many different features and I wanted to find new and exciting ways to use them in my classroom. Now that I'm coming to the end of the course, I realize that the things I learned most during this course center around student agency, communication and reaching beyond the four walls of my classroom. Instead of just learning how to manipulate the basic functions of the apps, I learned how to use the apps to further my students learning experiences. There are still a lot of features that I haven't tried on a lot of the apps, but the Advanced Google Tools for Music Educators course has sparked a curiosity about the different Google products that will undoubtably push me to explore more ways to integrate them into my classroom.
Between this course and my work for my school districts personalized learning cohort, I will be able to go into our next school year with a new perspective on student engagement and participation, and I will be able to reimagine what "education" can look like. I hope to begin moving towards more personalized learning in my classroom and technology will be one avenue to get there. I also hope to try more collaborative tasks by using Jamboards or find out more about my students through google forms. I'm also hoping that these technology tools allow me to stay organized and analyze my educational outcomes in a whole new way. I will continue to use Seesaw as my LMS, but I also have a lot of ideas of how I can integrate google products through that LMS and explore past the four walls of our classroom using things like Google Earth and Arts and Culture.
