I am a first-year teacher learning the ropes of being an effective teacher in the classroom. I discussed becoming a part-time online teacher with my husband and we both agreed it would be a great way to broaden my teaching experience. Before this school year I had worked as a long-term substitute teacher for the public school system becoming the teacher of the classroom when the teacher quit or went on maternity leave. I learned how to be a firm authority figure in the classroom working as a substitute. This year as a teacher with her own classroom, I learned how to develop professional relationships with the students, modify lesson plans to meet student needs, and overall, how to be flexible and think on my feet. I have only completed the participate section of the TOOL course but already I have learned skills I wish I had at the beginning of this school year. For instance, I learned how to teach students the importance of protecting their reputation on the internet. I now have a checklist document students can use to verify if a website is reputable for a research paper. Thanks to other participants in the course I have ideas for how I want to teach my online course. I shared a video Kelly Walker created for her students and shared with the community. I posted it to my blog so I would not forget about it in the future and to have as a guide in creating my own video. I created an account with Smore and PowToon and I plan to continue to use both accounts in my physical classroom and in my virtual classroom in the future.
This first section of TOOL felt overwhelming at first when I looked at the quest list, but now that I have already finished this section and I know I have what it takes to complete the other sections I am excited to learn more new skills and teaching ideas from TOOL and more experienced teachers in this digital community.
This first section of TOOL felt overwhelming at first when I looked at the quest list, but now that I have already finished this section and I know I have what it takes to complete the other sections I am excited to learn more new skills and teaching ideas from TOOL and more experienced teachers in this digital community.