Teacher Placement...

Teacher's are always there to help students with whatever they need. However, students rarely get the chance to do the same for their teachers. The 'Teacher Placement' project for my IDC class, was a nice change. I was paired up with my friend Denise, and our job was to help teachers from the art department at Mackenzie. We were assigned to help Mr. Simpson and Ms. Scott, who both wanted completely different things. In breif, Mr. Simpson wanted to revamp his old website, and Ms. Scott wanted us to teach her students how to shoot, upload, and edit video.


Did you enjoy the experience? Why or why not?
Even though this project was a lot of work, I can truly say that I enjoyed it. For Ms. Scott's music class, I got to make a presentation on how to use iMovie. This was a really fun task for me since I know iMovie inside and out, I love shooting/editing videos, and I love presenting. I even enjoyed filming the Jing tutorials for the resource website that we created for her students. I thought that adding a video option for the music ISP was a great idea; I wish I would of have that option for some of my ISPs.
Mr. Simpson's website was also really enjoyable to make. Some of the work was quite tedious (like uploading and renaming all of his files), but the rest of it was quite fun. I really enjoyed making the headers on photoshop, as well as editing the HTML of the website theme. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of helping and working with teachers and would like to do it again.


What went well with your placement?
With this placement, thankfully the majority of things went well. The fact that I was comfortable with all the technology we were using to help the teachers, was really great. If I was placed with a teacher who wanted help with smartboards or clickers, I would have been just as lost as he/she would have been. Ms. Scott also had very strict deadlines, this worked very well since it forced Denise and I to do a lot of work in a very short period of time. This was a little stressful, but deadlines prevent these placement plans from being dragged on and on. The presentation that we made for the music students also went very smoothly. Even though what we were teaching was basic, the students seemed very interested in using iMovie and WMM. Mr. Simpson's placement plan also went well; once we found him a website platform everything was really straight forward.


What difficulties did you have with your placement?
As great as this placement was, there were some difficulties along the way. The major difficulty was finding Mr. Simpson a website platform that met all of his expectations. He was already using a Google sites, however for an art teacher, it's just not the best option. The themes are boring/restricting, there is no photo/video gallery option, and there is a maximum for file downloads/uploads. At first, Denise and I were thinking of making Mr. Simpson multiple websites. One for announcements and files, one for photos to display student work, as well as links to Google Docs for files that went over the maximum capacity. Even though this solved all the problems, I thought that this was just ridiculous, there has got to be something out there that combines everything Mr. Simpson needs into one website! I was determined to find a better (and free) option! I spent a couple of days vigorously searching and finally came across the perfect solution, Weebly Education. No maximum capacity for files, no cost, no ads, no restrictions. Perfect.
There were also a couple of minor difficulties along the way. One being, uploading our Jing tutorials onto the resource website for the music students (of course we used a Weebly website). Weebly allows you to upload Flash files directly onto  the website, which was perfect since our Jing videos were Flash files. However, the files were too big to upload! In order to get our tutorials onto the website, we had to upload them onto the Jing website and then embed the HTML of the videos onto our resource website. This worked, but the videos were so large they got cropped. Then we had to figure out how to edit the HTML in order to make the videos the right size. Did I mention that we had to film, edit, and upload these Jing tutorials onto our resource website over one weekend!


Do you consider your placement a success?
Even though this placement took quite some time, I do believe that is was a success. Mr. Simpson and Ms. Scott are technologically advanced, but they are just so busy. What we did for them was a big help. Everything for Ms. Scott's placement went according to plan, we presented to her class on how to use iMovie/WMM and even made a website full of resources. We gave her everything she asked her and more. Mr. Simpson's website is not quite finished since he has been too busy to give us all his files/photos/announcements. However, we are going to meet with him (when he has time) to teach him how to use and update his new website. He's going to start using the website for second semester, I would consider the website a partially finished success. Overall, both teachers were very pleased with what we did for them.


Do you think the project is useful/has value for IDC students/teachers/students of placement teachers?
This project is definitely useful for both the teachers and students. Teachers get to incorporate more technology into their classrooms, and their students get to experience this new technology. The placement allows for the somewhat technologically behind teachers to start to embrace technology, which is a great thing since this is wear our society is headed. This project also has value for IDC students since they get to actually teach teachers for once instead of the other way round.


How could the project be improved for future IDC classes?
I was lucky enough to be working with technology that I was very familiar with. However, some classmates were not so lucky. Students are very fast learners with technology but having to learn the technology before teaching it wastes a lot of time. In order to prevent this, IDC students should at least know how to use each technology tool before starting the teacher placement. In addition to becoming an expert with one piece of technology, they should know a thing or two about everything else. This is more of a way to improve the 'technology project', but doing this will improve the 'placement plan project'.