Project Realized -- Part II

As I mentioned last week, overall, the lesson I taught was successful, and I was pleased. Below, I have pasted further thoughts relating to my experience.

Reframing -- If I were to teach this lesson again, I would again use technology to assist me but re-evaluate how I should use technology for the lesson. The virtual guest speaker via Elluminate worked just fine and was successful. But, in reality, Elluminate was just a tool I used to present direct instruction. There's nothing wrong with this, but, the way that I used this particular technology wasn't rocket science. It just provided a means to let the students listen to a guest speaker they would not have been able to hear otherwise. The technology part that I would change would be the way that I used Camtasia to develop another segment of the lesson. I developed a Camtasia movie where I read information about Baroque music in England over screen shots of composers from that era. If I taught this lesson again, I would definitely not just read over the moving images but, instead, talk off the cuff (after practice, of course). It appeared too staged and came across as boring. [Also, I mentioned this before, but the sound of this movie wasn't loud enough... and this was a little problematic.]

Evaluations -- Before, I mentioned that I was concerned with what the audience truly thought about the presentation. Well, I finally got feedback, and I am proud to say that they didn't have anything but glowing comments regarding the lesson. So, I was glad to hear this.

Those are my further thoughts for now. I am in the process of updating my Project Scorecard (including some comments reflecting on how the lesson went). I will post that in my blog after revising.