One thing that resonated with me from this course is ensuring to build a community of inquiry when teaching online. I make it a priority to build a classroom community when I teach my students face-to-face, which is why a community of inquiry resonated with me. I believe it is easier to build relationships with our students when we are teaching face-to-face, but it is also important to build a community when teaching online to make learning more meaningful and to build a connection with our students. There are so many digital platforms educators can use, but it is important we use ones that are meaningful and help students develop a social and cognitive presence. It is also important for students to know and see the teacher’s presence in online delivery. From my experience of online learning, knowing and seeing the teacher’s presence makes you feel a little more connected and provides reassurance. For my future teaching online, I will ensure to develop a social, cognitive, and teaching presence so that my students feel a sense of connection with each other and the teacher, and to make learning more meaningful.
Another thing that resonated with me from this course was Kathryne Brattland’s presentation. In my classroom, I try to cater to different learning styles to reduce any barriers so my students can succeed, but I was not aware of many of the things Kathryne pointed out for online learning, such as using different colours and shapes in a chart, how to add subtitles to a powerpoint presentation, and including full transcripts for all multimedia videos. As I teach younger students, I may have other things I need to consider to ensure the online learning is accessible to everyone. For example, most of my students would be getting help from an adult to use digital technology, so I will need to ensure the material I create is also accessible to my students’ families. I may need to consider things such as language barriers. For my future teaching online, I will ensure to make online learning accessible to all of my students and their families.
This course has helped me discover some ways to build a community of inquiry with our students in online teaching and some ways to make online learning accessible to everyone. I have also learned many new digital apps and tools I can use in and out of the classroom with my students to make learning more meaningful and engaging. Lastly, this course has helped me discover new ways to incorporate more digital technology in my teaching and motivated me to teach my young students how to use digital technology to learn.
Hi Gurreet,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that “it is important we use ones that are meaningful and help students develop a social and cognitive presence”. I think students are the center in classroom. The role of teacher is to engage students in learning not only in knowledge, but also the competence like communicative skills. Teachers should be cautious when they choose the tools used in classroom. Technology is a good one to engage and interact with students, but teachers should be clear that how many percentage technology account for in classroom. I am glad that you see the potential challenges that online teaching has brought to students. Online teaching may be not only challenging students, but also their families. Teaching students how to use technology will be a focus when teachers teach in the future.
Hope you will do great in your teaching.
Best wishes,
Eden
Hello Gurreet,
I like your idea of creating a community in the class to make connections through remote learning. We have learned to use different tools and apps in synchronous and asynchronous sessions. It will be helpful for us to use in the future for teaching and learning.
Best wishes.