Reflection 8 - STL

Teaching the STLs today was quite the challenge. I think I may have chosen the wrong object to teach: a LAN. My objective was the following: “Communication systems are made up of source, encoder, transmitter, receiver, decoder, storage, retrieval, and destination.” A LAN was given as an example of this in the STL book, and I thought since I had experience with LANs and I have a brother who is very intelligent and knows a lot more about LANs that it would be a perfect subject for me. Boy, was I wrong. I could not find on the internet how a LAN decodes and encodes information, hence why my presentation was so short, my brother said to look at “Ethernet” on Wikipedia, but warned me that the subject was far too complex for the grade level I marked in my Lesson Plan. Therefore, I took it out.

I want to capture something here that's important: my groupmates' lessons. I thought they, especially Kyle and Amy, did an excellent job. They used the board, videos, activities, and power points in effective ways. The board was used effectively in that it was used to write the answers that the class gave, and to show the points that the 'teachers' were making. I liked Amy's introduction to her lesson, it was creative and tied well into what she was teaching. That's effective because a creative introduction is memorable and helps a person remember the lesson more clearly. Kyle's activity was interesting, and involved the whole class, making the lesson feel, in my opinion, more student-centered than teacher-centered. I think that's effective as it also makes the lesson more memorable. One could say, “hey, remember that time when we split into two groups? I remember that lesson!” because of Kyle's activity.

Going back to my subject choice, I think it was ineffective because the only video I could find was a boring “how to build a LAN” video. That could have been exciting, but the way it was executed, it would have bored the class to tears, and I didn't want to do that. Also, I could not think of a creative opening for my lesson—a video, an activity, or whatever. Therefore, it lacked the grabbing effect that I needed for my lesson. Granted, I could have searched harder for something similar to a video of people communicating in a way that is analogous to a LAN, but I didn't think of that until after I taught.

I think overall the reason I was not as effective as Kyle and Amy is that I didn't give myself plenty of time to prepare my lesson. I did it the night before, like Geoff mentioned. Upon reflecting this, I'm going to take action that I mentioned in my teaching analysis: I'm going to give myself time to prepare for the lesson and choose the best topic I can think of for the type of assignment I've been given the next time I teach. I think then, next time, I will be better.

Was I more effective this time than the first two? I think so. I addressed the class, and I had a different topic this time. I was also watching myself throughout the entire lesson instead of focusing on how to condense the lesson into a small space of time.

This has been a good learning experience for me; I know now to think about the questions I'm going to ask and try to work with someone to answer it whenever I ask one, give pre-testing, and try to evaluate learning throughout the lesson. I know that the last part is not necessary, and that a review is fine, but I want to try out testing throughout the lesson instead as one of my new approaches to teaching. Expect something new and exciting from me next time.