Final Task 13 Rubric & Reflection

In hindsight, if I were to update my Task 7 lesson plan to make it more SAMR friendly, I would scrap many of the ideas that I had the students performing through Google Slides/Drawings and I would facilitate these projects through Nearpod, a program on which I will be presenting tomorrow. This website can essentially serve as a total replacement for Powerpoint and other similar programs, as it fulfills the basic “slides” aspect of a presentation while also presenting many other interactive features, such as polls, quizzes, and slides that the student can draw on. As a fair portion of my unit was focused on the students’ interpretations of events in the text and how they can articulate them, they may be able to use this drawing or open-ended question portion of presentations to draw quick renditions of how they visualize or interpret certain scenes within the text. These Nearpod lessons would be great alternatives to Powerpoint presentations as they are also accessible to students through their laptops/tablets/smartphones, so they would have another way to interact with the presentation that isn’t just a pen and paper.
When I created the original assignment for this I was not satisfied. I felt it was bland and adhered to the “banking” model of teaching, which is where teachers just stand at the front of the room and dump information into students off of a Powerpoint or just a lecture. With Nearpod adaptations to this lesson, it will create a more interactive modern experience that will allow the students to be active learners. This technological presentation method can be used across many different subject areas.
Of course, the rubric that I created is limited, but for these little projects that occur within a greater unit it would be apropos. It is suitable for a larger project as well, but it could be changed to a 6-point grading scale as opposed to percentages for smaller projects as well. For projects of a more artistic nature like the one I presented initially, it would seem to be more fair to grade the students on effort as opposed to actual specific details within the finished product.
By the time it was all said and done, this assignment has finally shown me the irreplaceable value of well-integrated technology in the classroom. It can totally redefine lesson plans and transform from the stereotypical drab Powerpoint into something special and interactive. As a future English teacher I could see how it would be easy to just use old-school methods to teach old-school literature, but upon doing this task I will strive to make my classrooms more modern and accessible to the students that I will have.


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