Task 1.3 Online Micro Teaching Reflection

• What did you like and dislike about online teaching?

In terms of my lesson particularly, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to use technology to my advantage when planning, preparing and even delivering my lesson. It added a fun aspect to my lesson and made me actually want to sit and plan and prepare and use different techniques and resources to interact and engage with my students and get them excited about the lesson. The one thing that I did not like about teaching online was the fact that I could not see my students and interact with them face-to-face; this meant that I was not able to gauge their facial expressions and check on them as I would when walking around the class, which is something that I think is extremely important with Foundation Phase students. I also did not like that I could not actually tell whether my students were actively learning during points where I was not engaging with them.

• What new skills did you learn through this experience?

I learnt that students will usually only interact and engage with a lesson when they are actually asked and usually prefer to stay passive during online lessons, which can be detrimental when the students are as young as they are during Foundation Phase teaching. I also learnt that, when teaching online, it is crucial to always run a practice test before actually delivering the lesson in order to ascertain whether everything is working the way it should. I learnt that students can sometimes get disconnected or mics won't work and that, as teachers, we should always be ready to adapt to any situation and be able to make a plan to continue the lesson even when things to wrong.

• What would you do differently?

As stated above, I would try my best to do a practice run of the lesson in order to make sure that everything is in the right place and works the way that I want it to work during the lesson in order to avoid any disruptions during the actual delivery of the lesson. I would also try and make sure that I include some form of incentive for participation as well as an informal assessment at the end of the lesson so that I know whether my students have grasped the topic well enough or if it needs to be consolidated further.

• Did you choose appropriate tools to teach your online lesson, explain why?

I feel that I did choose the appropriate tools (i.e. PowerPoint and Blackboard) as these are tools that I am familiar with and can navigate around easily which makes delivering the lesson much smoother for myself and my students. I also feel like the students will be familiar with these as well which may give them a sense of ease and rid them of any anxieties that they may have around attending an online lesson instead of being taught face-to-face.

• How has this experience developed you for teaching in a school?

This experience has prepared me for teaching in a school, should I never need to teach online. This experienced has also made me more familiar with the tools that I have accessible to me that will essentially make me more adept to teach this new generation of students whose lives revolve around the use of technology, which means that I will hopefully be able to design lessons that my students are more likely to enjoy and engage with. This experience has also taught me how to adapt to online teaching and how to continue with the lesson professionally and efficiently when things go wrong or not as expected.