I have been using presentation software for a few years now, but have mainly stuck to PowerPoint. When my students make their own presentations they often use Prezi. I have found it a bit jarring to watch at times, with all the jarring movements and transitions, but I thought I should get to know it a bit better. It does have the advantage of being stored online and is easily ‘shareable’.

I wanted to tell the story of how I came to be a teacher, and how I gradually incorporated digital tools into my teaching. I also wanted to tell the story of how I pursued both an education and a philosophy of learning about both the Arts and Sciences. Many students feel that they must ‘choose’ one or the other, then dedicate their lives (academic and professional) to one or the other. I see this as a false choice; I see no reason why a person’s varied and complex life cannot have both. We need a creative brain to be successful in science, and I also think the technical skills you learn in science can be very useful in the Arts (particularly applied arts). So I wanted this to be part of my story as well.

I decided to use a map to tell my story, as travel has also been a very big part of my life (I spend from 1998-2011 abroad, teaching in 5 countries). Using this ‘template’ I decided to ‘hop’ from one city to the next, while telling all the components of the story that I mentioned. I tried to simplify it as much as possible, while also including imagery from my own photo library to show some of the school projects and class photos in my Prezi.

How I came to be a teacher! This Digital Story describes my journey into the teaching profession, as well as my increasing incorporation of digital tools into my teaching.

I found this assignment very useful and relevant for my current teaching. It was great to get feedback about my chosen design and theme: an app-style interface.

I have found that Moodle can be difficult to use in terms of is aesthetic appeal. There are other LMS sites like Google Classroom and Schoology that I feel are more intuitive and attractive to younger students, but since Moodle is the chosen LMS of my current school, I wanted to explore Moodle and get to know more of its built-in tools. I wanted to try an ‘app-style’ interface that was appealing and attractive, and immediately intuitive to students who are used to this mode of opening tasks (like they would when opening apps on their iPhone/iPad/smartphone etc).

I played around with several themes and picked on that created an orange-and-blue ‘look’. I was very appreciative and receptive of the feedback I received from other students in the course. While they were very positive about the interface itself, they indicated that it was hard on the eyes and could perhaps prove difficult to use for those with vision problems. I took it to heart and found a theme that produced a grey-and-light-blue colour theme. The response was much more positive, and I agreed that it did indeed look better.

This feedback has actually forced me to look more critically at the Moodle pages I currently use in my teaching. I have subsequently made some changes to my Biology 12 course and it does look much better!

I also enjoyed the experience of giving advice and feedback to students who wanted to try out some of the ideas that I used in my Moodle page. I was able to assist several students who wanted to try using tables like I did, or change to themes that were more appealing.

Overall this was a very positive experience, and the constructive feedback and discussions involved in the production of my Moodle site was very useful going forward in my current teaching and use of LMS sites.