I have found Assignment II to be a very useful one as I define and build out a course that I will be teaching in the 2021-2022 school year: Filmmaking 11. In the past I have taught similar courses, in particular Digital Media Arts, where students have explored a variety of digital mediums to produce creative artifacts – photography, photo editing, film, coding, 3D modelling, etc. This assignment has been an excellent chance for me to create a more focused course by creating new materials as well as adapting some previous resources.
As I’ve been constructing my syllabus and introductory modules I’ve had to reflect upon my own teaching styles and how to integrate the Google Classroom platform into my instructional practices. A goal for my course is to really encourage communication and to provide the easiest environment possible for students to share out and critique each others work. I also have had to rework my learning objectives based on feedback from the previous week which I hope will help clarify to students what expectations I have for them in the course overall and in each assignment. My syllabus is constantly being reiterated as I continually follow the design cycle, reassessing the efficacy of each iteration for the intended audience of students (and to a lesser extent parents/guardians and administrators/support staff)
In this week’s readings I found greater relevancy from the optional readings as Anderson’s chapters on Online Learning leant more heavily onto a primarily-online structure whereas I will still be teaching this course primarily face-to-face. The primary takeaways I had from Anderson was the importance of developing a healthy and respectful discourse amongst the students whereas Taylor and Parsons also touched upon the role technology plays in student engagement.
As always, a metacognitive approach to my teaching stimulates a lot of thought (sometimes too much and I get stuck in a loop) and reflection upon my teaching practices which is always important – if we never take time to reassess the efficacy of our teaching, we remain stagnant and our practice suffers.