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St. Mary’s School
The Adventures of Kathy the Technology-challenged Teacher
By Kathy Ayette
Unless you have been living under a rock, and even if you have
you know all Ohio schools are closed. Of course, we still
want our children to continue learning. At St. Mary’s we are
using everything from technology to old fashioned work packets and
flashcards. If you have read any of my columns, I bet right now
you think you know which option I have chosen. After all, it is a
well-known fact that the cloud and I have issues. Well are you in
for a surprise. The next part of this opus could be entitled “The
Adventures of Kathy, the Technology-challenged Teacher”.
One aspect of teaching younger students is that most of the learning
occurs during the interaction between teacher and students. In
fact, if you were to look at the classroom side of one of my students’
phonics paper, you would notice that about three-quarters of it
consists of numbers with blank lines, on which the children write
responses to oral questions. So just sending home a packet of
these papers wouldn’t do much good. However, physically writing
the answers, along with responding aloud helps the students
learn. So, I am doing a combination of both. There-in begins my
technological adventure.
I opted to record classes via the app that our school uses.
Step 1 was learning how to record my classes using the iPad I was
issued at the beginning of the year. Now just to give you an idea
of how “non-techy” I am, I just had to remove the darn thing from its
cover, to see exactly what is was! Another little problem is I must
really concentrate to write “record my classes”, instead of “tape my
classes” Yep, I was in for a loooong week.
We had taught all day Monday and our tech wizard, who for the remainder
of this column and probably the rest of his life will be referred to as
St. Rich, came after five o’clock to teach a couple of us how to record
ourselves. After his surprisingly easy lesson I begin taping
(See, did it again!) and it did not go well. I kept making
mistakes in my presentation, so I would start over and over and
over… I finally got one good take only to discover that I had
done a pretty good impression of the Headless Horseman. St. Rich
had suggested that I divide each class into two videos. That way
if I made a mistake, I might not have to delete an entire class.
After several hours I finally got one, yes one of my phonics class
videos finished. Wow! only seven more to go! Teachers were to
report to school the next day at 8:00, and at the rate I was going, I
would be spending the night. Since it was about seven, I decided
to go home and eat. That’s when another saint, my husband stepped
in. He came back with me and was my videographer. Did that
ever help. I was no longer headless or out of focus. Also,
I realized that the videos didn’t have to be perfect. When I’m
teaching, I make mistakes all the time and correct them as I go
along. Really, if my students viewed a video of me teaching with
no mistakes, they’d probably think they were living the Invasion of the
Body Snatchers because that perfect lady couldn’t be their teacher.
Recording the classes was just half the battle. Posting them was
a whole ‘nother thing! (Poor St. Rich) The first night even Rich
couldn’t get it to post. I went home at 11:00. He stayed
until 1:00. The next day we had another class on how to post the
video on Google Classroom. Thank goodness I have a cheat
sheet. I must upload…uh…download…sideload…well load those videos
to Google Drive somehow and post them on my Google Classroom. The worst
part is waiting for my videos to compress, so I can send them on.
Everybody and their sibling are using the technology and I think the
cloud is getting a little cranky!
I’ve only had one discipline problem since I began making videos.
My husband was recording me and accidentally tapped something that had
popped up and thought he had lost the video. He used shall we say
an “inappropriate” word. Take two!
Finally, I really would like to acknowledge Rich Hadden for all his
hard work. He has another job that pays real money. He is a
volunteer, and I must tell you that he usually puts many hours.
With this emergency situation, he has been at school in person and
available on his phone at all hours. We really appreciate his
efforts. I’d like to thank his wife, Amy and their children for
sharing him.
Stay well and God bless!
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