The best tool for the job
John Mensah
21st March 2021
This reflection was contributed as a submission for a 2 Star Badge in The Digital Teacher (Leading)
Give a brief description of your work context and responsibilities, e.g. your teaching background, experience, type of organisation (e.g. FE college, ACL), subject/curriculum you teach/lead, your learners (skills level, any particular inclusion needs, age range of group, size of group)
I work for Hertfordshire Adult Family Learning Services as the Advanced Practitioner qualified with QTLS and ATS. My role is to support staff to push their teaching practice forward through coaching and mentoring. HAFLS is an ACL serving the residents of Hertfordshire delivering a wide range of courses. My area of focus are functional skills. Class sizes on average are around 12-15 with a wide... more
How did you use the learning from this/these module(s) (briefly describe the learning context, with a focus on The Digital Teacher)
The learning in this module was applied to my digital teaching context. For example I was able to test out two different digital whiteboards with my group of learners, making sensible choices as to when in which i would alternate between them for the tasks I set for learners in class. The two digital whiteboards that I uses with my learners are Microsoft Whiteboard and Google Jamboard. Both of... more
How did you adapt/modify activities and/or resources for your context providing alternative approaches with specific reference to The Digital Teacher practices?
Google Jamboard allowed me to mimic peer to peer teaching and also allowed my teaching to be more student centred in terms of my learners having opportunities to discuss and showcase their maths skills to the class.
For example with Jamboard you can invite all learners in your class to use the platform where they all have their own mini whiteboard similarly to what you could have in face... more
For example with Jamboard you can invite all learners in your class to use the platform where they all have their own mini whiteboard similarly to what you could have in face... more
Provide any examples of any new approaches tested out.
I use Microsoft whiteboard when I want to have an unlimited whiteboard experience, as the whiteboard on screen has unlimited space. Therefore I am able to write things in various positions on the board and manoeuvre around anywhere I want.
The Google Jamboard allows for students and staff to collaboratively work on a whiteboard together in real time which is incredible.
The Google Jamboard allows for students and staff to collaboratively work on a whiteboard together in real time which is incredible.
What worked well, or did not work so well? How would you approach the activity/use the resource differently next time?
Google Jamboard has been a huge success, as it has enabled me and my students to share work and write on the same or different whiteboards simultaneously. This means students can demonstrate their work to the whole class and other students can annotate their work, providing excellent peer feedback. The downside of Google Jamboard is that it requires learners to have a confident level of digital... more
How did the learning from the module(s) impact on the quality of the learning experience?
The impact from the modules made me reassess my understanding what various tools, apps and software are designed to do and what contribution they can make to an effective solution, assessing their appropriateness for the tasks in hand, making your decision and using the chosen tools, monitoring progress and evaluating how well it worked and what could have been done better.
How have you initiated strategic change/quality improvement in relation to The Digital Teacher, eg at a peer, department, organisational, regional, national level)?
From organisational strategic perspective CPD training has been delivered by myself in collaboration with other Edtech mentors to showcase the full capacity of digital whiteboard teaching. Staff within the organisation have been extremely impressed with the capabilities of the software and are now adding this new additional teaching tool to their repertoire. Going forward with HAFLS, I will be... more
What will be your next step in bringing about further change?
As mentioned earlier, delivering CPD on using appropriate digital teaching tools to external partners is the next step.
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This reflection was inspired by the following modules
Being confident
- Framework
- EdTech.
- Category
- The Digital Teacher.
- Level
- Leading.
- Average rating
- 4.0 out of 5.
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Best tool for the job
- Framework
- EdTech.
- Category
- The Digital Teacher.
- Level
- Leading.
- Average rating
- 3.8 out of 5.
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- This module is not in your bookmarks.
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