Mr. D'Amato - My Education Blog

I believe that my lesson plan went very well; I believe that I was able o provide the students with a great format for planning their passion project. I was able to successfully model an idea for them and how to use the tool that I was providing to them.  If I were to have done this before I would have been able to show the students a project that was completed but this was my first time doing this type of project. After presenting, I believe that I was doing my best to engage with the students even though sometimes it hard to through zoom.  I was able to answer any of the questions that the students had; one student asked if they could make a game which was a great idea that I forgot to mention.  I look forward to using the skills that I learned by creating this lesson plan in my future classroom especially if I am teaching remotely. 

    Today in fieldwork we had another mentor present for the first time this semester. This was a great learning experience because even though I have been watching Dr. McVerry present, it was good to see someone with the same amount of experience as me doing it. I was able to learn some important transitions and ideas on how to engage the students. Since I am going next week, it was refreshing to see that I am definitely prepared to do the lesson plan.          Once again, Dr. McVerry did a great job of engaging the students even though he was not presenting very much at all today. It is important (especially during camp) to be able to have natural flowing conversations with the students. A good way to make sure that this continues is to keep up to date with the current interest of your students. I personally think that this is an underrated and important part of being a fun and relatable educator. I believe the best educators are great at teaching and just as great at connecting with

Dr. Mcverry did a great job today of scaffolding the lesson plan to make it attainable for all of the campers and students who were on Zoom today. In order to make it attainable for all of the students he first shared his screen which is always beneficial when working with computer programs. This counts as the visual aid part of the scaffolding. Prior to doing the video editing, he provided a chart to the students where they can put their quote. The students had to come up with a 6-word quote and then create a short video. Dr. McVerry provided the image and asked them to write a quote on the google drive. Once all of the students did that g. He then showed the students how to do the video editing work that they needed to complete before sending them out to do it on their own. Guiding the students through the steps and not assigning it all at once it makes it a lot less overwhelming. It also makes sure that the students are understanding each individual step before moving onto the next

 Today during Tech4Teens I learned a lot from Dr. Mcverry that will benefit me in the future classroom. Sometimes in class, we will be teaching the students about things that they may already understand; therefore it is important to listen to what they have to say. Listening to their feedback or ideas can actually make your classroom better as the student will feel more comfortable. Also, just because you are the teacher, this does not mean that you will be the best at everything. It also does not mean that the students you are teaching do not have very important information that you can learn from them.  Once again, Dr. McVerry came into Tech4Teens with a lot of energy and was trying to get the student excited to start doing today's lesson. Since Tech4Teens is a drop-in camp and free, it is important to make sure that the students want to come back. This may not be a challenge that I will face in the classroom, but attempting to make the classroom as fun and useful as possible is

       This week I learned more about creating a website; I decided to make a website about the Rugrats childcare. The coding website that Dr. Mcvery shows us allows for a lot of creativity; it is very helpful to me and obviously the campers because it provides a clear outline.       Before breaking out into groups, Dr. Mcvery does a tutorial through a shared screen. Sharing your screen with your students whenever possible and appropriate can be extremely beneficial. Instead of just handing them directions to follow, you can walk through it with them as they do it or you can show them how to do it so that there is a visual aspect.      Dr. Mcvery brings a lot of excitement when he does these types of lessons and is always reaching out to the campers to have them be more involved. For example, he will ask a different camper each week what music they want to listen to. He will also ask them if they want to share some of what they have been working on however it is never mandatory. I also

  Tech4Teens     Tech4Teens is a free camp that middle school students can attend through zoom. This camp or program's priority is to make sure that students a technologically literate and it helps them learn about different online programs that interest them. Some of the topics covered include video editing, coding, photo editing, podcast, and website building/design.     I have learned a ton from being part of Tech4Teens so far. The first thing I have learned is how to properly run an online class; you need to bring a lot of energy to keep the students engaged. Watching Dr. Mcverry teach has taught me some key things about enthusiasm and making sure the students feel comfortable. In order to be a great teacher, you need to help motivate your student to be great.       I have also learned the importance of sharing your work with the class when appropriate or modeling for the student before having them do it on there own. During Tech4Teens, we do a lot of screen sharing so that the

 Learning about the different codes necessary to code a meme was very interesting. I have a slight understanding of HTML coding just from messing around on my own computer but it was nice to actually be able to learn from a reliable source (Dr. Mac!). I believe that it will be interesting to work on coding for Tech4Teens if that's what I end up doing. There is a lot of potential for coding especially in the future where computers will be even more important than they are already (is that possible?). The possibilities of coding are almost endless and the satisfaction you receive from a correctly written code is very nice. I am excited for the upcoming weeks in Tech4Teens and look forward to teaching and learning more. 

 I am very excited to start this journey! I believe it will be beneficial to my future teaching and the topics that we are exploring catch my interest.