Wednesday, September 12, 2012

And then, my whole curriculum was digital!

This school year is shaping up to be possibly the best school year ever (I know - I say that every year), but just about every year I've been right about that! But this year perhaps more so than even other years because I worked my tuchus off going over my entire curriculum this summer, through the very sexy process of converting my notes into power points.

I told a science-teaching colleague of mine about my summertime endeavor and he replied, "Anne! Are you a closet lecturer? I'm shocked!" I assured him I was as constructivist as I knew how to be in my classes, but these power points serve a rather different purpose.

I will confess that my thinking can sometimes be non-linear, and hopefully this will help me to stay on track and removes the nagging question "What comes next?". When I get brilliant ideas for other units, I have a go-to location for depositing that thought for development at another time. I don't have to worry about creating notes for next week's class, or even next month's class, not to mention the benefits of when a student is out sick or leaves early for field hockey. I'm already more relaxed than this time last year, and I already feel like a better teacher.

Why did it take me so long to get to this point? Frankly, I knew this would be an intense undertaking, and at this point my compilation of files represents at least 80hours worth of work. But my gosh, it has been well-worth it.


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