S573: Teaching Reflection 1

We are asked in my S573: Education of Information Users to reflect upon our teaching styles, likes, dislikes, etc. I thought it would be helpful to reflect on these things here on my blog. I can then use it later to make my teaching statement and to reflect upon the events of this semester. Here are my thoughts from the first class:

We read a short article for class by Buskist (2002) called Ten Common Mistakes TAs (and Veterans) Make. After looking at the ten common mistakes, we were asked to think about our favorite teachers in the past and what made them great teachers (kind of a opposite of this list). I have to say that when I think of my favorite teachers, I think of people who are enthusiastic about the topic, can incorporate humor and storytelling to help you remember the material, challenge you to do better or learn more about the topic, will let the students lead the discussion but still bring the class back to what the teacher wants them to learn for that day (organized).

I would want to be this teacher. However, so of it takes a while to learn and others are hard. I would not know where to begin to bring humor into the class. I would probably have to know the subject very well first. So thinking right now about nothing in particular does not help. We are challenged in this class to teach a couple of classes and to see the class as a way to try out anything. I think I will try to add humor where I can to help the class remember what they are learning. I also want to make sure that I give off confidence and enthusiasm.

I have been throwing around ideas of what I will teach. I am not sure yet. I have been thinking about delicious of diigo, swing, and Jing. I would say that I have more enthusiasm for these things. I also have goodreads. I think the first one should be something technology oriented. I do not know about the other one yet. I also need to think about the activity and how I want to organize the class for the big teaching project. I have to think about what I want to try. I know a few and maybe these next weeks will help me think about it.

As a side note, my class reminded me, and maybe I will do something with this, about the Net Gen and Don Tapscott (I have the youtube videos in my blog from my internship). Don has a lot to say about how the generation is learning and using technology these days. Maybe I can do a class on that and experiment with his ideas and test the accuracy with an activity.