Week 9

Today’s lesson was all about BYOD – Bring Your Own Device. Since James was away, we had a guest lecturer, Camilla, talk to us about BYOD. Lots of schools are doing this, and it can often cause some problems in your classroom. Camilla suggested a base level computer that schools may possibly use. The base level is a Chrome Book, as it is much cheaper than many other options out there. Camilla also told us that as educators, we need to strive to make the things that we do with our students accessible on all devices.

She then briefly took us through the GSuite. The GSuite includes Google slides, Google docs, Google sheets, Google forms, Google sites, and Google classroom.

Camilla suggested that we refer to the concepts of music as “the roots” of music instead – this makes it much less confusing and problematic. Another suggestion she made was to ALWAYS give catch up time to your students.

We then went through and explored the site Camilla made for the topic of theatre music for year 7 and 8. As a side note, one of her suggestions was not to start this too early with year 7.

With year 9 and 10, it is important to give the students checklists to keep them on track. It is also important to give your students feedback after every lesson.

Camilla showed us a website called io808.com and told us how it could be beneficial to use in the classroom. She also suggested to give the students a time limit, as they might spend TOO much time on it!

Other pieces of advice Camilla passed on to us were to break things down A LOT more than you think they need to be broken down, be patient with your students, have a bas level of work in your classroom, and give students the opportunity to complete extension work (and give them freedom in this).

We then spent the rest of the lesson doing a task that she had created, which was super fun!