The Edtalk project was an interesting experience for me. From doing my own Edtalk video to watching other peoples and learning about their books, there was a lot of information that I took in during the activity. From learning about different types of students in many different stories to how other people interacted to them there was a lot to learn and take away from this exercise.

When making my video I got to learn about things that I struggle with when it comes to presenting information to people. One thing I learned was that I can sometimes struggle to find what information is actually important to present to people. Especially when there was the entire book of information to choose from. It was very helpful to have someone else with me who gave ideas about what was important and not. I also found that I can be wordy with my explanations of things. I tend to overword things sometimes and have to re read what I already wrote down and refine it after. If I don’t do this my explanations tend to get longwinded and the point that I am trying to get across never actually gets there. I did also find that I am good at a few things, I am able to come up with explanations for things quickly and after a quick re read I am able to have a good idea of what I want to say. I also found that I am quite comfortable in front of a camera and in front of people in general. I found all of these things important to know because these things could affect my teaching strategies in the future.

When listening to other peoples videos I was able to learn about what a potential student would be like in a classroom. Every book had a student from a different background whether that was race, economic, ethnic, or just grew up with different experiences in their lives. Each of these kids were vastly different and all had some sort of struggle or challenge when it came to the classroom. In our class discussions we were able to come up with different ideas as to how we could help these students if they were in our classroom. From actual actions like what to do if a student had a breakdown, to just basic ideas of how to have an open and welcoming classroom. These ideas can all be transferred into a real classroom, things like being open to talk to students or tailoring lessons to help a student who may have had a recent traumatic event. I was able to pick up a lot of ideas on ways that I could improve my future classroom.