Contribution to My Digital Teacher Identity

 As I have always stated, whenever I got the chance so far, I have always been a traditional teacher. Instead of teaching in front of a screen, of course not when I am forced to because of a pandemic, I would always prefer to be face to face with my kids. But, during his course I was able to learn different ways of benefiting from the screen in front of us and communicating with my students. I realized that students, according to their ages, will always have the interest for electronics, digital tools and such so, even if this is forced for us at the moment, I guess willingly most of us will want to get in front of a screen in the future. So, we already are aware of the importance of giving feedbacks, designing lesson plans and formative assessments but applying these in a digital platform through screen may become a challenge for most of us. We learned how to do these in the most effective and easiest way. Our educator’s lessons were mostly interactive that actually showed us in the act how to use these in a digital platform. We gave feedbacks to each other, we used the platform’s features to raise hands or react to each other’s comments and such. As for my digital teacher identity, as a traditional teacher, I realized I can combine both with blended language teaching and learning. I can use digital tools during face to face classes or I can apply face to face activities, to some extent, to my online classes. I used to be really strict about digital teaching because I simply didn’t want to do that, I even didn’t work as a teacher during pandemic because it was going to be through screens but now I understand how I should manage my online classes or blend them in together.

 

 As I have stated above, I realized that I can combine digital and traditional and even though I used to be really strict about digital teaching I understand how I should manage my online classes or blend them in together. For my practicum experience, I was able to experience digital teaching for almost a year now and I used so many tools and did so many preparations for the classes as I was very excited. With practicum and this course, I think I seriously had the chance to grasp the idea of being a digital teacher even if it was kind of forced. For my practicum I prepared lots of activities through digital tools such as kahoot, storybird, quizlet etc. even at my busiest week I prepared slides or documents to share with students so that they could share their ideas as well like as in white board we use in teams. Of course, not being able to see the students face to face or talk to them privately when I thought they needed it was difficult because I wasn’t used to not being there for my own students but I was lucky my practicum teacher was very understanding and I felt like she was an easy-going person that her students wouldn’t have any difficulty to go and talk to. I still think that being a full-time digital teacher is definitely not for me but blending the two, that, I can manage.