At last, the “Teachers of the Future” unit has come to an end. Although we did have major disruptions such as the 3/11 earthquake that devastated millions, we managed to break through as a community, and continue to produce quality work. Such things include my tutorial, and this is what I am expected to reflect on today.

If I had to pick which out of the five Areas of Interaction fits best with this project, it would have to be Community and Service. But before going further into the matter, we shall investigate the definition of the word, “tutorial”. According to iwebtool.com, “a computer tutorial is an interactive software program created as a learning tool. Tutorials help people learn new skills by using a step-by-step process that ensures the user is following along and comprehending the material.” I couldn’t agree more with this definition, but this is not the focus of this paragraph. The reason why I chose Community and Service as the the Area of Interaction that best fits this project is because as seen in the definition above, tutorials help PEOPLE learn new skills, and in other words, allow us to SERVE THE COMMUNITY.

Overall, I am very pleased about the work I produced in this unit. This is because I personally think that I have met most of the class criteria, therefore making my tutorial satisfactory or above. If I had the chance to redo this project, I would try to show more enthusiasm in my speech, talk a bit slower, and last but not least, not procrastinate. Though I am content at how my tutorial turned out, I think excelling on these criterion would’ve granted my tutorial with a higher level of achievement.

As a student of a school that takes part in the Middle Years Program, I have grown quite familiar (OK, I still have difficulty remembering them…) to the Approaches to Learning. Of all, I think that I have used and developed “communication”, and a “subject-specific and interdisciplinary conceptual understanding” the most during this project. I say “communication” because the whole purpose of my tutorial was to teach something to the viewer while COMMUNICATING with them through video. But in order to teach something to the user, I had to have a “subject-specific and interdisciplinary conceptual understanding” about the topic in which I was talking about.

Honestly, I do not recall being as productive as I wished to be in class. Why? Because of the amount of distractions and experimenting I had to go through in order to complete my tutorial. It was not until the week before the project was due that I realized that screen-casting wasn’t the easiest and most efficient way of presenting information. If I were to start this project from scratch again, I would’ve urged myself to make up my mind on the style of presentation that I was going to use.

During the last month in which we spent on this project, I think I have demonstrated various IB Learner Profiles. But out of all the possibilities, I think that the profiles that would apply the most to this unit would be, “Thinkers” and “Knowledgable”. “Thinkers” is a no-brainer; in order to create a tutorial, you have to think! The second profile that I mentioned, “Knowledgable” is just as obvious as the first. Making a tutorial requires knowledge regarding the subject in which you are discussing, so really, knowledge could be considered as the basis of a tutorial to some.

The skills and techniques that we have learned in this unit will live on forever, but it is our decision whether or not to use them in the future for our own, and for other’s benefits. But the question is, how can we use the skills we have learned in the course of this project, and when will it come in handy? For me, I feel as though I will utilize more of the teaching skills that I have learned in this project, rather than my newly discovered technology skills. Teaching is very important in our lives, because it is probably the most common way of sharing information with others. We teach without even noticing it ourselves: e.g. when showing a friend how to do something on the computer, and answering people’s questions.

Well, that pretty much wraps up our 2nd (3rd?) unit in Technology Class. Thank you to all of you who have read my blog posts despite their boringness, and I hope to see you in my following units.

If you wish to see my tutorial, play the video below:

Solving Basic Algebra Problems from YIS Academics on Vimeo.