It has been an interesting fall with the start of the school year in remote learning. While the COVID has disrupted every aspect of everyone's lives, I am glad that I had the opportunity to take so many technology classes that I could now use in this new learning format. As with all of the previous technology classes that I have taken, I really learned alot in the collaborative technology tools class that I took this fall. You can read about some of the new ways I plan to integrate technology into my lessons under the EEND676 tab.
Reflections on Technology This Summer
During this summer of 2020, I had the opportunity to take two awesome courses on technology through the University of St. Francis: EEND679 Using Technology in Student Assessment, and EEND713 Engaging E-Learning. While it was alot to handle taking 6 hours, I really enjoyed the resources that I created and experienced throughout the learning process. I have included my reflections for each class under their respective tabs along with some of the artifacts that I am most proud of. Any comments are welcome. Thanks for reading my blog!
Genius Hour Reflection
I found the Genius Hour project overall pretty challenging. I enjoyed the final results of my efforts, but I will say this took more time than I expected, in trying to balance everything on my plate. Honestly, I don't know how some people accomplished all that they did in the time that we had. I am really impressed with all of the projects that people completed. I feel like the continued feedback from my classmates, and the opportunity to look at other people's projects provided me with motivation to keep going, but also comfort through my struggles.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for me was the time component of getting the project completed. I love cooking, and am glad I chose that for my passion project; however, I feel like it took a lot of time to get the recipes done and revised. It also took a great deal of time looking up and tracking all of the nutrition information, taking pictures, and writing down individual ingredients. These are the tasks I DID NOT enjoy completing! In fact, this is probably why I have given up on going on diets where you track food, because tracking of all of the nutrition information and food measurements is such a pain!
The aspect that I enjoyed the most with this project was the creativity portion. Being a creative person, it was fun to discover new ways to add flavor to vegetables, and cook new foods. Ideally, I would love to be able to get to the point where I can cook meals "on the fly" quickly. I don't really like looking up recipes because they take alot of time, and during the week I really want something fast. I feel like I got a good start with this through the project, and at least have a place to continue.
What I did learn throughout this project is that foods may "seem" healthy based on their ingredients, but in certain combinations or cooking styles they can become unhealthy. Many foods are touted for their health benefits, like olive oil and whole grain foods, but they also contain many calories and/or carbs, so if you are a person who is watching either of those it is difficult. I was proud of myself for finding healthier options, and in creating at least a week's worth of meals that I could fix when I get back to school. I do think I will continue modifying some additional recipes as I go, now that I know what ways I can make them healthier.
What will I take back to my classroom? I will probably take the idea of student choice and self-paced learning back to my classroom. While I don't have the ability to implement the full concept of Genius Hour in my classroom, I can probably give students more choice when we do have project-based learning. If we continue to use remote or digital learning, I can definitely design more self-paced activities for my classes. Seeing students only 25 minutes per week, twice a week (that assumes we will ever go back to something similar to this), I will have to leave the full Genius Hour experience to the classroom teachers.
I found the Genius Hour project overall pretty challenging. I enjoyed the final result of my efforts, but I will say this took more time than I expected, in trying to balance everything else on my plate. Honestly, I don't know how some people actually accomplished all that they did in the time we had. I am really impressed with all of the projects that people completed. I feel like the continued feedback from my classmates, and the opportunity to look at others' projects provided me with motivation to keep going, but also comfort while I was struggling with some aspects of my project.
Sharing
So at the end of this project, I have been able to complete a week's worth of recipes, with some ideas for some additional ones that might work in the future. Overall I would say I have been able to re-create healthier versions of my stay-at-home recipes, without a ton to clean up. The true test will be re-creating these once school is back into full swing. During this process, as I have progressed through the recipes, I have discovered easier ways of substituting ingredients and also making everything fit into 1 or 2 pans. I have learned alot from having to research nutrition information on each food. Most of these recipes are vegetarian, and contain some similar ingredients, but meat can be added very easily. Having similar ingredients made shopping a bit easier, and also provided me with flexibility for leftovers. I have included some of these suggestions in my recipe collection, let's call it.
I hope you have a chance to try at least one of the recipes I have collected. My family has been pretty pleased with the healthy, revised versions. How can I tell? They have eaten all of them with no complaints. If you do have a chance to try any of them, please leave me a comment or feedback; did you like it?, what do I need to change?, etc. I would love the feedback.
I collected everything into a Healthy, Tasty, Less-Mess Recipes document that I have shared in this link. I hope you enjoy.
| Two of My Favorite Recipes: "Farro & Apple Salad" and "Almost Baked Penne Pasta" |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)