Wrap Up

I finally completed my TED Talk where I had to reflect on what this experience was like for me. It was interesting thinking about how I took a topic that I had NO idea about, and opened myself up to learning more about it. I think that TED Talk could be a very good way to assess a student's learning. It is a more interesting way of having the children share their learning. It would also allow for parents to view their child's learning and how they express themselves. The only issue with this is that this does not fit in everyone's comfort level. I was NOT comfortable filming myself and talking into a camera with no one around. From here, I would have to start thinking of other ways I could assess students that were not totally comfortable with this method. At the end of the day, I want my students to learn. They are able to be successful even if they are not comfortable in front of a camera. For some students, assessing them based on a TED Talk would actually not be the best way to capture what they learned.

One thing I really liked about this assignment was that I had the ability to teach myself something in a way I was comfortable with. In this case, I needed hands on and visual instruction in order to fully understand how to do the oil change. If I had chosen to bake a pie, for example, I may have watched a few videos of someone baking a pie but then would have completed the task all on my own. For this task, I could not do it without direct instruction. I also thought about the difference in consequences of being unsuccessful at this task. For example, with a pie, at worst I would have burned it. With an oil change, I could have caused some serious damage to my kiwi! Even though my final conclusion was that I would never do this on my own and that it is worth paying for it to be done, it was still a good experience to see what goes into an oil change; something that all car owners have to deal with. For these reasons, I think as a future teacher I would encourage my students to do something like this because I could learn from them and about them.