Placement review
Throughout the past few months me and my partner have been working on recording Mr. Rupke's accounting classes. We then edited and uploaded these classes to YouTube in order for him to be able to link them from his site. We also then showed him how to use the camera and the video editing technology so he would be able to do the same thing himself.
Overall I enjoyed this placement experience and I think I learned some useful skills in the process of recording and uploading the videos. However there were definitely some bumps in the road and some times I felt pretty frustrated with the whole system. In the end though I think was a positive experience and taught me some important teamwork and communication skills. I also learned a lot about the important skill of patience and how to respond to changing circumstances. Now it's time to get into the positives and negatives
First lets start with the good stuff, what I enjoyed about doing the placement. Number one was actually interacting with Mr. Rupke. He was always very nice and supportive and made our job as easy as he could. He was always understanding of any of our issues and didn't put any unreasonable expectations on us. Second of all I enjoyed working with my partner as we got along well and were able to solve problems together. We never got into major arguments and were able to share work relatively evenly throughout the placement. Finally I enjoyed actually helping Mr. Rupke and knowing that our hard work and made someone else's life just a bit easier.
Now for the negatives, what I didn't enjoy about the placement. First it was the confusion since in the middle of our placement we didn't know if we were even going to finish it. Mr. Rupke's recording schedule meant for most of our placement we had nothing to do. We ended up working on small side assignments that never went anywhere and probably weren't that useful to anyone. Also actually using the recording hardware was difficult as the process of recording and transferring videos was much more complicated then we thought. We spend most of the first part of our placement trying to get the camera to store on an SSD card and eventually ended up just giving up on that idea entirely. This is just one example of many frustrations we experienced when dealing with the hardware. Finally actually recording the lectures wasn't too interesting as we just sat in the back of the class and held the camera on a tripod. Also the battery dying in the middle of our recording session was also a harrowing experience I would rather forget. Even though the negatives were fairly numerous I think they were still outweighed by the positives for the overall experience.
I think in the end our placement was a success as we accomplished our goal of recording Mr. Rupke's lessons and teaching him how to use the technology. I don't know if he ever actually used our videos or is ever going to record his class again but at least now it is an option for him. However I think we succeeded in achieving what he specifically asked us to do and hopefully he feels the same way as I haven't talked to him since the placement. If he doesn't then maybe we didn't succeed as well as I thought.
I think the project is very useful for other teachers and students as the specifics of what we did could be applied in any class. Virtual classrooms are becoming much more popular and their potential is just now being discovered. I think in the future many classes could be enhanced with taped lectures and many students could gain a greater understanding of the subjects they were learning. I know Mr. Rupke wasn't the first teacher to experiment with virtual classrooms in our school and hopefully after this he won't be the last.
I think in future IDC classes establishing a timeline for the project in the beginning of the placement could save a lot headache and confusion later on. If we had known how long our placement would have taken in the beginning we could've made a more informed choice. I also think a weekly log could prove more useful then a daily log as in my experience not much happened for us day to day and remembering to always fill in our log was a bit of a hassle. However overall I did enjoy the placement experience and think it is a good experience for students to have.
Overall I enjoyed this placement experience and I think I learned some useful skills in the process of recording and uploading the videos. However there were definitely some bumps in the road and some times I felt pretty frustrated with the whole system. In the end though I think was a positive experience and taught me some important teamwork and communication skills. I also learned a lot about the important skill of patience and how to respond to changing circumstances. Now it's time to get into the positives and negatives
First lets start with the good stuff, what I enjoyed about doing the placement. Number one was actually interacting with Mr. Rupke. He was always very nice and supportive and made our job as easy as he could. He was always understanding of any of our issues and didn't put any unreasonable expectations on us. Second of all I enjoyed working with my partner as we got along well and were able to solve problems together. We never got into major arguments and were able to share work relatively evenly throughout the placement. Finally I enjoyed actually helping Mr. Rupke and knowing that our hard work and made someone else's life just a bit easier.
Now for the negatives, what I didn't enjoy about the placement. First it was the confusion since in the middle of our placement we didn't know if we were even going to finish it. Mr. Rupke's recording schedule meant for most of our placement we had nothing to do. We ended up working on small side assignments that never went anywhere and probably weren't that useful to anyone. Also actually using the recording hardware was difficult as the process of recording and transferring videos was much more complicated then we thought. We spend most of the first part of our placement trying to get the camera to store on an SSD card and eventually ended up just giving up on that idea entirely. This is just one example of many frustrations we experienced when dealing with the hardware. Finally actually recording the lectures wasn't too interesting as we just sat in the back of the class and held the camera on a tripod. Also the battery dying in the middle of our recording session was also a harrowing experience I would rather forget. Even though the negatives were fairly numerous I think they were still outweighed by the positives for the overall experience.
I think in the end our placement was a success as we accomplished our goal of recording Mr. Rupke's lessons and teaching him how to use the technology. I don't know if he ever actually used our videos or is ever going to record his class again but at least now it is an option for him. However I think we succeeded in achieving what he specifically asked us to do and hopefully he feels the same way as I haven't talked to him since the placement. If he doesn't then maybe we didn't succeed as well as I thought.
I think the project is very useful for other teachers and students as the specifics of what we did could be applied in any class. Virtual classrooms are becoming much more popular and their potential is just now being discovered. I think in the future many classes could be enhanced with taped lectures and many students could gain a greater understanding of the subjects they were learning. I know Mr. Rupke wasn't the first teacher to experiment with virtual classrooms in our school and hopefully after this he won't be the last.
I think in future IDC classes establishing a timeline for the project in the beginning of the placement could save a lot headache and confusion later on. If we had known how long our placement would have taken in the beginning we could've made a more informed choice. I also think a weekly log could prove more useful then a daily log as in my experience not much happened for us day to day and remembering to always fill in our log was a bit of a hassle. However overall I did enjoy the placement experience and think it is a good experience for students to have.
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