took this course because I wanted to get credit towards my teachers diploma. However, once I understood what the course outline was, I changed my attitude towards why I was doing this course. 

I realized I wanted to be open to the group discussions since in my trades schooling past we didn’t have many of those. It was really neat to hear the way everybody thought about the concepts and was a fun idea having those discussions. It made me realize I would like to have more pondering thoughts in school, not just discussions on the right size of wire to pull for a certain device. I want to connect all the students together with these more broad discussions. We could talk about examples of jobs people have because of their journeyman tickets, we could talk about execution to get the apprenticeship hours done. There are so many things that we can talk about, which will give that feeling to my students that I got during the first part of this course. A feeling of connected, and also to practice a tool we don’t often use in the trades, which is no wrong answer discussions.

I also realized that I wanted to learn how to make videos like you see on youtube or discovery channel. Where they show you an engine, then explode all the parts out in cartoon form and show you what they look like and what the engine looks like inside. I wanted to see if I could make the same sort of videos. I thought it would be great, because although using other content creators videos can be great, it’s even better if they are specific to your own craft. 

You can image somebody in Zimbabwe talking about how their woodshop tools operate and perform, looking way different then the tools in Canada or Asia. We might use a drill press to drill holes, and they might use an old school handheld and hand turned drill. I think most of the time, for confused students, the more detailed and applicable the example can be to their life, the better that it is. Also you really just can’t find everything you need online. You can try and be vague or specific, sometimes there just isn’t the concept online that you are trying to teach.

In the end I didn’t actually learn that exact skill. But I did learn it will take me mega more hours to even achieve this goal than I thought. I learned the systems can be clunky and it’s probably something I would want to buy an app to do properly. Either way I think it’s a worth while investment, and something that would be useful to start practicing now, before I actually need it. 

I really think these new additions to my teaching could really up the ante on offering a really successful class. I remember wanting more examples that actually applied to real life when I was in school. They would bring in motors and say “this is what you wire up”. But if they could have shown themselves walking up to a motor on a jobsite, and showed us where they entered the wires, and how they figured out polarity etc… that way, through a video, it would be way more helpful, then just a motor plopped on a table.