The Enlightened Engineer: Bridging Creativity and Technology in Education

 Hello there, and welcome! Today, I took my Google Certified exam, which did not go well. I've never taken the certification exam until today, and to make it more interesting, I took the Google Educator Level 1 Certification Exam with no practice. I was extremely stressed with the last weeks of school and preparing for summer school. To get set up for the exam, I had to set aside three hours of my schedule and have a credit card ready to pay the ten-dollar fee. The test consisted of thirty-five multiple-choice questions, which took me almost the entire time to complete. When I was preparing for the test, it mentioned that I could have resources open, but since I had never taken the test, I did not actually know what to prepare for or what resources would help. The wording was sometimes confusing or tricky, which is where I made most of my errors. Many of the questions were multiple-choice, where it would say pick three, and I knew two, but the third one was tricky. It could have be...

  As educators, we know that a well-structured lesson plan is the backbone of a successful learning experience. But what makes a lesson plan truly effective? In this post, we'll explore a four-step lesson planning format designed to capture students' attention, deliver instruction clearly, and assess understanding meaningfully. Let's dive into the steps: Step 1: The Curiosity Spark The first step in our lesson plan is the "Curiosity Spark". This is where we grab our students' attention and pique their interest in the topic at hand. The goal is to create a sense of intrigue or wonder that makes them want to learn more. I chose a short, relevant video clip that introduces the concept. Step 2: Instructional Screencast Once we have our students' attention, it's time for direct instruction. In this step, we'll create a screencast that clearly explains the key concepts and skills of the lesson. Keep the screencast focused and to the point using visuals a...

As educators, we strive to create lessons that not only convey essential content but also actively engage our students. This blog post will explore how I harnessed the TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) framework and Pear Deck to design an interactive, formative assessment-focused lesson for teaching accounting concepts. Designing an Interactive Accounting Lesson with Pear Deck For this project, I chose to focus on The Accounting Equation. My goal was to create a lesson that would engage students while assessing their understanding of the material in a variety of ways. I began by outlining my learning objectives and determining what types of questions would best assess student understanding. I decided to use a mix of true/false, multiple-choice, open-ended, and numerical questions to cater to different learning styles and gain a comprehensive picture of student knowledge. Next, I created a Pear Deck presentation that integrated these questions in an intentional, engagi...

  As an educator, I'm always looking for innovative ways to teach my students the skills they need to succeed in the digital age. I recently created a lesson on conducting effective online research using Google's suite of tools. I used the TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) framework to design an engaging and interactive learning experience. In this post, I'll walk you through how I created my instructional video and Google Slides presentation and share some exciting ways I used Screencastify and embedded quizzes to bring the lesson to life. When I set out to design my lesson, I knew I wanted to focus on teaching my students how to evaluate online sources, use advanced search features, and cite their sources correctly. I created a video tutorial using Screencastify, a powerful tool that allows you to record your screen and add voiceover. I loved how easy it was to use - I could highlight my clicks and add annotations to make the tutorial engaging and easy t...