StudioCode

This was one of those projects that take forever to learn how to use at first, but then once you get it, it’s a piece of cake.

I was out of town traveling for basketball and missed all the instruction on StudioCode, so it was me, the rubric, and the computer in the lab for about 5 hours. It was quite frustrating at first. Just like anything, trying to learn a new foreign program is like taking a vacation to China and not knowing a lick of Chinese. Anyway, I started exploring things and the step-by-step sheet that Dan gave us would have worked perfectly, but for some reason I was having some technical difficulties with my StudioCode and had to shut down and restart the program about three times. Then my prayers were answered as a second year PETE student came in and started coding one of her videos on StudioCode! So I asked her a few questions and then I was on a roll.

Once I got the hang of the program, I can see why it is very useful to the PETE program. You can really analyze your teaching and break it down into any categories you want. When I was coding my “feedback” under instruction, I was very surprised to see how many times I actually gave positive feedback. Also, I learned that it is very important to repeat the rules and instructions and make sure you have the class’ full attention before giving them. I realized that a lot of my teaching time was spent on disciplinary actions and that took away from valuable teaching time. I also realized that using a student as a demo, can be very effective and helpful to the flow of my lessons. Lastly, I realized that I didn’t circulate around the class as well as I thought I did, and teaching from different angles not only enhances the lesson, but also decreases the temptation for students to be off task.

As you can see, StudioCode has been very beneficial to helping me improve on my teaching and also it has been beneficial to learn the program because we will be using it a lot next semester and next year.