Summer Courses and Opportunities

This summer-well technically it isn't summer yet-I am taking several courses online for my MSET Program.  One of these courses is called Multimedia Productions.  It started on Monday.  I am really hoping to learn and use some of the course ideas for my Multimedia course I offer for my High School classroom.  I do not have any curriculum for my high school classroom-so I will need to come up with ideas, lessons and tools to offer this.  This is our last week of "school" for my students.  We have had to be online for this last quarter-all of it.  Some students, like my own daughter did well with online learning-actually, probably better then being in the classroom.  She is a chatty one and gets distracted by others.  Being online-there are no others students to distract her.  Some students though really struggled with not having the support from home to help them stay on top of their assignments.  Or they were able to do the assignment-but need more support of going through the directions because they tend to not read them.  I think if I have to begin next year online-some of the changes that I would make would be doing a video through loom-where the students must watch the video and then answer questions.  I currently offered a video but many students skipped the video-how do I know these innocent angels were skipping the video?  Well-when you get questions that were answered in the video-you know they didn't watch it.  

Anyways on to my plans for the summer. I am taking another online course through USD which partners with DSU for their MSET program-it doesn't begin until June sometime and is something about Active Learning.  I also have signed up to take a 1 credit course called TEACH Camp.  That is free to take online June 1st and 2nd -half days.  If you want it for credit it is only $40.  I am hoping to be accepted for 2 other things that I have applied for.  One-I applied back in January or February for a one week workshop on ECS-Exploring Computer Science.  It is a curriculum that I will learn about and then implement in one of my classes.  I am thinking either 7th, 8th or 9th grade.  I also will receive a stipend for doing the class-which is also a nice incentive!  I am hoping to hear soon.  Another opportunity that came through my email was from DSU-Cybersecurity.  This would have me learning about Cybersecurity for a period of time and then implementing a course about it.  I could easily add a Cybersecurity course into my 9th Grade Computer class.  Another stipend is offered through this too.  

Another opportunity that I am considering is offering Summer Challenge camps this summer in July-IF we can.  I originally -before COVID-was going to offer 10 sessions on Scratch programming for students in 2 age brackets.  They are still considering Summer Challenge possibly for July-if the School Board says it is okay in June.  SO, we will see.