This is a series I'm sharing over on the CI blog page. Use the buttons below to find each post.

I have had a love/hate relationship with Zoom. There are a number of features I appreciated, as a professional, like the ability to exit out of a full screen screen share so I could open my notes (or something else 😲🤫🤭). During the pandemic, when I was teaching a hybrid class and had students in my room physically and online, I hated it. Zoombombing was a new thing and teachers were having many issues with it. I instead used Google Meet. Now I am in a world where I'm required to use Zoom and, I'll be honest, I've learned some cool things. I still find the sharing procedure clunky and much prefer Google's, which worked with tabs, windows, AND the screen, but Zoom is growing on me. So, I wanted to share some things I've been doing with my classes. 

I just wanted to give a brief rundown of what you could do with the annotate feature in Zoom. As you can see in the picture, when you click "Annotate" on your zoom toolbar, a second toolbar shows up. You can move this around to where you need it to be and it includes a number of features. You can also disable others' ability to annotate on that main toolbar. From Top Down:

I am still learning about Zoom and all the things it can do. I know I may be behind the curve on this, as I held out against it due to Zoombombing, but I am learning more and getting a little more excited about what it can do. What are your favourite features about Zoom? What things do you wish it could do?

I am a millennial. When I was younger, that term made me cringe, but I have come to accept and even enjoy the title. Our generation is credited with ruining a variety of social and economic constructs, inventing L33T speak, and living through a exhaustive list of "once in a lifetime" events. In addition to all this, we grew up as technology advanced. I often give this timeline:

• I was born when records and cassettes were popular. 
• In elementary school I learned basic coding and typing.
• By the time I was in middle school, we had a computer (with dial up), and I was beginning to explore the online world.
• In high school, I learned how to do research online, what a virus was, and how to blog. I've had a LiveJournal, Blogger, Wordpress, and more. 
  
• I learned how to record tapes off the radio, then starting buying CDs, and learned how to use Napster.
• I've also had most iterations of social media: Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Insta, and beyond.

TLDR: As technology advanced, so did my generation. We learned how to work technology and work around it. We learned how to make it work for us. All that to say, technology is a standard part of my life and one I enjoy using both personally and professionally. 

This page is going to be dedicated to what I'm calling "the digital classroom". In 2020, this had a very specific meaning, particularly for those of us who were teaching in a physical classroom and were, quite literally, thrown into a digital one overnight. There were a lot of issues, failures, and successes during that time, but it taught me new things about technology and the classroom. 

Now that term can mean many things. For me, as of today, it means:

1. technology I use in the physical classroom with my students, particularly when they are using it as well. 
2. a "digital classroom" - a presentation or PDF that includes links to notes, activities, and more for students to use on their own devices.
3. my "digital classroom" - starting in 2024, I became a digital teacher. You can read more about my decision on my social media, but essentially I decided to work from home part-time to spend more time with my son and be with him at home, at least, for the first few years of his life. I have two types of digital classrooms: (1) a classroom within an Learning Management System (LMS), and (2) a live classroom using zoom. 

Lastly, while I already have plans to cover a number of things, I want more! If there are any things you've found success with or would like me to consider, please drop a comment below. Also, what do you consider a "digital classroom" to be?