About




Textbooks, those large, usually awkward, bulky objects comprised of pages and pages of information regarding some particular topic. You all know what I am talking about, right? At some point or another, we all have experienced some type of battle trying to make sense of the knowledge kept inside those two covers. We read, and we learn, and we experience as a result of that knowledge until we are able to form some general idea of the topic at hand. 

This idea of reading, and learning, and experiencing is exactly what my life has been like since I delved into the world of teaching; hence, "the teaching textbook." 

My name is Megan Koetzle, and I am a concurrent education student in university, on my path to becoming a primary school teacher. Along this path, I am flipping page after page of information and ideas all relating to this concept of teaching. I would like to welcome you to join me on this crazy journey as I progress through each chapter, exploring and understanding what it means to be a teacher. 

 This site will focus on all the lessons I learn from university, from my own research, and from my experiences in classrooms as I work with students and engage with other teachers. I will share both the upheavals and the downfalls I face as I try to make sense of my role as a teacher in this ever-changing world of education. 

Popular posts from this blog

Ch. 3: How do I know if this is right?: The Ins and Outs of Analyzing Digital Resources

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How do I know if I’m doing it right? This is a question that I know I have been guilty of asking many times throughout my student life, as I suspect many other students have and will continue to ask. This question is especially important for how it relates to technology and digital spaces. I often find myself delving into these new digital spaces, trying to interact and engage with them, before being hit with those initial thoughts of “What am I doing? Is this right?” So that leads me to the question of how can I, as a future teacher, ensure that my students can answer these questions on their own? Recently I have been learning about using, analyzing, and creating in different spaces, understanding that to work effectively in digital spaces, we must ask questions about the tools we are using to better understand their benefits. This ability to ask questions is what I have come to know as the process of analyzing (Heinrichsen & Coombs, 2014, p. 9-11). Analyzing takes place before
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Ch. 2: Breaking the Code in Digital Spaces

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The topic of how to teach students to use technology and attain meaning from it is often circling throughout my brain in one form or another. I find myself questioning how I’ll be able to teach with technology if I don’t feel comfortable enough using it on my own. Sure I consider myself to be relatively “techy,” when it comes to my personal use of technology, but how does that translate into my ability to incorporate it into the classroom? Over the past couple of weeks, I have discovered two key terms that can help in my ability to use technology in the classroom. Code breaking is the ability to understand how a technology works. This idea is closely tied to meaning making in that we have to understand the ins and outs of how a technology works before we are able to effectively find and take away meaning from it. To put these concepts into practice, I have spent some time creating in various digital spaces that were unfamiliar to me. I started off with creating a Bitmoji cha
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Ch. 4: A Wrap-Up on Critical Digital Literacy

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Identity is something that, as teachers, we often encourage our students to generate. We tell our students to be true to themselves and write so that their voice comes across. But how might those teachings about identity translate into the online world? These past few weeks I have been examining the concepts of digital persona and digital citizenship for the ways that identity is constructed in digital spaces. Essentially digital personas are the equivalent of one's identity/persona in the real world but are just modelled digitally. What I have learned is that, as teachers, we must ensure that anything we post online ensures that our reputation as a teacher is not corrupted. We must remain professional, responsible, and respectful in how we choose to present ourselves digitally. We are citizens of a digital world, and therefore, it is our responsibility to interact in a manner reflective of how we interact as citizens in the real world. I also believe this is something that should
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