In my education class I was asked to be a documentarian over the course of 10 days that related to my teaching, student learning, my classroom, and even me as a learner. Over the course of the period of time I told a story through the use of pictures. I used a very common social media tool to do it, Instagram. Each day I would post one picture to Instagram that related to my life as an educator. This included pictures of me grading, or projects were doing or assigning students to do, objectives, agenda, and preparation for the AP Exam.
As I did this project I really enjoyed reviewing the photos and reflecting on the days when I took the pictures. It brought back fond memories of implementing teaching strategies, covering my units, and supporting students in their educational journeys. I also thought this was an engaging and innovative means to documents learning. Through the use of pictures I documented my journey as a co-teacher. The ten days was a small snapshot, but an effective one. I think projects like this will be available to my students one day as I look to implement engaging and fun activities in the classroom. Lastly we put the Instagram pictures into a Storify and created our story. The Storify added a sequential flow to the pictures and allowed me to reflect on the ten days that had transpired. There are many ways to engage students with technology, and Instagram is another means to that end. Countless students at my school are on Instagram and I think it would be effective to have students use it in an academic context. Students are constantly engaged with technology, as educators I think it is a good idea to find ways to have students use what already has them engaged in an educational fashion.
I am showcasing an online tool that I have used in my classroom to review for tests and other content material. Students love to play this game and it allows them to use their devices, which is always attractive to students today. Take a look as I describe the features of this tool in a step by step process that I trust other educators will find helpful.
Chapter 7
As the old culture of learning is giving way to a new one students are becoming more engaged with and connected to technology than ever before. As the authors state, “The old culture of learning is no longer suited for a world of constant change, current efforts are geared toward trying to fix the system by refining and perfecting it.” My question is in regards to my own teaching. Am I properly assessing students’ learning by the question I pose and the activities in which they participate? I think that it is essential to keep education relevant and engaging. Students are connected to their technology on a continual basis, but are too often discouraged from engaging with it in their schools. I want to more deeply think about the activities I do in class and the assignments I give. I want students to engage with technology in a thought-provoking and intensive manner. I can connect this thought to my ED 530 class where we are developing our 20% projects where we document our research using online tools, blog about our progress, and reflect on our learning. When students are able to accomplish learning through interacting with what they already interact with daily. The authors give an example of students being told locate Iraq on a Middle Eastern Map. Then younger students were sat in front of a computer and told to “Find Iraq.” Students used the technology to not only find Iraq’s location but asked how the map should be formatted and provided with further details. I thought much about this point because students are learning through newer tools today and the outdated methods for measuring learning are no longer relevant. As a teacher I want to keep this in mind to keep students engaged in their learning. Chapter 8 This chapter discusses an environment where students must learn to function in a digital environment. The authors state, “Participation in a digital environment requires a sense of “learning to be… Which is more about acquiring certain social practices that give meaning to experience.” Students today must know how to interact academically in a digital atmosphere. What I question is, does forming digital networks increase student engagement in the classroom? I am prone to think that it does. Students are very competent in using technology and know what social practices are appropriate and what are not when engaging digitally. However, they must learn this is the academic environment. I think technology is often engaging in and of itself, but integrating it into the classroom will make the classroom more engaging too. I would create this digital environment in much of the same way as we did in our Tech Class, ED 530. We were given assignments and we monitored our progress by earning badges in the class. I would implement the same strategies because I have personally witnessed the effectiveness. It has allowed us as students to engage inside and outside the classroom. As I thought about this chapter I reflected on how I desire to give students more opportunities to explore technology and integrate it as a fundamental function of my classroom through using a wide variety of options that students can use. Chapter 9 An overall theme of this book is the effectiveness of tacit learning. The authors say, “ Tacit learning functions most effective when students discover their own learning techniques.” I think this quote is the impetus behind the entire chapter. Students must learn through experience and taking active participation in the learning, and they operate effectively when they are given the freedom to discover the techniques that work best for them and are conducive to their progress and learning. The question I have for myself is how can I facilitate students’ finding their own learning objectives? I think one of ways I can do this is similar to what I did in my Tech class. We had a 20% project where we had to identify ten solid inquiry questions that we did not know the answer to. We had to research and find techniques that worked best for us to produce learning. In reading this text I thought that 20% projects tied and students finding their own learning objectives is something I could implement in my classroom. I really am thinking about this more and I think moving forward I will have at least one project a semester that is similar to the 20% project where students are given freedom and liberty. The freedom to acquire knowledge, to make things, and to play. These are essential themes found in this chapter and the book that allows students to thrive the new culture of learning.
Time: 4:00 PM
Date: 4/21 Host: Beth Leidoff Hashtag: #reflective teacher Questions: Q1: What real-world skills do u teach/believe will help our Ss in the future? Q2: What are some appropriate uses of film? How can films be made more purposeful? Q3: How do/can u integrate movement or fitness into classroom activities?
Time: 4:00 PM
Host: Tom Whitby Question:What are specific ways staff meetings can be made meaningful and supportive? Hashtag #edchat Ch. 4
I really enjoyed the thoughts presented in these chapters of the book. One of the questions that came to mind in the course of reading chapter 4 was, Are collectives practical for students at all grade levels? The chapter distinguished the differences between communities and collectives. The chapter explained that in a community people are still able to be passively involved, but in a collective people are required to give full participation. Students should be a part of a collective. In a collective students come together to produce more than they could as individuals, and it requires the input and engagement of each member. One of the quotes that stood out to me was, “create a collective, and every man will learn how to feed himself for a lifetime.” Essentially, being a part of collectives gives you access to many resources that one can lean on for development and support. Technology is able to give students access to people who are striving for a similar product and it allows many ideas and information to connect. This is similar to our ED 530 class where we are part of a community on Google Plus that allows us to build and reflect upon the input of our classmates. We are all striving for a common goal, to obtain teaching credentials and become effective educators. What really caused me pause in this chapter was just thinking about how collectives create a product that is greater than the sum of its parts. In the future I want to use my whole classroom as a means to come together to produce something that could not be done independently. Ch. 5 There is a lot of controversy today about what young people post on social media. There is a common debate about what should be public and what should be private. But the authors question whether or not the argument should be between classifications of public and private. Rather, they argue that there is a difference between sharing something in a community or a collective than out in say Central Park in New York. Sharing within a collective is different than sharing something that truly is visible to the entire world. My question is should we change how we distinguish between what is private and public? I think there is a difference between something shared on social media as being public and sharing on American Idol in front of millions of viewers. The author states, “Sharing something personal with a collective is very different from taking something private and putting it into the public domain. Within a collective there is commonality and similar objectives. In our ED 530 class we share information within our community on Google Plus and on Twitter, but this is not “public” in the sense that it is for the world. There is a difference. This was a whole new thought for me in reading this chapter. Participation in a collective environment is different than participation in a public domain. Ch. 6 The authors state, “The skilled students today learn how to watch the teacher very closely and thereby infer what questions will be on the test.” This is a form of explicit learning based on the old school model. Students learn how to pick up on cues and memorize information and demonstrate how good their memories are on an assessment. However the authors argue that we move from explicit learning to tacit learning. Students need to experience learning and be able to explore. Students cannot simply ask a teacher how the student himself or herself felt when he or she was learning the material, instead they must tacitly learn on by experiencing the learning on their own. My question is, How can we move from explicit learning to tacit learning? This chapter caused me to ponder this question and think of how this relates to my content area. For Social-Studies I think we can implement tacit learning through simulations, breaking down text, asking in-depth questions that initiate deep discussion, and through giving student the opportunity to explore topics on their own and conduct their own research. They can do this within groups and as a part of a collective. They can use digital technologies to present their findings and become active members in their classrooms. Overall, I think this chapter allowed me to think about how I can make my classroom a place where tacit learning transpires and less explicit modes of learning. Students today spend nearly a quarter of their day within an educational institution where they are trusted to the care of teachers who will instruct students and help develop their education. However, our world is constantly changing and evolving. In the book, “A New Culture of Learning,” Thomas and Brown describe the necessity of a certain atmosphere in order to produce educated individuals, In reference to this new culture of learning they write, “It takes place without books, without teachers, and without classrooms, and it requires environments that are bounded yet provide complete freedom of action within those boundaries.” They are not calling for the removal of educators or books, but they are saying this is not the only means through which learning in occurring. Students are engaging in mediums that require them to learn in a certain environment. An environment that allows them the freedom to play, question, and experience in order to achieve understanding. This connects well with my Tech class where we have been given the freedom to learn something that we find interesting. In our 20% project we are given the freedom to experiment, question, and play to learn something new. One of the key points that stood out to me markedly and caused me pause was when the authors discussed how children learn much through playing and through their experiences in doing so. It causes them to question and draw conclusions as they interact with people, places, and things in their experiences.
Thomas and Brown greatly stress the need of a specific environment to cultivate learning. As in my Tech class and the 20% Project we are taking a learning-based approach where we learn through experience and using resources around us in order to learn, so should students in this new culture of learning. In my Tech class I am not just being told about different technologies, but I am able to go out and use them myself for research, implementation, and learning. Thomas and Brown write, “Learning should be viewed in terms of an environment-combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network-where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way.” In this new culture of learning students are not just demonstrating what they know, but also searching for answers to what they do not know. However, what they don’t know is available for them to find out because this environment is conducive to their learning. It teaches students how to use the resources all around them to learn. This portion of the chapter struck me because often times we should be teaching students to embrace what they don’t know as an opportunity to learn. As time has evolved technology has greatly evolved. The book states, “If the twentieth century was about creating a sense of stability to buttress against change and then trying to adapt to it, then the twenty-first century is about embracing change, not fighting against it.” This portion of the book, Chapter 3, is discussing how technology has evolved rapidly, even in the last ten years, Our students must have an environment that teaches them to embrace changes and learn these new technologies by experiencing them themselves, even if a teacher is not available to explain how they are used. I would like to know how we can engage students to such a degree that they will absorb information without simply using rote memorization that they won’t use very often in their everyday lives? If technology is going to continually change then we need to find practical ways to teach students how to deal with these constant adaptations. Thomas and Brown talked about the saying that roughly says if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he be able to provide sustenance for himself. Yet the authors question this saying by saying this assumes that there will always be fish available and the means to catch the fish will never change. This should not be the approach we take to education. We must create an atmosphere that teaches students to learn and how to do so independently. As teachers we must facilitate learning rather than disseminate information. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/06/07/3-ways-colleges-use-instagram
In reading this article I could not help but think about how this could work in a high school setting as well. In particular when the college in Florida asked people what they wanted to see and there was an overwhelming amount of people who requested to see behind-the-scenes photos. I was thinking about how Instagram would be an easy way for parents to see what is gong in their students’ classrooms on a daily basis. A teacher could use Instagram to photograph student work, post the agenda and daily objective, or take pictures of various activities going on around the school I though this could be an effective way for teacher to stay connected to their classroom, especially with their busy schedules and for parents who may not be able to be as involved with what goes on in their child’s classroom as they may like. I think what makes Instagram so appealing to its user is that looking at a photo can be more enticing and engaging than just reading something. A photo has a way of grabbing a person’s attention and sparking interest. I think this could be an effective way to involve parents and students in activities surrounding the school. Parents could see pictures that were posted by the school and connect with their students about what it was about or what was going on at the school. I think there are benefits for using Instagram in the classroom and throughout the school. It is just another way to capitalize on what millions of people are using on a daily basis for educational purposes. It helps to keep education up to date and fresh. I think it helps to keep parents comfortable when they see that their school is keeping up with the technology and being creative and innovative. |
AuthorAP Psych Teacher Archives
May 2015
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