I believe that distinguished teachers understand that students learn in different ways and use a vast array of research driven instructional strategies to engage students on a daily basis. This is where my learning philosophy has changed. Being taught by the old-school lecture method, it was all that I knew. And to top if off, I was a fan of the lecture method because I was an auditory learner! Learning about how web 2.0 tools can help to motivate students who are a part of the online generation makes me much more open to try and using them as a part of my daily classroom routine!
Passion, enthusiasm, and dedication to their profession are just examples of words that I would use to describe myself and my work ethic. By continually changing learning modalities, engaging students as twenty-first century learners, and using a variety of methods and mediums to communicate with my students, I attempt to set the stage for a dynamic and engaging classroom. Whether it is getting my community service students engaged in the Brazilian Step Dance craze or creating new worlds with the SNITCH program, students need to be taught in the ways that they get motivated to learn. We must also create students that can find and create information via online tools quickly and more efficiently than others their age. Maybe it’s teaching them how to interact online or maybe it’s monitoring how they search and retrieve information online, no matter what web 2.0 tools we choose to use with our students – we must be using them in our classrooms!
I really liked reading the words “passion, enthusiasm, and dedication” as they apply to your own work ethic. I think these words are crucial to the students’ education as well. We saw throughout the course how web 2.0 tools can increase connections and ease the ability to access information, but we always seemed to come back to the information and classroom experiences being personal to the student. I liked seeing these ideas of student motivation, participation, and collaboration come through in your new learning philosophy.
Thank you for including your own personal connection to the material we learned in the course via your written response above. I like how you connected to the learning based on your own particular learning style. I think that meeting each students learning style is still appropriate and capable even though their is a shift in the role of the teacher and I like how you highlighted this important point. Your video focused on the role of the student as a 21st century learner. You really hit the key points presented in this course. The ideas that really stood out to me as well throughout this course was the idea of communication, global learning, and collaboration. Also, way to connect to Google Docs since that seemed to be a highlighted web 2.0 tool this course! I hope you are able to successfully include these new ideas into your teaching practices. Good luck!
You said that you were a fan of the lecture method because you was an auditory learner. This stood out to me. I had not realized well that good lecturer always and still fascinated me till reading your philosophy. However, as your philosophy, mine has been changed in terms of education. Even if some instructors/educators are able to give good lectures, they hardly be best educators if they don’t develop their teaching styles.