Category Archives: Web 2.0

Learning Philosophy v2.0

I spent some time going back to the month of September to re-read my learning philosophy. It is amazing to see how much growth and how much my mindset has changed in the course of 3 months. I have really enjoyed what I am learning and enjoy sharing my experiences with colleagues and family (a family of teachers I might add). I am also excited to continue on this journey of technology and how it can become one and the same with my teaching. Especially as I continue to grow the computer science department at my building.

 

Let’s talk about my current philosophy and then take a little time to break down the differences of what has been expressed.

I believe the best learning comes from a combination of the teacher and the students. The teacher should focus on transforming the learning space into exactly what it should be, a safe, positive environment for students to work together, collaborate, and problem solve. Although there may be times direct instruction is important in the classroom, a teacher should evaluate the many technological tools available and decide what is the best way to present materials and also allow students to practice and demonstrate mastery of those skills.

 

Although my current teaching world is driven by policies of what I can and can’t do; ranging from grades, to absentees, to assessments, to homework, to how I am evaluated as an educator, I see that education needs to take a step back and reevaluate what we need to do to meet the needs of our students. Students are growing more and more rapidly into this digital-age, so it makes sense that we as educators should embrace this opportunity and teach digitally as well. We should shift from memorizing information (after all, one quick stop at Google will give you what you need) and focus more on how do we find the answers and know you are using credible sources? Students should be so driven to learn that the grades would come naturally (ideally). Tests change from being able to know information to be able to find new information and assimilate into what you already know (teach them a skill and find a way for them to use that skill into something greater) . After all, you don’t learn something new unless your way of life already meets that information or changes to meet that information.

 

We should advocate for our students to learn, to teach each other, to ask questions and then to go find the answer to those questions. I believe motivation is still the core to learning, but I feel embracing where our students are, rather than forcing them to conform to us will increase motivational levels. Think about it, how excited are you to do something you aren’t interested in versus how excited are you if you are doing something you have interest in. Technology is merely one avenue we can embrace to excite and drive motivation through the charts. Final thoughts, teaching students to embrace technology makes sense. Technology allows students access to learning 24/7 for the rest of the internet-age, rather than the teacher, which allows learning for a class period a day for 5 days a week for one school year. Which one would you prefer a student to be engaged with and to learn from in the long run?

 

Reflective Differences

In general, I feel my previous philosophy was in the ballpark of my current philosophy, with the exception of the passion and excitement of technology in the classroom. Many of the core beliefs I still share, coming from team collaboration, motivation, adopting the material into your life, and technology uses. However, I will advocate more for teaching in the digital world, because of the fact of one reason, our students are digital-age students; we should stop making them conform to us and start conforming to them more often. I do hesitate still (as always) that we still need to teach other essential skills such as learning from an instructor and such, but we can definitely embrace new teaching styles at the same time. I feel the key difference is not really what is written in the text but the attitude I now have about using more technology in the classroom to facilitate collaboration and learning. I thought I used a lot of technology well in the classroom, but I now understand that maybe I am still using it well, but I can use technology a lot better to facilitate learning to a deeper level through collaboration. I have learned that I need to remain humble about my knowledge of technology and how to use it in the classroom effectively. Although I may be a resource for fellow colleagues on how to use computers and some software, I need to let myself continue to learn more in the field and push myself in avenues I am not familiar with.

 

In the end, I have a little summary that keeps hitting me. Many teachers often “battle’ with their students over not talking and not using their cellphones in class. What if the teacher turns this enemy into a resource for learning? What is we teach our students what to talk about, what if we teach them how their cell phones can be used to poll information and gather information. What if we stop focusing on the talking and the cell phones and open up to the idea of using them in the classroom for good, not evil. We could really transform our students into learners and really begin to teach dynamically. In the end, we like to talk, we like to use technology, it makes sense to embrace this idea and combine them in the classroom when appropriate to show students other ways to learn and be successful.

 

 

Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYxFO2yaYqE

 

A special note to my collaborative team: Thank you for supporting my blog and for sharing your input during this semester. Due to the nature of the course, I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did without your thoughts, comments and experiences. I wish you the best for the rest of the year of 2014 and a successful 2015 as well.

Week 12: Future of institutions and Pedagogy in the Digital Age

This week I felt the article we read provided an opportunity to reflect on many of the new concepts we have discussed. As I was reading I jotted down little notes that caught my attention or I found most relevant. The whole idea of digital learning (participatory learning) is that more than just one person creates a final product and that many produce the end product. A notion I found interesting resides in the legal rights. Who owns this product? The creator? The final editor? The one who contributed the most? It was really thought provoking to think about how technology has truly shaped and changed legal actions based on how we can now interact with each other easily and successfully. I have been hearing a lot from my wife’s classes that we teach in a industrial type setting and that this doesn’t work for many of our students. I have taken time to adjust my lessons to open the doors for more types of learning, but this would require a more fluid institution that we teach in.

I found it interesting how we read about the fact that the current teaching model expects individualized test scores to demonstrate learning rather than focusing on the process of learning and evaluating on that. It seems like we are missing something as a society and the blueprint that teachers must follow in America is designed to support what has been done for many years and is clearly in time to change, just like some laws had to change with the new technologies we have available. We need to prioritize collaboration and focus less on what one person can do. In this world, we have spent a lot of time with relying on one person to solve our problems, imagine if we put people together with a direct initiative.

The process of learning should focus on how we learn rather than what we learn. We should build students into individuals that can teach themselves and learn how to determine if a source is reliable to use. For example, many teachers hold Wikipedia in a bad mindset, however, Wikipedia has been found to be just as if not more reliable than other encyclopedias (although if you cite Wikipedia, you should include a date in case the information changes).

The idea of digital learning being global learning I found very interesting to think about. The idea that the digital world connects us globally and that we can learn new cultures and skills from anywhere is incredible. We can also learn in digital worlds such as video games. I am the advisor for a “Programing and E-sports” club in which we focus on playing video games. Interestingly enough, even though the material is not curricular related, students will sit together, discuss games, discuss strategy; even some of my programmers will discuss or ask how this game was probably coded. A lot of learning (and fun) occurs during this club and this is something students are willing to stay after school for!

I do want to point out that I believe the article was incorrect with its Pokemon example. Pokemon is not for the computer, in which the article makes several references that the student is doing stuff on the computer with it.

  • What is your perspective on the authors’ notions of how institutions and pedagogies must respond to emerging technologies and practices?

I feel that institutions need to keep up with its “customers”, the students, because of this, I agree that education needs to get out of their comfort zone and conform to the idea that you can’t conform to one way of teaching anymore. Although I do have some reservations (as expressed most weeks) about the idea that if we always meet the needs of the students and teach them the way they expect, and then we don’t teach them how to learn from multiple avenues. I fully agree with students being able to teach themselves, becoming independent life-long learners, but I also know in the workplace, you will be expected to meet their conditions, not the other way around. In general, I would say switching the teaching up is an essential part of teaching in which we do need to embrace the notion that learning can be done without the teacher giving the information, but rather through other resources instead. After all, a teacher is only available for so much time a day, the digital world is literally waiting to be picked up and used any time instead. Final remarks: I often find myself wanting to do something differently, but pass on the opportunity because I can’t meet the current grading policy; it is time to shift our minds and truly begin to teach how to learn.

  • What other changes do you think we, as educators and learners, should be attentive to with these emerging trends?

Games, games, games! I think GAME theory is going to be a huge up and coming trend with students. Basically, GAME theory goes under the concept that when all basic needs are met, the next thing people do is play games, this can be observed in animals as well. I think we need to keep in mind that learning can still be fun and that we need to do our best to see that learning is fun for students, I do urge caution that we continue to model for students multiple avenues of learning and that a game is simply one option. As a learner and a teacher responsible for the learning of other learners, I also think we need to keep in mind how technology is changing us. I find students expect immediate results ALL the time. I have several examples, but one of my most recent was during a club meeting. I was standing on a table, plugging cords into a projector while getting a student to change the features on the remote. During this time a student is calling my name over and over to get my attention, because he wanted to know if he could turn off the lights. This student then came up to me, while I was still on the desk and proceeded to interrupt what I was doing so he could ask his question again. I told him I was in the middle of setting something up for the group and that I will get to him when I can and he was not happy with that response. Yes, I love technology and hope to be a leader in the technological world of teaching at my school, but I do fear that the conveniences of technology will spoil society as well. I think it will be even more important for the teacher to take time to model decent interactive skills for students to help counter this, on the bright side, the teacher will be able to model this more because they won’t be hugging the front of the room as much.

Week 11: Learning Across Spaces

Learning more about the library is always an interesting thing for me. I teach math and computer science; something most people and math teachers would say that the library isn’t a place for my students. The fact that the library is shifting in a direction of creativity and digital literacy means that even math classes can begin to utilize this more often now to. The first article I read about, Making space for makerspaces (Foote), talks a lot about makerspaces in which students have the ability to create and problem solve. This is a wonderful notion to have students come to the library for whatever reason and find themselves building something or solving a puzzle. My library has a mentality that gaming and collaboration is a fundamental skill that they can encourage. Many teachers find that this is frustrating because students that are in study hall and not being successful in class are using the library as a way to not do anything for a class period, but in fact they are doing something, they are problem solving and reasoning through new tasks.

The second Horizons, Horizon report K12 2014 (pp. 12-13), article I found interesting about the approach of changing instruction to a project-based, problem solving type class. Although I teach a class that uses this mentality, I do feel it is critical that students are exposed to a variety of teaching and still have the ability to learn from a traditional setting. I am all for maximum exposure to all types of teaching and a variety of teaching in each class however. Project learning is a wonderful strategy that can allow students to reason. You can assign a project with a lot of specific direction or very little and allow the students to figure out what they have to do to achieve the goal of the project. This not only encourages learning of a concept, but also an ability to determine how to filter what they want to do ont eh assignment as well.

The last article on badges I found as a notion I used in a remedial class when I taught 8th grade math, 7 things you should know about badges (Educause). We used an online website (I forget the website at the moment) in which students played math games that tested a variety of math skills. Students were given a list of math topcis to cover and had to pick certain games or puzzles to complete. After completion of an activity they earned badges to signify what they were doing well. Were they fast? Were they accurate? Did they reach a high score? Not only were students trying to collect them all, they would also compare and ask each other how they got the one they got, talk about motivation! Are badges to childish in high school? Perhaps, but sometimes even the most childish things can be fun for students if presented correctly.

What are ways in which you could apply the notion of learning across spaces in your context? Specifically are there ways in which you could design and integrate learning activities that would be supportive of specific learning goals across different contexts?

In many ways I already provide some opportunities for students to learn across spaces, specifically from my classroom to the library, to working at home. I run my programming classes very digitally, in fact I only print out 7 pages of paper the entire semester for the students which I give to them day 1. These papers spell out the course and show them what each assigned grade is so they know what to expect. All of the course learning materials are found on Google Drive which I share with the students during the semester. During my 7th period Hall Duty coverage, I often stop down to the library to assist the students I have that have study hall and go to the library for programming time. It is great to work with students in a different environment.

In programming, I often point the direction for students to code, especially on their final projects. I could create a more open plan that contains a checklist of skills that need to be demonstrated instead. This would support students learning across very contexts, coding topics they are interested in and this would allow them to work outside of my classroom walls and code in the library or at home more.

I wanted to take a moment to share a little inspiration I had today about pushing my programming class in the direction of Web 2.0 and collaboration.

It took me a little to think about this, but I think it would be neat if not only I provide my packets for my students but allow them to do something similar to Diigo in the sense that as they read, they can highlight, ask questions, make comments, provide additional thoughts to what they read. Programming has many difficult concepts and allowing students to provide their own analogies might be beneficial. For example I talk about the difference between a JFrame, Container, and JPanel and use a painting as the example. The JFrame is the border, the Container is the canvas, the JPanel is the additional “stuff” painted on the canvas – or at least a portion of it. How great could it be to have students come up with their own analogies and thoughts – this would encourage not only learning, but the ability to reorganize what they learn to something that already makes sense. In addition, the collaboration aspect could be very beneficial. Check this idea out: the course is self-paced…some students have finished the required materials where as my struggling students are halfway through it. Imagine if the students that “get-it” left comments as they went through the curriculum. The students that are struggling then have not only my packets and myself as support, they have all of the students that went before them explanations as well. I am really excited about this idea and wonder how I can implement this. I wonder if Diigo can be used on Google Drive with the PDF. Another option is to play around with the ability to “can comment” instead of “can view” on my documents. Do they work with PDF’s?
Conclusion: I have spent some time playing around with google drive, there is no luck with using the comment feature on a PDF, however I can upload the docX file and students are able to comment that way. The only issue, even if they are allowed to comment, they can still add and change the things I have written, however they need approval before it goes through. This might be a possibility for the next time I teach this course next semester.

Week 8: Audio/Visual Media and Learning

I want to start out by saying that podcasts and even flicker are areas that I haven’t dealt with before. I have friends that constantly talk about the weekly podcast they like to listen to, but it was never something I really found interesting. I often find it is hard to listen to something when I am actively doing something else, such as driving. So today was a new experience, sitting down and actively listening to a podcast on homework effectiveness and doing nothing else during that time.

I found the Educational uses of podcasting (Harris and Park, 2008) to be a great overview of how podcasts might be appropriate for education. The idea that you can provide a podcast that students could listen to in order to reinforce an idea could be really beneficial or using a podcast to explain the steps of a process, so students can hear the steps and follow the steps without having to stop and read (could be difficult for timing, but still doable). The fact that you can make a podcast public could allow for a teacher to extend their teaching to not just their students but to other students as well. I have thought about how I can use this in programming, I could create little podcasts that students could run before or after their readings for the day in which I summarize or give some focal points to think about as they read. I played around with garageband and made a podcast and was successful implementing it into a word document. Sadly, as expected, I could not get the podcast to run on a PDF, which is how I currently provide the reading materials for my students, I have other thoughts, but I was hopeful for an all-in-one package.

The use of Flickr I found interesting, but had a hard time adopting into my mindset of teaching in math and computer science. I can see the motivational benefits to writing comments and practice typing using Flickr. For the topics I teach, I could see having students create problems for other students to solve and put them on Flickr, but I see better effective ways to do this instead. I can see how Flickr could have a role in education for reflections, but I am also concerned about the fact that you have no promise what pictures students might find and in this day and world, I would rather play closer to the safe side than not when it comes to things that could have been “avoidable”. Are there any thoughts on how this could be used for a high school math course?

I listened to the “Study Right – What Works” podcast. I found it to be a nice way to summarize some do’s and don’ts such as highlighting alone isn’t enough unless your students have been taught how to highlight and use the highlighting effectively.

I also looked into the bubble maker from the Flickr article. Here you develop comic strips and add bubbles about what is going on. An activity that I am quite found of for logical structuring of stories, etc would be to make a comic strip and cut out each one so they are no longer in order. In addition, cut out the summary of each picture so students have to place the pictures in order and then determine which summary is appropriate for what spot. This requires students to collaborate and debate and it really gets them thinking; even if they go out of order in any way.

 

 

  • What types of trends do you see in the ways audio and still/video media are being used to support learning?

I think the video and audio media are providing a lot in the educational system when utilized. We all know that students learn differently and one way is through hearing information over again or just hearing the information. A podcast could provide that information. In addition podcasts could be used to support students who want to go deeper with the material. Perhaps the difference between a college prep type class and an honors class is that the honors takes the deep conversations in class, where the college prep have the opportunity to hear deeper connections through a podcast if they choose. In general, I think this type of media supports learning by promoting learning, refreshing previous content, and pre-loading students to know what to expect in the unit.

 

  • Specifically, how do you see these media enhancing participatory learning within the Web 2.0 context beyond that possible by text media?

Text can only go so far in the sense that you can’t necessarily express emotions. Not to mention when you are writing material down you often have a structure in your head already. By allowing students to speak (a natural thing we all do), we can allow students to embrace their thoughts and emotions into their works as well. In addition, students that have difficulty writing or typing now have a way to shine in the class if they can express themselves vocally instead. Students can begin to read articles, create podcasts of it and react to each other’s thoughts in a different way, all while learning new material. In general, I feel a podcast could be a way to allow more students to get involved in the process. A devil’s advocate could claim that it inhibits the students that struggle with writing the opportunity to write, but I think it depends on what the intent of the activity would be.

 

  • How do you see the experience of creating and using the podcast yourself affecting your thoughts about media for learning? Or have you had experiences of using digital media for learning/networking that you would like to comment on?

Like I mentioned earlier, I do not have any prior experience with the digital media involving oral speech. I could see myself using a podcast type idea to support students that struggle with reading my packets and assimilating the information into code right away. These podcasts could be used to summarize, explain different parts of the packet and to help support students that struggle with the independence. Although I work with students individually, it would also allow me to speak with each of my students about my own thoughts on what they are learning and to support them without having to stop assisting students on the actual projects. My current thought is to look at the toughest 3 packets and create a podcast that I will load into my google drive that students can then play if they need it. If it appears to be successful, I will then proceed to make more as we go along, similar to how I am constantly updating the packet as mistakes or things that need more clarity get revealed.

For my podcast, I will be interviewing a business teacher at my high school. Every class she teaches uses the computers nearly everyday and I hear some great things that she uses to help the students learn and collaborate.

 

Finally, Happy Mol Day in Chemistry!

 

Week 7: Wikis and Learning

Before I begin about this week, last week was an interesting experiment with working with the class wiki. I found it neat that I could put in a first version, look at other people’s wikis and make some improvements, I found myself often going “oh yeah”, I can talk about this or summarize the category and provide additional links. It is a pretty neat experience and I could see the “neatness” growing if others were to look at my 5 technology tools and expand on personal experience or other things they have found. It would be quite the collaborative experience.

This week, we were asked to read 3 articles, all revolving around the idea of wikis and how we can utilize them for learning. I found two of my readings to have drawn me in a bit.

In “The power of wikis” (Schweder & Wissick, 2009), I found the list of 10 ways wikis can be used in education to be quite interesting to think about. It is amazing to think about how a wiki was designed to allow a community to grow a topic and how from one idea we then expanded into multiple functions, some of which I imagine were unexpected. Curriculum Planning was the first one that makes so much sense that I would have never thought to use it for this purpose. Using a wiki to map out a unit or an entire course could be so beneficial because everyone can contribute, add in notes and see everything. The other one I found interesting (mostly because I had mentioned earlier if I could do something like this with my programming class as a way to contribute tags and codes for students to see) was the Math Encyclopedia where students can contribute new knowledge to this wiki and have a running view of everything they are learning. This could serve as a huge review, practice organizing information, allow students to have that important process time between new material. I could see myself having a Geometry wiki where students have to contribute new properties and then also link those properties to other properties that use it. This would serve as a great way to process the properties and convert that into long term memory and also allow students to apply that information.

The other article that invoked a more emotional response was the “How to use Wikipedia as  a teaching tool” (Wadewitz). This article struck a nerve in the sense that I strive for a classroom of equality for all and it is really important to not be blinded by how great a wiki and community-based learning can be. You have to keep in mind your population within that community. For example, Wikipedia had an issue with women being left out of history, primarily because someone chose to group the men in one page and the women in the other. A community dominated by a “corrupt” group could really cause a negative reaction to learning. So, even though a learning style based on community can provide you with lots of information, you still need to be critical to what you learn and really take into account on who really is contributing to this “brain” of a wiki page.

In general, I feel the knowledge building in a wiki occurs most by one person taking an initiative to make a page and add in what details they are familiar with. Afterwards, those with common interests then find that page and contribute their knowledge to the page. I see this continuously happening until a page has been refined a decent amount and has been processed over and over again. The wonderful thing about this process is the original creator can then see these changes and learn more, assimilate the information or challenge it. Through this non-stop collaboration (that could go over days), a person develops a deeper schema for the topic that was posted. As far as how learning can occur, this allows the brain to process information multiple times, thus rehearsing occurs and more than likely after this amount of time you are likely to have an emotional response to what you are seeing and reading that you will store this information into long-term memory, thus learning will occur.

I feel that wikis can provide a lot of valid learning and knowledge to an individual. My first thought is strictly on the fact that if it wasn’t valid, then Wikipedia wouldn’t be as big as it is or fan-page wiki’s (for TV shows, etc) wouldn’t have popped up as a major way of being a part of the community that enjoys that television show. I think the fact that a person is iterating through the same information over and over again to add additional information is a perfectly acceptable way to learn new information and adopt it into your way of life. In addition to the collaborative nature, I think there is a lot of merit in having a group of students take ownership over a wiki page. This way students have to do the entire process of learning, such as collecting information, finding pictures, determining which information is true, adding their own thoughts, reflections, logging; to generalize, I think through the use of a wiki, students could take learning into their own hands and learn the process of learning, which is a general goal I think we have as educators, to teach students to think how to think and to learn how to learn.

 

How can I use this…well here is one website that provides an idea in math class. http://divisbyzero.com/2010/02/24/using-wikis-in-mathematics-classes/

In general, this teacher has a wiki that students are making an answer key for all the homework problems. More importantly, the key is not just answers, but detailed explanations. This is a great way to get a class to contribute together, to find each others mistakes and make edits. In addition, students are going to be emotionally involved in doing homework and by explaining the process on the wiki. He found students were more likely to type in a whole new problem than to edit, which is important to note, but you could potentially drive this into a group competition — to want to post correctly and catch other group mistakes. Which group posting which problem could be anonymous for other students except for the teacher. Although the teacher reflects that students weren’t that interested in it, I would imagine with the right motivation and tweaking (and perhaps not making a solutions manual), could serve a great way to process, reflect, and review material.

Here is one last link providing some other ways to use wiki’s in math. In short, they all tend to either be a group working through problems and using the wiki to explain the entire process or individuals using the wiki to organize information into a “study guide” of sorts.

https://suite.io/david-r-wetzel/109920x

Week 5: Becoming a networked learner/teacher

Week 5 was along the lines of things I have openly expressed to my colleagues in a direction I want to go in my teaching. I have always found I prefer less spotlight on me and more on the students taking ownership in their own learning. Although I was not aware of the Khan Academy classroom setup (I’ve used the videos, but nothing more than that), I have heard and witnessed a flipped classroom before. At my first teaching job, my mentor had a flipped science room and had demonstrate a legendary success year after year. In the 4 years I have known her, she is running a 92% overall pass rate on the state test, in which one year she had a 100% pass rate. Since it was 8th grade, I had the same students she had and did not experience the same results she got year after year. My programming course is similar to a flipped model in the sense that students travel at their pace and do all the practice in the classroom, but some students don’t do the lessons at home and instead do them in class in addition to the practice.

The TED talk video was really neat to watch and one I want to share, though fear the length of it will deter off some colleagues (cause who really has that type of time).  The video was very inspirational as to how a class can be ran for my math course I teach. This is something I have started to play with (making some of my own videos), but I could utilize what is already made as well. My biggest reservation is the fact that I find it hard to have the homework be a “technology” related assignment because what happens if the student doesn’t have the ability to interact with the lesson at home. The video in the end left me with a desire to do this, but a bigger desire to get a 1:1 initiative started first.

A lot of the reading in the Web 2.9 technologies as cognitive tools (Hsu, Ching, & Grabowski, 2010) felt like a reflection of many of the ideas and concepts I have experienced briefly in this course. Blogging, reading other blogs, interacting through diigo, all ways to learn using Web 2.0. The portion on wikis got me thinking the most. I have two tiers of programming a super intense course (one I mention several times already); the other is this low-level entry web-design course that’s pace can sometimes be slower than a snail. The difficult part is that sometimes I get students that struggle on the content and I have other students already familiar and far more knowledgeable than myself. I take the opportunity to encourage those students to do more and to help others and I try to learn from them as well. I could only imagine if I can start some sort of wiki contribution for coding that every student has to contribute to. This could relate to a huge curve for the struggling students and would give a way for the students already knowledgeable to provide more to the community in the classroom. I have also thought about revamping the course more than I have already and find a way to turn it into a more self-paced like course like my other programming. The last part in the article is what makes me nervous for crossing the bridge to a complete Web 2.0 class. Technology online comes and goes, who is to say that what you did today will still be around tomorrow. Yes, I can spend more time for more things to substitute, but time is something I have very little of with the amount of preps, grading, and desire to really shake things up in my classroom and perhaps my district.

What do you see as the most important areas of professional development for educators to become 21st century educators?

I feel that the most important area for professional development is to provide a ton of differentiation for the teachers. I’ve tried taking some professional development around the idea of technology, one of them on advanced Google; during this I found myself completely bored and feeling like I wasted my time, yet other teachers really needed that presentation. In general I would like to see more on just tools that are available while other teachers more skeptical of embracing technology have opportunities to use the technology to learn new material themselves (such as taking a course similar to this one). I guess to summarize, I feel we need to provide such a variety to fit the needs of the teaching population so that everyone is being challenged to grow in their experience and to learn more options of what they can truly do in their classroom.

What are specific steps you would consider as part of your effort to become a 21st century connected educator? Specifically, how might you think practically about integrating technology in your classroom or context?

In my geometry class, I really want to start providing additional resources for students outside the classroom. In many ways, I would like to start running a flipped classroom, but start out simple where all students must stay at the same pace and eventually in time begin to loosen up and allow students to follow their natural learning path as best as possible. I could really see creating a video that students can watch that have them fill out their notes as the homework and then in the classroom, we can spend the time reflecting on what was learned, facilitate discussions and make connections. In addition lots and lots of practice and collaboration, all because we embraced the lesson through technology at home. In my internet programming course, I really would like to see (even this marking period) if I can get some sort of collective wiki-type idea going in which students can contribute new tags, items, segments of code that perform various tasks. It would sort of serve as the entire brain of the class. Does anyone have a wiki suggestion that could meet this basic need? I would want to have full control of the wiki, but my students could go in and contribute in an organized way.

I guess the worst part about this course is that I have so many ideas to embrace and I am the type of person that can only do one thing at a time passionately, so I need to way my options and see what I can integrate now that will be able to keep rolling the following year (and years to come).

 

Edit: on a side note, I am now an unofficial adviser for a Programming and Video Game club in which students will get to choose what programming they want to go into. In addition, I will be a coach and sponsor a student team to compete in this High School Star League where students can compete for scholarship money. Very exciting!

Week 4: The new ecology of learning

Happy Saturday everyone! This week we took a look at how learning occurs, more specifically where and the results, although not surprising, were very interesting to engage in. The very first article I read felt like it was looking at me and say “Jeff, this is just for you”.

When reading through the articles, Arc of life of learning; A new culture of learning (Thomas & Seely-Brown)  pp. 17-38, I found myself relating to most of the case studies on a personal level. I help run a scratch club for middle school students to experience programming outside of the school time. During this club, I present projects for students to get involved in and we simulate very similarly to how the scratch website that Sam was a part of. My students design projects and then “team” with other students to share, modify, and experiment with each others code. Although this setting is still in a classroom, I feel it is a little less formal as students are the ones pushing each other, rather than me. I am primarily there to get access to the computers and to guide students. I see this as a way to motivate students to want to take my programming courses at the high school when they jump from the middle school to the high school. Sam’s story of how he learns reminds me a little of how my programming courses are set-up. My students have their own sense of “community” just we are in a formal classroom. Students take full advantage of my room, moving desks, sitting everywhere, in which they team up. Now each of them works towards the same objectives (for now, that will change during the 2nd half of 2nd semester), but often what happens is that one students can figure out the next challenging project and the rest of them in the group will ask for the student to explain some of the logic. A big emphasis I have been trying to teach is to not give the answer, but find ways to point people into the correct logical reasoning. I often wonder how I can extend this course so that students have supports out of the classroom. I have been using google in which students can chat with each other, but perhaps finding a strong open forum type setting might be more appropriate. This will be something that I can think about as I approach the independent study portion of the course.

Although I do teach about game design, I personally believe that my students learn, unlike Douglas Thomas. I find it funny that the person responsible for building that community couldn’t recognize the learning that was occurring. Although this leads to a valuable point that perhaps the best learning should be done without the teacher. Perhaps the best classroom is not a classroom, but a place where the learner can embrace opportunities that they care about. Perhaps during classroom time, we should be using it to motivate the learner to go home and learn more. We should equip them with the skills to be able to learn more, while providing the motivation to have them want to learn more as well. Similar to last week…this sounds amazing, but how can we do this in a public education setting where you must grade on specific content and the achievement of the student? This currently feels like another situation where grades are ruining opportunities for students to truly thrive and learn. It almost feels like there should be a grade tied to achievement, but then an academic responsibility grade that ties into the learner embracing learning, but then again, do we really need to tie learning to a grade? Do we really teach students to learn by dangling that letter grade of a carrot in front of them?

The last part of the article that made me smile was the whole “google the error” type logic. This is something that my students embrace in class at times. I personally prefer if they can read the error and make sense of what it means, but I encourage using your resources and google is a resource. I have noticed that students don’t usually google the same error more than 2 times, because after that they either #1 don’t make the error again or #2 have learned how to fix that specific error. Programming is such a unique topic to teach, because if the program doesn’t run the way you want it to, you know you made a mistake. It is self-regulating, self-checking, and students get sucked into the logical reasoning puzzles that they encounter. A final thought on this article is that they are wrapped around a general idea of coding or software that uses code. These types of settings are very unique from other courses and I wonder how I can work this into a math course or for that matter any other course. Has anyone had an experience with teaching or being in a course where more learning was facilitated by the student rather than the teacher pushing them?

The second article, Connectivism (Siemens), did not really strike anything with me. It felt like it was a lot of things already looked at summarized together. I think I would have gotten more out of the article if diigo was able to be utilized because I think we as a class have a lot to offer and share and during that article it would have been great to read other thoughts rather than thoughts we have discussed for the most part already. In general, the article supports the idea of Connectivism, where students get connected to topics and websites that allow them to get deeply engaged with. At one point the article mentions how the demographics of teaching are changing and how now days we need to have lessons revolve around a student-focused setup. Student-focused doesn’t mean the teacher isn’t involved, but rather the teacher avoids being in the spotlight for to long and instead embraces the idea that students can put things together by putting their heads together and forming connections that way. What struck a chord with me is how there are claims that education has fallen behind the times. In many ways I can see that because (not to be stereotypical, but this is my experience at my school) majority of our veteran teachers believe good teaching exists by strong delivery of content to students and letting them practice it. Part of being a younger teacher in the building means that I get to sit in on veteran teachers’ classes. I have yet to sit in an experience teacher’s class and see a class that doesn’t involve a 20 minute lecture. When it comes to technology, most teachers use computers for word editors or website searches and yet we have so many other options out there that we don’t dare tap into. Perhaps in the coming years some of the more technology, student-focused teachers will provide trainings on how to shape the classroom to fit closer to the times. I do want to put it out there that by no means is there disrespect for a teacher driven-lesson, I do feel there are times that this is still appropriate and I think it is important as well because the students need to see multiple ways of teaching so they can begin to teach themselves how to learn in different ways. Schools need to prepare students to learn from a multitude of ways and need to prepare students for the real world, not everything will revolve around them and they may need to follow directions and ideas that their boss tells them.

 

To Summarize:

The texts we read this week continue to support the idea that the best learning occurs without the teacher. A teacher merely opens the door to where the students can walk through and dive as deep into as they want in the material. To create a new learning environment you need a community. I feel there is much else except a willingness to learn and share. So the role of the teacher in this is that the teacher needs to provide doors to a community and perhaps at first require collaboration in the hopes that the learners will see how beneficial it is, afterwards the teacher can just let things roll on their own, direct the class to new ideas, and sit back and observe. Through those observations the teacher can then provide more materials to direct students in ways that interest them or challenge their current thoughts.

 

A lot of the whole idea of how learning is built by a community resonates with me strongly because that is why I try to do in my programming courses. I keep an open environment to allow the students to naturally team and embrace what they are learning. I am struggling with three ideas though.

Thought 1) How do I do this in a geometry course? Programming was so natural to do that I did this type of setup without trying my first year teaching the course. Geometry is still in a formal setting and I would love to branch out. I have always felt my teaching style was less about me and more about them, I keep notes down to about 10 minutes and have most of the class time for students to take what they saw in notes, practice and then see if they can draw the connection of what the notes will be for the next day, that way when I am teaching in front of the room, most students have already figured out what it is we are going to do. Still, I don’t have a community and I definitely don’t have a class of students trying to learn more about geometry at home through an online community.

Thought 2) How can we tie this into a course when we have so clearly learned that tying everything to a grade results in ruining the type of motivation to learn, which then discourages the students to dive deeper into the content? I really don’t have much more than a question for this thought, can anyone provide some ideas? My student mentality is that if it isn’t for a grade then why bother (one of the reasons why homework has become an issue because we don’t grade homework).

Thought 3) Really not a debate, but what about students living in the 20th century trying to learn in a 21st century classroom? How can students take the learning home and embrace a wonderful online community with no computers or devices to stay connected? Yes they have a library or other locations to use them, but what if they don’t have transportation to and from on a regular basis? If I create this huge social media type course, how can you hold students accountable that literally can’t do anything at home? Even if we had a 1:1 initiative (hopefully in the coming year or two), we can’t promise the students will have internet access at home.

    Good teaching reaches to all students…how can we show good teaching if not every student can be involved in the same opportunities?

 

Note: This is not related to the course but I have grown to value my groups opinion. How do you feel about homework and grading, should it be completion or for accuracy, or don’t do it at all? Has this impacted learning at all? This is something my colleagues are debating about as we talk about the grading policy, I really see a little of each sides, but which one is best for students? Does it change for the subject you teach? What about for students who are economically disadvantaged and spend their days kid sitting and don’t have time for homework? Any insights anyone can provide would be appreciate, I am a little tired of hearing the same things over and over again from the same people.