Monthly Archives: March 2016

This past week our class began the AEE 530 series with our group.  Our group facilitated the workshop of “Does Diversity Matter? Maximizing Multicultural Competency for Teaching Success.”   This instructional and interactive workshop gave educators and students specific strategies to deliver instruction that supports all students’ preferred learning styles. Participants gained tools that help create classroom climates where each student has a successful learning experience. This workshop was helpful for teachers in alternative schools, schools wanting to enhance delivery methods, and teachers seeking to connect with students who are not achieving the learning objectives.  Out learning objectives were to identify major components of multicultural education among instructors and educators, classifying personality styles, and identifying instructional strategies to increase student performance and support at risk learners and address needs of students.  Before conducting the workshop, our group worked together to develop a lesson plan and list of duties for each member. We met 3 times to ensure all tasks were completed and utilized skills and talents of our group members. I was able to conduct the beginning phases of the planning and my other group member served as piecing all information together in the lesson plan to create more understanding for the entire group to meet tasks. I think we had some difficulty in creating workshop presentation and tasks based on language barriers and understanding of the other group member. This issue was solved by finding a place in the presentation for the students to give their international perspective on teaching and learning and student preferred learning in Ukraine.  The group also utilized resources from the multicultural director in the college of AG and peer reviewed literature to support our topic.  Outreach and promotion of the workshop was viewed through networks of listservs of one group member and we were able to gain nearly 30 participants for the workshop.  An interesting point I think was a plus to the planning was our hands on activities, which gave participants a chance to network with others and gain there learning personality style better.  Reviewing the workshop evaluations, participants felt that the workshop was useful and they could utilize this information in there learning environments and classrooms in the future.  Some comments from participants were to make sure the group watch the timing of allowing through the interactive activities, the international perspective, the tasty dunkin donuts and coffee.  After our workshop the group got detail feedback from the class for future delivery and learning.  Some points were to offer more time for reflection for learners and offer beginning definition documents before. Students pointed out that the group did a great job and the break out sessions and the climate of the workshop as far as demographics was a great fit for the topic. I really enjoyed working with my group and topic and could see expanding or creating a novice workshop or discussion on the topic in the future.

 This past weekend our AEE 530 class had the opportunity to participate in the Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium.  The symposium is an annual on-day event to showcase ways that technology can be used to enhance teaching, learning and research.  The symposium opened with a full and hearty breakfast with the opening speaker of Dr. Jones which he gave a great discussion on transforming education.  Some discussion from participants among the symposium mentioned barriers revolving in TLT and trying to incorporate focus into teaching.  The corporation with canvas and the size of classrooms would be an issue, however if educational tech could be able to leverage strategies to be able to get more technology to the students.  Another question noted was do we have more communication with all complexities of the system to get the barrier issue situated with TLT. It was also noted to implement a plan to incorporate diverse students in TLT to be more inclusive.  I attended various sessions which included sparking student interest using yammer and voice thread, promoting cultural competence through culture walks, wearable technology for self-regulated learning, and supported a colleague in their workshop on Penn State music education in technology regarding the blue band.  All workshops were great, but the sparking student interest workshop was the most beneficial to me to be able to gain more insight on other educational apps to use within course structure especially using them within me TA with my advisor course this fall. Yammer and Vice Thread could be utilized in gaining student online presentation and dialogue on content with more than just their classmates.  I felt like this experience has truly gave me a view on how to incorporate more technology effectively in courses I will teach or TA in the future.

My micro teaching experience was very interesting and fun. I wish I had more peer-reviews to get a deeper feedback approach from more in the class. I also saw it was interesting how I created the lesson plan and got a chance to teach a portion (10 mins) of the lesson.  I played the role of the teaching experience in terms of a morning setting but since the experience was conducted in the afternoon it made it a bit difficult to broaden my thinking in teaching the course in the morning time frame. The breakdown of my teaching experience of the lesson educated me on how plans of action do not go as planned sometimes and how reflection is instrumental going forward. I think this micro-teaching experience was helpful in it gave me a chance to re-teach a lesson from AEE 311 and really get great feed-back from my peers in the class. In addition, I loved the structure of being able to reconstruct a syllabus, create a lesson plan, and then be able to teach to other classmates. I wish we could have selected 5 students of our own to come at that moment and be able to hear from undergraduates about their reflection from our teaching since the courses are undergraduate level.  From my peers I learned a sense of additional stances on bringing technology to the class, providing humor to make classes more fun-filled and interesting, and having breakout activities to build more on the concepts presented. I think my taking my time would be beneficial going forward in my teaching to let students be able to reflect more on the concepts presented in the lesson plan.  My peers mentioned in the review that I gave great energy, positive handouts, presented questions and group discussion, and made it a fun atmosphere to engage content. They also mentioned that things I could improve on was telling more my story or experience, rushed a bit on teaching, needed to play clear instrumental music for class, and typos in my PowerPoint.  Overall, I feel that I did a great job generating discussion in the teaching experience and prompting students with guided questions. I think by me providing material for the students in the beginning helped them as well to gage more into the content. I look forward to viewing the video of my experience to grasp more of my teaching and strategies I can use going forward in future teaching.  If I did this lesson again, I would change several things.  I would add more time and better introduction/hook to the concepts.  I would have students take a beginning approach or start out question to engage there attention to the lesson. I think I would also send a question or reading in advance before the micro-teaching experience so my peers would have a heads up on the content for the lesson. This would have helped to know who would be in our groups in advance for the experience.  The sky is the limit!