What are you passionate about with regard to learning and why?
Looking back at my class assignments and checking for completion, I realize I have come a long ways. When the semester first started, I didn't even know how to access the ICARE documents, It took me many days to set up my Weebly account, and that included 2 nights of crying out of frustration. Know that I have time to reflect and answer this question, I feel so proud of myself for hanging in there. Thanks to all the obstacles I faced, I know more things today. I realize, that I love to learn and leaning new things makes me excited and I want to share it with others. When people ask me, "why do you like being a teacher?" I always say that it's because I like to motivate kids to learn, to get them excited about learning. But I think it's because I love learning with them, and I'm the one that gets excited for learning! Now that we live in a world where technology is all around us, I feel need and responsibility to get educated and bring that new knowledge to my students and my colleagues.
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Enrolling in this graduate program has been by far the most difficult thing in my life, but the most rewarding also. When I first started, I came across many challenges, especially in technology because the only thing I knew about technology back then was sending emails, how to look up information in Google. and something I was very proud of at the moment, which was to Cut and Paste! Today, I find myself with my own learning website and incorporating various technology opportunities in my teaching practice. Through this program, the concept of collaboration came to be my most respected and admired skill. If it wasn't for the support of my professors and my cohort, my journey would have been very difficult. If there was something I didn't understand in the readings, or something just wasn't clear, it always was clarified when we came together during our class discussions. Through my cohort friends, I found new ways, new ideas, and new solutions. Most important, I feel more self confident and stronger. I feel capable of taking on more challenges. This program has made me stronger and I can truly say today, that I am enjoying my profession to the fullest, thanks to all the wonderful experience I have learned as a student.
I never knew that this new and exciting way I was learning through, was actually "Flipped Teaching" not until my professor mentioned it and I was able to read about it. I always looked forward to the new homework assignments each week because I knew it would include videos, articles, TED talks and lots of meaningful discussions with my cohort and study buddies. According to the theoretical framework, the two key components of Flipped Teaching are Educational Technology and Activity Learning. Both of these components influence the student learning environment. Using technology with learning brings the world to your fingertips and serves different learning styles to say the least. Learning through activities makes learning meaningful and exiting. Professors find that having more time to spend on the concept, hands on experience, or discussions, lead students to high levels of curiosity that serve as a magnet for learning. When an activity involves solving a problem or challenge like in CBL, the students learn to be engaged thinkers, learning by an experimental process. I feel this is one advantage CBL has over Flipped Teaching. A few years ago, my father became ill and needed an open heart surgery. I quickly started reading everything I could about my father's condition, the surgery process, the risks and I would even synthesize the information for my mother and my sisters. All of this information gave me knowledge to ask more questions and keep researching. What I want to you to understand with my Dad's story, is that when there is a meaningful purpose, you take on the tasks, and do everything you need to do, in order to understand and learn. This to me is Challenge Based Learning Flipped Teaching and CBL prove Dan Pink's research on motivation. Except, I feel that Flipped Teaching drives from curiosity and excitement and CBL is driven by purpose and value. Pink said that rewards don't work, but when there is a task with simple set of rules and a clear destination, there is a narrow focus on the goal, that goal can be achieved and this again is CBL. My students would benefit greatly from both methods, but I would be more apt to try Flipped Learning First. My students are hungry for excitement, I don't blame them, they are 9 and 10. The other day we were reading Hatchet and we came across the part where Brian, the main character, gets hurt at night by a porcupine.. As we were discussing this incident and all the questions kept popping up, one student asked how it was that the porcupine wouldn't hurt itself? To make a long story short, they all wanted to go online and read about the how's and the why's and everything related to porcupines! In the future, I would like to do a research study on Flipped Teaching and how it increases or affects student achievement. Who knows, maybe my school could transition into this new way of learning someday? Whether its Flipped Teaching or CBL, I have come to the realization that we are all learners; students and teachers and the learning can no longer be contained to just the 4 walls in the classroom. We need to expand our horizons and use the technology that can open all those doors. We need to remember that learning is not the end product, it's HOW you got there, because the HOW is what stays with you forever. John Seeley Brown A New Culture of Learning * Big shift from A predictable world of equilibrium, to An exponential world of constant flux and disequilibrium. * Technology is speeding things up, constant change, no termination. * What's the real meaning of learning? Creating the new, rather than learning the old. * Kids start very curious; look it up!, always connected. (ipads, computers, and phones, etc... are all curiosity amplifiers. * No better way to learn, than to teach others. * Best predictor of how well a student will do in college? Their ability to form and join study groups. * Passion = deep deposition * "If I'm not learning, I'm out of here!" * Answers become more qustions Howard Gardner 5 Minds of the Future * Every discipline has its mental form * Synthesizing= putting information together in a way that you can hold on to it. so it sticks * Respect begins at birth, you need it in order to globalize with the rest of the world. * Ethics are your rights, your obligations, your responsibilities. * Have to start where the kids are, but cant end with them because they don't know the answers. Daniel Pink The Surprising Science of Motivation * Rewards narrow our focus * Autonomy= the urge to direct our own lives * Mastery= the desire to get better and better at something * Purpose= the yearning to do something with the purpose of serving someone larger than ourselves I feel that I was raised thinking in linear ways. Maybe it was because I was a girl with a very strict father and we were new to this country? I think there was always the need to do things in order; the way I was told, to follow the norm, the procedure, the step by step way in order to feel right, safe and avoid embarrassments. Yes, I grew up always scared of making mistakes. Sadly to say, as a teacher I still was the same way. I followed the teacher's manual word for word. And never really had enough confidence to think outside the box. I feel that this year, I am developing more courage and giving myself more freedom to think different. With all that I am learning in the masters program and collaborating with my study team, new ideas are flourishing and my teaching is going into a direction of an agricultural model; and I'm loving it! Two days ago I introduced Readers Theater to my reading class. My students have been enjoying them so much that today they even mentioned the idea they had about possibly doing the play for the kindergartners. If my purpose in reading is to get my kids to develop love for reading and fluency, why not? This takes me back to a comment I heard in one of the videos; Learning doesn't have to be hard. I think the best kind of learning, is when you love what you're doing that yo don't even realize you are getting better and better. This theory is proven by the story of Dusty, the boy who aspired to be a professional surfer and indeed became one. Anything can be possible if the person has passion and the will to fail again and again without being afraid. I am ready to fail and learn. "Every great idea grows from the potting soil of hundreds of bad ones, and the single biggest reason why most of us never live up to our creative potential is from fear of making a fool our of ourselves" Mobley. "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy" John Dewey
It saddens me that one man saw the need for direction 100 years ago, and we are barely seeing this need today. Our leaders best intentions for this great nation didn't become possible as they imagined. But I am hopeful that our education system is slowly but surely turning into a positive era of reforms. In the video of Shelly H. Carson, Creative Brains, I familiarized myself with the phrase " See what others don't see" and I learned that thanks to the creative people that didn't see something or saw something different, they were able to create something and helped bring upon change to mankind. Alexander Fleming, noticed when bacteria failed to grow in the specimen thus discovering penicillin. Or George de Mestral noticing his coat and his dog's fur being full of burs after coming back from hunting in the woods. From seeing this unwanted situation, he came up with the invention of velcro. How I am connecting these stories to our current education reform is that we are learning from what we are not seeing. We are not seeing results that show students have learned the content and the skills needed for the 21'st century. But we are being creative and looking for solutions to help us move forward. Darling-Hammond laid out her policy prescription for closing the gap.
What does the 21st century classroom looks like? It shows students working in groups collaborating using the 4 C’s. To me, collaborating means, students working and putting their thoughts together trying to solve problems or all working towards completing a task. I also hear students asking the majority of the questions and the teacher serving as a facilitator reacting to and redirecting their inquiries. Students using technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information. That’s what a 21st century classroom looks like, and that is the goal of today’s educator. I know it can be possible, because I’m seeing it happen in videos; it’s called the “new media ecology”
In the video from the SITE conference, Mishra states, “ We urge for developing a thoughtfully playful attitude towards understanding this landscape being created by these new technologies” The message I got from this is that there is so much technology out there, that it would be impossible to keep up to date and know how to use every thing. Instead, we need to see technology as a tools that we can play with and become familiar with, because eventually it could help us improve our teaching. As educators, we first need to explore some of the many tools out there. When we explore, and learn to use them in our everyday life, we get good at them. When we feel comfortable with technology and know how it works, then we begin thinking of the different ways we can use it in our classroom. Mishra says “teachers are the designers of the total package”. When we start connecting pedagogy, content, and technology, we would have reached the center of TPACK. Many teachers, including myself, use microsoft word, we used it in college, in our everyday life,and we use it in the classroom. Microsoft word wasn’t even created with education in mind! It was created for marketing purposes. All it took was someone thinking creatively and finding its benefit in using it as an everyday functional tool. This is what Mishra is telling us to do, to think outside the box, explore, be flexible, and know that technology is messy. As an educator, I really don’t have time to explore technology, and even less time to learn how to use it in my classroom with my students and my lessons. As a student in the Innovative Learning program, I have the opportunity to explore a plethora of technology tools. Some tools I find super interesting right from the start, and right away I think of ideas of how to incorporate them in my teaching. Other programs or tools, I like and I find very interesting, but I know I would have to continue exploring. Currently I only use technology in my classroom as an enhancement tool. But slowly I have been brave enough to try new tools. I just started using SeeSaw in my classroom with blogging and a week ago I went to a training on “Google Classroom”. I have lots of plans and ideas to take these tools a little further, perhaps even to the “transformation” level. I know that slowly but surely, creativity ideas will come us, and we will be able to survive in this new media ecology. We have taken the first step, to embrace technology and learn how it can work for us and better the lives of our students. I always knew technology was moving fast, but boy was I blown away by how fast!
845 million active users on Facebook every month? And if we were to put all the FB users into a country, that country would be the third largest country in the world behind China and India! It's unbelievable. It's true and we must accept it. Our students are living life at this speed too. At a very young age, kids are owning their own phones and look up an answer to any question they might have, and even get it in a form of a video if they wish. Ken Robinson made a good point about children now days getting diagnosed with ADHD. He clarified, how ADHD does exist, but know it just seems like more and more children are diagnosed with it today as if it were an epidemic. The way I see it, our students can't sit still at a desk with a paper and pencil in hand following directions, and doing what they're told all day long. Our new generation lives and breaths technology; fast speed technology. How can they sit still? Our new generation needs to be stimulated, challenged, and inspired! After all they're kids that just want to learn and have fun. In the TED talk video given by Adora Svitak, she says that children have the best and most creative ideas because they don't think of the restrictions. Grown up, on the other hand, are always think why they can't do something. It's sad that we loose the ability to create and dream as we grow up. If we were allowed to dream more often, I think we would be less stressed out and have more fun learning with our students. Together we could bring education to a new level. On a last note, I would like to say that technology seems very difficult for me. Most of the time I am intimidated by it, and I don't want to hassle with it. I think I need to get out of my comfort zone and bring more of these wonderful resources into my teaching practices. Comfort or no comfort, that is the way we live at the moment, and we need to help our students catch up to that wave. |
AuthorTere Delgado Archives
December 2017
session 6 |