After watching the challenge based learning video of Ringwood North Primary School's projects, it made me more motivated to continue pushing my students to do great things. From my experience, I have noticed how teachers automatically assume that students are too young to try certain things or are incapable of bigger projects. For example, the school district created personal email and passwords for every child in the district. These emails start from kindergarten and follow the student until their senior year of high school. In kindergarten is when students need to learn how to log onto a computer. While it is a new skill that students need to learn, I have noticed that teachers shy away from using technology simply because students have to log in using their assigned email and password. This shying away has affected teaching in the grades to follow, because students are still learning how to log in. While this is a small example, these same ideas that young students are incapable because of their age affects larger subjects. From the video I have seen the importance of collaboration and allowing students to explore and come to their own conclusion on big questions. I believe this applies to all subjects and all grade levels. What I love in the video is how one teacher mentions the hardest part is allowing students to get there on their own. However, allowing this struggle is key to student success. Another teacher mentioned, "If we give kids credit they will come up with amazing things". As educators we need to take a step back and give students more responsibility to take their learning into their own hands and allow them to explore and grow from their learning. Our job is to help keep them directed and give them the information and necessary tools to be successful in their findings.
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Somewhere in a students academic career they become aware of their surroundings and self confidence tends to slowly disappear. Mistakes become scary and the thought of letting people help them in academic struggles make students more nervous. I have noticed in my career that around the second grade, when academics start becoming a little more rigorous, is when students start becoming very aware of their own successes and start comparing themselves to their friends. When students enter third grade is when it becomes evident that they are either struggling more than their peers. This feeling of being behind often causes students to try and escape academics and shy away from making mistakes. Mistakes don't feel good if the mindset behind mistakes is that mistakes are bad. As an elementary teacher I have done my best to build a classroom environment that accepts mistakes as a chance to learn and grow from. When receiving responses to questions that I ask for class discussion, I try to take what would often be considered a wrong answer from a student and change my response. Instead of saying "no, does anyone else have the right answer", I always say "let's build on that answer" and try to shape their idea towards the "right" answer using other students to build the response. I try my best to give all students a chance to collaborate with their peers before calling for answers to help students feel comfortable to share out in class. I find that I get more responses after allowing them to talk with their peers. I often will ask for students to respond with their partners answer that way we get a mixture of responses to build off of and it gives the shy students a chance to have their voice heard without the pressure of talking in front of class.
After watching the videos of the different speakers and reading Can Creativity Be Taught, I have taken away the importance of teaching the whole child and that we are teaching children for potential jobs that do not exist yet. I love how John Seely presents that we are preparing our students for an ever ending future and when our students in our classroom graduate college there will be jobs that they were never prepared for. Howard Gardner presented that when most people become an expert in a subject they will often graduate to work for another master of a subject. We are in a world of constant change, information and technology is getting outdated quicker than new ideas and products are coming out. Our job as educators is to create life long learners, create a classroom of welcoming creativity with a quest of always becoming better.
We need to get out of the traditional way of teaching and create collaborative classrooms that allow students to use all forms of learning. As educators we need to welcome mistakes and create an environment where students feel free to make mistakes and feel comfortable overcoming those mistakes. Daniel Pink talks about how google allows their works 20% of their day to work on whatever they wanted as long as it wasn't what they were assigned to do. This is where google has developed some of their best ideas that are put out to the public today. I thought it would be interesting to see how we could put this idea into the classroom and allow students a certain amount of time set aside for them to develop whatever they want. Not quite sure how to structure this inside the classroom setting, but I found it really interesting how effective this idea was for google. The whole idea is to invite creativity and allow students to use skills that they often don't get to use in the traditional classroom setting. I also have taken away the importance of collaboration. This is something that I hold very highly in my own classroom. I try to give students as many opportunities as possible to work with their peers and discuss different topics and skills in all subjects. From Mobly's six insights I have learned that we need to pose questions that create creativity. Open ended questions that allow students to explore topics and allow multiple answers and have students determine the best answer through exploration with peers. Students need to be taken out of their comfort zone. They need to be pushed to be their best, but students also need to be taught that they are not the smartest person in the room and sometimes other people have just as good, if not better, ideas. Darling-Hammond expressed that a successful education system requires five key elements: meaningful learning goals, intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems, equitable and adequate resources, strong professional standards and supports, schools organized for student and teacher learning. If the nation were able to put these key elements into place our students would be our first priority. Teachers would be well educated and have a uniform sense of purpose for their classrooms. Curriculum would be adequately updated and funding would be spent effectively.
After reading the last few chapters of The Flat World and Education, I had a little sense of hope for my school and the district. A lot of what the book was saying needed to be changed, has started getting changed in a way at my current site. For example it mentions "Standards became political documents, rather than curricular guideposts, proliferating objectives that create a mile-wide-and-an-inch-deep curriculum and tests that too often offer superficial, anemic view of learning." As a district we have created priority standards, specifically in math, to help dissect the curriculum and make lessons and testing more meaningful. This year I have taken those priority standards and it has adjusted entire units and have adjusted tests that I am giving to make them more meaningful for both students and myself. In the text it also talks about the importance of observation and learning from our peers. What I love about my site principal is that she will work with teachers and create a time for us to observe other teachers and collaborate when needed. While at the elementary level, collaboration and prep time is still a huge problem because there is not enough time to do so. I feel as if my principal is doing her best to give us the most opportunities that she can. Our district has also been working towards building our technology department and replacing old technology and updating technology that needs to be updated. I believe this is one step towards not only meeting those five key elements for a successful education system expressed by Darling-Hammond, but it also helps our education system adequately educate our students for 21st century teaching and learning. After listening to the video The Technological Alterations of the Student Mind by Gary W. Small, MD it has confirmed that technology has both pros and cons for the classroom. However, after some research and listening to Dr. Small I believe that if the technology is purposeful it can enhance student learning. In his lecture, Dr. Small talks about how they did a study on adults who had absolutely no computer experience and compared their MRI's to adults who had experience. The people giving the experiment had the volunteers learn something from a book, then try to learn the same information from the internet. What was interesting about the experiment was not the adults who had no internet experience. What was interesting was that when the adults who had internet experience was learning from the internet they had significantly more brain activity than just learning from a text book. After reading and listening to the video, I believe that teaching needs to be purposeful. When there is a clear purpose and the students understand that purpose their engagement and learning is better. Technology does not scare me. I actively pursue an understanding of technology and its uses within the classroom. Although, I often find myself frustrated and in need of guidance it is not something that I shy away from. The thought of bringing teaching into the 21st century started when I was in the classroom being taught. I have used technology in the classroom since I was in high school, and learned how to incorporate it (some) in my student teaching practices. Several of my teachers in high school had smart boards and incorporated technology in various ways. I have also had many opportunities in school to do PBL projects (although it was not called that when it was assigned to me). These experiences have led me to using computers for activities in my own classroom with great success. Therefore, I believe due to the way I have been taught, adapting to teach 21st century skills is a natural way of life.
With that being said, when I look further at my own classroom I have noticed a lot of my teaching incorporating 21st century skills has been more around teaching my students basic collaboration and independence skills rather than technology skills. Throughout the past year, I have been trying to incorporate more and more technology into my classroom by giving students more chances to use the computers. Last year, I was teaching second grade and the students skills regarding technology at that age are very limited besides playing simple games and basic communication. So my goal at that point was to give students the opportunity to interact with technology at a basic level. In order to accomplish this I gave my students the chance to respond to their reading by typing their response. It was successful as well as a happy transition into our new curriculum that gives the students a safe place to do just that. I am continuing this simple way of involving technology this year as I am now in third grade. I have been trying to figure out how to use technology more in my classroom and I am excited because this last week I have been given a Promethean board for my classroom. I have not received any training on this new technology yet but there are some basic tools that I am very excited about. I can't wait to have my students writing on the whiteboard to show their thinking. (Best part I can take a picture of it and have proof of their learning for later if I need it!) I am also very interested in getting students working on their computers and sharing their screen on the board to show their thinking, not really sure what this will look like exactly but it sounds exciting! When Reading The Flat World And Education, the main idea that I am getting from this text is that it is my job to do my best and make sure to meet students needs. I need to adapt to my students and the world around us and transform my classroom every year. I am excited for this new technology and the new skills I will able to bring to my students. I still have so much to learn but I believe applying technology more is my next step to teaching my students the 21st century skills they need. My top three videos that I found:
Respond, Reflect, Review for writing collaboration Three read protocol for math word problems Assessment for differentiated instruction Reflection on Respond, Reflect, Review video:
After watching many videos and reading the next few chapters in The Flat World and Education. There were two videos that really caught my attention: Adora Svitak's Ted Talk and Ken Robinson's talk about changing the educational paradigm. These video's have made me think about how I am teaching my students everyday and how I have my classroom set up for their future success. The past few years I have focused on making my students collaborative and independent. I have my students partner and group talking throughout the day, bouncing ideas off of each other and coming together as whole group to discuss what they talked about and see what other groups discussed. I think a large part of this shift in my teaching is due to the new curriculum that the district has adopted, but I also know that since I have had this shift in my classroom, I enjoy language arts better and I believe my students enjoy it more also. I really enjoyed these video's because I think that I am headed in the direction that they are trying to push us. I do not know of many professions where people do not need to collaborate with one another. I also know that collaborating and having people skills is not an easy task. I have had students push back at the beginning of the year because collaborating and sharing ideas is a scary task for people. As the year progresses and students become more comfortable with each other, it is more difficult to get them to stop collaborating. It is easy to give students a worksheet and have them fill it out on their own, while yes students need to be able to work independently and show what they know. We need to test kids to assess their learning and plan for future lessons. However, I think it is just as important that students can work together, share what they know with friends, and learn from their friends at the same time.
The best part of my day is when students realize how far they have progressed. I love setting realistic goals with students and seeing them take ownership of their own learning. I am passionate about creating an environment where student's understand what their end goal is, but also understand that everyone will get their differently and at their own pace. I believe in the power of student collaboration and that students are more interested in their peers ideas and information than what I am trying to teach at the front of the room. I am passionate about creating an environment where students are collaborating with one another and their whispers are on topic and supporting their peers academically. After reading through the beginning chapters of The Flat World and Education by Linda Darling-Hammond, I believe that my passion is in the right place. According to the book, our students are not getting the education that they need and deserve. Many times teachers just give out the information students need for the final test and expect students to memorize it. We have been stuck in a monotone focus on standardized testing and have forgotten what really matters, the kids and their future. Students need to learn how to become successful and not give up when things get hard. Learning should be real world based and not standardized test based. They need to be given the tools to persevere and transfer their knowledge across multiple subjects. If I can give my students the tools to set realistic goals, collaborate with peers, and persevere beginning at the primary level, then these students will have a more successful future academically and socially.
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