Saturday, March 12, 2011
How Art Teacher Blogs Have Changed How I Learn and Teach Visual Art
Friday, March 11, 2011
Building My PLN
Storybird
Friday, February 25, 2011
What Does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century ?
This Century’s graduates are different than those in the past. They are different in the way in which they learn. Prensky, believes that the brains of people who grow up with technology are physically different from those of past generations who did not. As a result they learn differently than past generations. What I know is that how I learnt as a child is not how my daughter is learning, nor my students. Telephones and face to face conversations with other students was the only way to collaborate in my childhood. The major sources I used to find information were books, magazines, newspapers and television. Today, these technologies are being added on to and/or being replaced with google, wikis, instant messenger and email (to name a few students have mentioned to me recently). Students in my room have made Youtube videos, websites, play games and use instant messenger - a lot. Even my four year old has made Photo Booth movies of herself making goofy faces, reading and role playing.
No longer are students passive recipients of a few people’s ideas which are distributed through media. Now students are producers and consumers of media. With this shift it follows that there needs to be a change in the skills that students will need to be literate and a full participant and citizen of the 21st Century. As the Annberg School for communication and Journalism’s New Media article suggests the skills of play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, transmedia navigation and networking need to be taught. NCTE notes that these are also the skills employers are seeking.
Technology is not going to go away and as a teacher I think it is my responsibility to help students develop the skills which will allow them to participate fully as citizens of the 21st Century.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Value of Research
I can honestly say that I underestimated the value of research to my practice at the beginning of this program. It took some time for me to realize that it is important. I started off by using research to support what I was seeing in the classroom and through field studies found that research prior to designing a field study was most valuable. Research allowed me to learn through the experiences of others.
A couple of the most valuable reasons to me for continue to using research in the future are :
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Reflection on “Knowledge, the disciplines, and learning in the Digital Age” by Jane Gilbert
After reading and discussing the article by Gilbert our group found that many of the learning outcomes in the content areas we explored (math, science, language arts) were connected in some way with Language Arts. Language Arts seems to tie them together. Other groups that explored different content areas found that just about all content areas overlapped some how. Things such as analyzing, summarizing, questioning, predicting, connecting - the higher order thinking skills were often found to overlap between disciplines.
Technology can be used to link together content areas and promote higher order thinking skills if we plan very carefully and delibrately for this to occur. Students would benefit from this, as they may begin to see ‘the bigger picture’. Blogging, for instance, can link together content areas with Language Arts. Students use writing skills to post and would need to use skills such as evaluating and analyzing to respond to the posts of others. Students could connect with other classes and compare results of an inquiry
My thought on how can technology be used across the content areas
Examples:
1) wikis and blogs
-could be used to store necessary facts (rather than using a textbook or memorizing)
-allow students to share results and thinking with others
- to receive feedback to further build understanding
-would be possible to interact with others both locally and globally
-can be used to promote critical thinking (evaluating, synthesizing, questioning, analyzing) as they read and respond to the work of others They will need to think critically about what they are reading to respond in comment form. These tools will allow students to connect with others who may extend their thinking because of differing viewpoints.
2) digital cameras
- to document, record data a real world problem and solutions, could be used as a sort of photo story rather than the traditional write it down approach, adding to the multi-modal literacies mentioned in the article
Goals for Fall 2010
Goal for Fall 2010
So far I have used technology tools to research and collect information online and to create a product. I did a project at the end of last year which would fall into this category (see posts below). In a nutshell, I had students create a page for a nonfiction book about something of interest found on school grounds. This year I’d like to take it a step further. I want them to investigate the creek behind the school and the quality of the water within as part of our Natural Resources study. As far as I know, this creek has not been studied previously and is so small it often does not make it onto maps. Students will formulate an open-ended question and take photos to help them answer their question. I am hoping that students will present their pages to their peers and then to their parents and ?.
This relates to NETS 2b) : design or adapt relevant learning experiences that
incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student
learning and creativity.
I am hoping to head towards being proficient where NETS state that teachers design and customize technology-enriched learning experiences that engage students in developing research questions about real-world issues or problems, proposing and evaluating multiple creative solutions and presenting a report to an audience either fact-to-face or virtually, for feedback.
The one capacity in this program that I think that I need to work on is “participate in and help develop learning communities to support your teaching practice”. I might be able to make gains in this area by learning about the Smart board my school has had installed and hold lunch time sessions to help those who wish to learn more about the Smart board do so. While I have a blog that I do make occasional posts on, I could post more and definitely comment more on the blogs of others. I would like to learn more about Twitter, which I have heard good things about but have not been able to get into as of yet. I would like to learn more about it and give it another try.