Both Classroom Flipping and Challenge Based Learning increase student engagement and motivation. Both of these concepts increase creativity, motivation, and engagement. This allows students to be generators and producers. The goal of a flipped classroom is to off-load instruction to homework in order to open up class time for student-centered activities, inquiry, and critical thinking exercise. In Caitlin Tucker’s article, “Flipped Classroom: Beyond the Videos”, she noted that a flipped classroom homework assignment does NOT require the teacher to create the content via recording videos or podcasts. She discusses the benefits of media that is already ready to use (i.e. history.com, pbs.org, and khanacademy.org). I appreciated this because it takes the pressure off of teacher’s who want to use a flipped classroom, but do not necessarily want to create additional content for it. Tucker went on to discuss the what classroom instruction time looks like when the transfer of knowledge (the lecture) takes place at home. In order to maximize the potential of classroom time, teachers can offer instruction in different mediums. This could include technology, student-centered activities, collaborative research projects, or creative writing assignments. Challenge Based Learning empowers students to address local and global challenges while acquiring content knowledge in all subject areas. It help students develop 21st century skills, and ensures critical and creative thinking. CBL is designed to be flexible and customizable with clearly defined roles form both student and teacher. What I love about this form of learning is that EVERYONE involved is a learner! Teachers, students, community members, and families all share the responsibility for the learning experience. CBL provides a meaningful learning experience beyond the classroom and into the community.
Students begin to engage in CBL through essential questioning. Next they investigate those essential questions and organize their plan. Third, the students take action and begin implementing the solutions they came up with to solve the problem. The video we watched with the students in Victoria, Australia flawlessly executed this process. The teachers, students, administration and community all shared responsibility to successful implement this project. The students successfully contacted community members to ask for specific needs, collected books for the flooded library, wrote encouraging letters, made bracelets that represented hope, and donated animal supplies. My students are currently leading the school in collecting donations for Operation With Love From Home. Many aspects of CBL could be implemented in addition to the students collecting donations. In addition, our school could definitely do a CBL process to help with the fires that have devastated so many families in northern California right now. This would address both global and local challenges. Students learn how to channel their compassion and empathy into action through Challenge Based Learning.
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According to the Universal Design for Learning on the CAST website, the way people learn is as unique as the design on their fingertips. For teachers, this means we need to have curriculum designed to meet this diversity. This type of learning minimizes barriers and maximizes learning for all students. Technology really lends itself to the UDL in the classroom. The first principle of UDL is Representation. This means presenting content in multiple medias, and providing varied support to students. I can use technology to activate background knowledge and support vocabulary through graphics, videos, or other tools. The second principle is Action and Expression. This includes providing models, feedback, and support for students. This also means allowing them to show what they learned in a variety of ways. Technology is an excellent way to make this happen with something like a google slide presentation. The last principle of UDL is Engagement. To engage students, they need to have choices that fuel their interests and autonomy, which will in turn grow their perseverance because they are excited about what they are learning. Technology will provide students with a quick way to access content about what they are choosing to study. Our ALPS program for our district has great online resources for students to explore, getting to choose what they want to know more about. The site also provides the framework for the students to organize what they are learning. This site is a great example of tehnology fueling engagement in the classroom.
The PDF we looked at entitled, Ready For Rigor: A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching listed powerful ways that students can process information. As the teacher, I need to be providing appropriate challenges in order to stimulate brain growth to increase intellective capacity. This can be done in a variety of ways. Connecting new content to culturally relevant examples can be done seamlessly through technology. Technology allows students to get access to content in a quick and effective way. Teaching students how to access and use technology ensures that students from all backgrounds and income levels have an equal access to the digital world. It is a powerful way to build background knowledge for students. This helps to level the academic playing field by allowing students to learn more about a topic, even if they have not been able to experience it. Two of the online math programs that my students do are individualized to each child. They are called Sumdog and Prodigy. After a placement test, these programs place the child at the appropriate level that is challenging, yet still independent for that child. They do these programs during math rotations. This is an example of the individualized support technology can give to one group of students, while I am working with another group of students in a small group setting (my small group time is when I engage with small groups of students in discussions about what they are reading, use math manipulatives to uncover a new concept, or simply provide extra intervention or enrichment). Using formative assessments and feedback is another component of Culturally Responsive Teaching. Again, technology helps address this. Our Language Arts program that our district has adopted has an online component where students take their assessments. I grade these assessments online, and I am provided with a quick data analysis of where that child is in relation to the Common Core Standard, in relation to other students in the district, and in relation to other students in the class. Our Bridges program allows us to plug in student’s test scores into a spread sheet and look at how they are improving in individual standards. Both of these feedback tools are helpful to me as a teacher, and to my students. In the presentation, How Tech Is Changing Childhood. technology and its impact on children is discussed. The timeline of technology shows how ingrained it has become in our culture. An important topic in this article was digital citizenship. Digital citizenship is something we discuss each year at our school, and in my classroom. In order for students to use online programs, research, and create, they must make sure they are being safe citizens on the internet. This requires teaching them the tools to successfully and safely access content online. These are the many reasons for how technology can help meet students’ individual learning needs. I feel it is important to state that technology is a wonderful and excellent tool, but that is exactly what it is-a tool. It is not a substitute to teaching, rather a tool to support it. Ken Robinson, in his TED Talk entitled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” stated that education is meant to take us into the future that we cannot grasp. We don’t know what the world will look like, but we are preparing our children for it. This is why instilling creativity in our children is key. Robinson stated that children have a great capacity for innovation. One quote that really stood out to me was when he said, “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” What a powerful statement! All of our research this week has supported this statement. Let’s look a little more into this.
John Seely Brown stated that there is a big shift from a predictable world of equilibrium, to an exponential world of constant flux and dis-equilibrium. He talked about how the 21st century infrastructure is driven by the continual exponential advances of computation, storage, and bandwidth with no stability in sight. The image Brown showed was of an S-Curve that represented how a rapid set of change didn’t allow for a long period of stability. The infrastructures that define how we do things (i.e. universities), have been driven by an S-Curve with punctuated change followed by a period of stability. There is now one punctuated move after another, roughly after every two years. It really stood out to me when he stated that the half-life of a particular skill is shrinking. He said the skills we are teaching our children have a half-life of roughly five years! This is a very strong argument for why is important for children to learn creativity, along with content, so that they are prepared to take their innovative minds into their future job that doesn’t even exist yet. When Brown talked about a social way of learning, I automatically thought of digital content companies like BuzzFeed. Companies like this produce a range of media from current events, to pop culture, to videos, to interactive quizzes. Each article has a plethora of images, GIFs and videos embedded into the text. This is engaging for the reader. It is no wonder that textbooks are hard to stay engaged with for students when they are used to this more interactive form of reading being put out online. Digital reading also allows for direct and constant communication with others about what is being read. This could be in the comment section of an article, blogs, or on various other digital platforms. The ability to interact about what you are reading on the spot is another way that media has changed the way we think about communication. Brown discussed about the importance of communication and collaboration when he talked about a group of kids in Maui with a passion to become surfers. One child in particular, Dusty, wanted to become a professional surfer. Dusty and his group of friends, aligned with the same passion, began meeting. They would watch videos of the best surfers in the world and analyze what made them the best. They would watch/critique each other, film each other, etc. These boys would pull the best ideas from adjacencies such as skateboarding, snowboarding, motor cross, mountain biking, etc. They maintained deep collaborative learning with one another. They honed in on using digital media is order to “swap ideas” with others. The big take way from this is that when recreation becomes an act of re-creation/remix and productive inquiry, then a culture of learning that thrives on participatory life-long learners and a quest to always become. Dusty and his friends were willing to fail constantly in order to get a move right. How incredible would it be if we could get our students this excited about their learning in school? I want my students to feel passionate about what they are learning, and get to a point where they feel successful failing. A student may not feel as passionate about a math concept as they do about surfing, but they can still engage in math in a positive way. How can I get my students passionate about the "how to" of learning/the process of learning? A partial answer is to encourage collaboration and a growth mindset. If I am teaching my students to feel successful failing, because they know that is part of the path to learning, then hopefully that mindset will transfer over to the passion they want to peruse in life. By teaching collaboration, I am teaching my students skills for how to successfully communicate with peers and to work together with a common goal to achieve. If students are learning these principles in school, then imagine how successful they will be by taking these principles and applying them to what they are truly passionate about perusing in life! It will also create more meaningful learning experiences for what they are learning in school. This really ties into the importance of teaching with the four Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity through opportunities to work together and access technology. Dan Pink in, “The Puzzle of Motivation”, makes a case for rethinking how to run businesses (or in our case, our classrooms). Pink discusses the power of incentives. He states that extrinsic motivation doesn’t always work. Extrinsic rewards, by nature, narrow our minds to complete a goal to receive a reward. When we have problems that require creativity and out of the box thinking, then extrinsic motivation that narrows our thinking isn’t going to be as effective because it will limit that creativity. Intrinsic motivation, the desire to do something because it matters and is important to us, will be a much more effective form of motivation. Dusty and his friends were intrinsically motivated to excel at surfing, therefore passionate about gaining mastery over this skill. Giving students autonomy, control over what they are learning, is extremely effective. What if a portion of the school day could be devoted to this? For example, a student could research and create a google slides presentation about something they are passionate about. They would still be learning research and presentation skills, but under the context of something they are passionate about. When teaching new vocabulary words, students could break into groups to create skits that represent what these words mean. This would allow for collaboration and creativity to take place while still learning the required curriculum. The drive to do things for their own sake/because the thing matters leads to motivation and productivity to go up. August Turak’s article, “Can Creativity Be Taught?” he discusses the insights of Louis R. Mobley. Mobley states that success depended on teaching to think creatively. Mobley’s first insight is that most education focuses on providing answers in a linear step by step way. Mobley discovered that asking different questions in a non-liner way was the key to creativity. Second, he stated that becoming creative is an unlearning, rather than a learning, process. Getting students to think of something in a different way is the start of creativity. Mobley’s third insight is that we don’t learn to be creative, we must become creative people. In order to foster creativity in my classroom, I need to provide those experiences. This could mean asking open ended questions followed by time for students to collaborate with one another with different technologies and tools available to them to work with. This will open them up to alternative modes of thinking. I think of the Singapore Model Method for math where students use a bar method to work through word problems. This strategy provides a different way to solve world problems. Providing students with varied strategies to solve the same problem encourages different ways of thinking. Mobley’s fourth insight is that becoming creative becomes easier when you are around creative people. I cannot think of a more creative group of people than children! Allowing kids more opportunities to create together will foster an atmosphere of creativity in the classroom. I notice this in my class when I allow for total “play”. My students earn free choice time at the end of the day on Fridays, and one of my centers has Model Magic clay and all a ton of tools to use with the clay. I am always amazed at the creativity that I hear during this center. They are engaged, laughing, creating, interacting, teaching each other how to create different things, and building off of one another’s ideas. Mobley’s fifth discovery is that creativity is correlated with self-knowledge. His school is described as being designed as, “one big mirror.” Sixth, Mobley always gave his students permission to be wrong. This pairs well with what we have learned about the brain. When we make a mistakes, our synapses fire up and learning takes place. Jo Boaler has stated, “Mistakes are not only opportunities for learning, as students consider the mistakes, but also times when our brains grow. Understanding the power of mistakes is critical, as children and adults everywhere often feel terrible when they make a mistake in math. They think it means they are not a math person, because they have been brought up in a performance culture.” Celebrating mistakes and acknowledging how they are helping us grow will be an important step in fostering creativity in the classroom. One quote that stood out to me from this article is, “Make friends with frustration.” It is okay for students, and teachers, to feel frustrated at times when trying something new. This is a necessary step for fostering creativity. Tenacity is required for creativity as well. Not quitting, despite frustration, will lead to growth. These are not just important classroom skills, but life skills as well. This ties into what Howard Gardner discussed in, “Five Minds of the Future”. He talked about how the, “Creating Mind” does something new. It comes up with new questions, discoveries, and thinks outside of the box. There is a willingness to fall down and get back up. To cultivate a creative mind, students have to learn to deal with things that don’t work out, and then keep on working. Teaching our students how to have grit in the classroom is going to support them into growing in their curiosity and creativity. Ken Robinson talked about how our society as a whole has stigmatized being willing to fail and make mistakes, and that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. I found it very powerful when he stated that, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” It is vital to not educate students out of being creative. Darling-Hammond discussed five key elements for a high-and equitably achieving nation:
John Dewey’s quote: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” Even though these words were spoken a hundred years ago, his words are just as true and powerful today as they were then. It is imperative that we, as teachers, are advocates for each one of our students. Wanting the best for our students, and providing the best for our students, will benefit the future these students will live in. We are educating the next generation of citizens right now, and it is imperative that we are teaching students skills that will make them informed, critical thinkers who will better the communities they live in. If we, as teachers, all have this as our goal, then we have a bright future for our nation. One important way to prepare our students for the future is by teaching 21st century skills. This week, I watched the video, “Grounding 21st Century Learning in Good Thinking” by Dr. Robert Swartz. He talks about the importance of infusing skillful thinking in content instruction to engage students to think in deep and rich ways about what they are learning. One powerful tool he talked about was developing questioning strategies with our students. Developing questioning skills in our students (i.e. how to ask the right questions to make informed decisions), will help them in the classroom, and provide them with real-world skills that will benefit them in the work force. Just shy of two decades ago, my Dad created a program called Women In Technology where he worked as a teacher at Armijo High School in Fairfield. His dedication to technology, and the belief that women should have more of a presence in the field, led to a powerful movement at his school and in his community. He went on to win many awards, including Teacher of the Year for his district. I remember going with him to a conference he held at his school (at age ten), and being in awe of the new technology being introduced by powerful and influential women in the field of technology at that time, as well as being so proud of my Dad for making this program come to life. Even that long ago, the benefits of technology in the classroom were recognized and celebrated. I am so thankful I was exposed to this at such a young age through my Dad. This set me on a path where technology became integral in my life as a student, and then later as a teacher.
Technology is an ever-growing, ever-changing field. Teachers are said to be lifelong learners. This could not be more true in the area of technology! It is important that I make a consistent effort to stay well versed in this field, because implementing technology supports the 4 Cs in a meaningful way. Sometimes technology can seem overwhelming because SO much is offered, but it is important to just take one thing at a time and implement it. I often remind myself that it is better to do a few small things, rather than to become so overwhelmed by it all, and do nothing. According to Darling-Hammond, a shift needs to happen in the educational system that in includes equal access to critical education resources, and a shift in curriculum and assessment that support 21st century skills. Darling Hammond discusses five key elements that must be implemented for a high and equitably achieving nation. The first element she writes about is having, “Meaningful learning goals, including thoughtful conceptualizations of the content and skills needed for success in the 21st century“ (pg. 279). This goes right in line with everything we have talked and read about in class so far. It also syncs up with what Mark Morrison discussed in his presentation. The first thing Mark Morrison talked about was active student engagement. He stated that students should be answering important questions and mastering important skills in order to have students be able to articulate what they are learning. Second, Mark talked about the importance of the “4 Cs”, and how we should be providing plentiful and meaningful opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. Third, Mark discussed the deeper use of technology as an instructional asset and a learning tool. Technology should be utilized as a productivity tool. An area I want to grow in is allowing multiple options for my students to access the content and demonstrate mastery. Critical thinking skills can be shown on paper, or on a computer screen. When I allow my students a choice for how they access the content and show what they have learned, then I am allowing for them to delve into greater critical thinking by removing the barrier of, “It has done this exact way.” I think that method can also reduce creativity. In the short time I have been in this Master’s program, I have been exposed to more forms of technology that I can apply in my classroom. For example, my students could create their own presentations on Prezi, or they could review for a test through Quizlet. Perhaps having my students blog and respond to one another will be my next method I will implement to support the 4 Cs into my classroom. It is up to me as the classroom teacher to facilitate an environment in which these 4Cs can thrive, which in turn means my students are thriving. There were many powerful messages in this week’s resources. One driving point that stands out to me is the fact that we are preparing our students for jobs that do not currently exist. In order for us as teachers to do this, we must be utilizing technology and 21st century skills in a powerful way. This includes using technology in the classroom, and using inquiry based teaching that develops students who can use critical thinking skills. It is important to help students discover their talents, and to encourage them to peruse their dreams while holding high expectations for them to rise to.
Each video I watched about technology in the classroom had some aspect of collaboration in it. One component of collaboration was with colleagues. To successfully use technology in the classroom it is important to collaborate with my colleagues. Collaboration with my colleagues will allow us to analyze standards and find technology to support student learning. It was powerful to watch students working with one another while interacting with technology. Student collaboration with one another through technology leads to powerful learning and the development of 21st century skills in the classroom. Adora Svitak delivered a powerful TED Talk. She stated that it is crucial for adults to have high expectations of children, and a willingness to learn from children. Both of these components are so crucial as a teacher. Dalton Sherman also delivered a powerful reminder to believe in each and every individual child. He stated the importance to believe that each child will reach their highest potential. Implementing growth mindset principles in my classroom will support these powerful statements made by these children. By having high expectations, my students will rise and meet them. In the process, I will learn from my students. I will learn from their creativity, willingness to try new things, and their amazing ability to think outside of the box and bring a fresh perspective. As teachers, we get to spend our days teaching and learning from the next generation. We have the responsibility to shape their minds and to encourage them to continue to dream big, and to carry those big ideas and dreams into adulthood with confidence. Hearing these children speak was such a great reminder to remember to always keep learning from my students because they are absolutely awesome. Ken Robinson in his TED Talk, “Bring on the Learning Revolution,” said that education needs a revolution. He talked about the importance of individuals finding their talents. He said, “Human communities depend on a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.” Some people never recognize their talents through life. As a teacher, to take part in this revolution by helping students recognize their individual talents, and to celebrate those talents. Robinson talks about how we are currently in a “manufacturing model of education”, and that we must move to a model that is based on an “agricultural model of education”. He sates that human flourishing is an organic process, and that we should shift into personalizing education for who we are teaching. These statements pair well with what we are learning about technology in the classroom. Technology is a tool that can be utilized by teachers to help shift to a more agricultural model of education. Teaching my students to use technology, think critically, and to peruse their talents will empower them to become better prepared for the future. It is my job to continue finding innovative ways to do this. Implementing ideas from this week’s resources will be a good start. What are you passionate about with regard to learning and why?
A passion for both learning and teaching was instilled in me at a young age. I grew up with both of my parents as teachers who loved their jobs and made a lasting difference in the lives of their students daily. Watching both my Mom and Dad pour their hearts into the lives of their students showed me that teaching is more than a profession, it is a calling. This instilled in me a love for learning along with my love for teaching. I believe that in order to have a passion for teaching, one must also have a passion for learning. This is because, as teachers, we are constantly learning and adapting our teaching methods to reach all students in the most effective way possible. This includes ways to improve one's teaching in order to become more effective through continued education. I am also passionate about learning more about each student individually, and applying this knowledge to my teaching style in order to change and adapt them to best meet the needs of each student individually. This includes growing in the areas of, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, character, global citizenship, and communication. Continuing to learn more about these "6 Cs" will help me to best prepare my students for college and career readiness. Continually pursuing learning opportunities as a teacher reignites a passion for learning. |
Jennifer PerkinsTouro Student, Master's in Innovative Learning Archives
November 2018
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