This semester has really helped me out to be more of an innovative thinker. Am I where I want to be, probably not but, at least I feel I am moving forward. I can say that I have learned more because last semester there was so much focus on designing the research paper that I honestly think there wasn’t much focus on innovation. But now with the instructional design models we have looked at this semester it has helped me out quite a bit. There was a lot of focus on Dervin and Clark this semester that it helped me understand the importance of how and why we should design our curriculum and instructional strategies around these two theorists’ ideas. A challenge for me is that I do have tasks from Mathematics Vision Project that has students practice the 4 C’s as they go through the task, but there is no student motivation around the content in the tasks. This is where the ARCS model has helped me out on how to get students motivated in the classroom. When I worked with matt and James on this model it was really clear and straight to the point on how to apply this model and I plan to use it as much as I can when designing instruction. A lot of the times it seems like these models would have been a great introduction to the beginning of this program. I think that if I had these models and have studied them in detail like I have this semester, I would have been able to create a deeper and structured driving question. That also would mean I would have had a better written research paper with better data. At least I think I would have. I have to finish this blog with making sure that I give my C-15 fam some credit. Anytime I needed help on something from the program, the person I contacted or whomever was readily available, were there to answer my questions. They have made my time in this program enjoyable, yes enjoyable, I said it. So thank you very much everyone! C-15 fam represent!
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I remember when TPACK was first introduced to us last semester and at first it was a difficult concept for me to follow with all of the “educational grammar” in it. But throughout the previous semester and now this semester, it has been making more sense. To me though TPACK’s concept of instructional design can be used with other models we have looked at like ARCS, Dervin’s engagement learning environment, SITE and Clarks Concept chapter. In other words I see TPACK encompasses these models concepts. Every time we design lessons we should consider the main concepts of TPACK which are Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge. With all the educational tech tools we have explored we can cover the technological aspect of TPACK. Then with what he have explored through our research and analyzation of the data we have and will look at is where we can come up with pedagogical strategies. Then with content knowledge is where we could focus on the standards that we are to teach our students. I think the ARCS model can be applied here since we should use the TPACK concept but also apply the idea of getting students attention and having the activities we do in class to be relevant to them in order to deepen student learning and the practice of the 4 C’s. And let’s not forget about Baggio’s ideas of how to present our content to our students. Visuals can be used as we design lessons around TPACK. I did think about some of these things as I was creating my prototype. I knew that I had to create it around my DQ but I had a difficult time building around it. It wasn’t until I got my research paper and my initial analysis and thought about them as one. Then I was able to think of the process of how I would want to “teach” colleagues on how to plan for ELL’s while addressing my DQ. I also thought about what instructional design models would work and which ones make sense to me. I used ARCS, SITE and TPACK. I could have inserted Dervin since it was such a big influence on us this semester but I believe that these models have a little to a lot of what Dervin addresses in her article.
One of the things that I am most excited about is how I will try to integrate more technology into my classroom. I have used some digital tools in my classroom throughout the program that has gotten me wanting to try them out on my students. I have used very little technology in my class so this will be big change. Therefore, I will be applying it little by little so I won’t overwhelm myself and my students. For example I have students work in Collaborative Study Groups (CSG’s) every week and they have to do a written reflection on how their session went within the group, but now I would love to use Flipgrid and have them upload an oral reflection of a minute or less of how it went. Also Screencastify is a great tool I enjoyed using and hope to teach this to my students to work on projects or even small homework problems. I would love to do this all around collaboration this is where my DQ revolves around. But now after seeing the video of Eddie Obeng, he mentioned something about if we are trying to try something new we should be asking ourselves, “Hmm, I wonder whether this also makes sense in our new world after midnight." This comes to the way the world is evolving as such an exponential rate but learning isn’t evolving at the same rate. So it gets me thinking to if what I am doing is really innovative or not. Will it be useful for my students? But I think this where Baggio, Dervin, Clark and the SITE model come in to play because they support in what I believe in is that we should try our best to not just listen to our students but try to empathize with them in order to create and plan lessons around them. But to me one of the biggest influence has been Baggio. This has got me going me all over the place on how to create worksheets, assignments, tests, and any presentations that I might have going on in class. I want to make sure I don't have any CRAP-py materials/presentations.
After taking the Learning Style Quiz these are my results: 56% Visual 16% Auditory 28% Kinesthetic One of the main things been that has inspired me so far has been the evolution of technology upgrade in my teaching practice. My driving question revolves around my ELLs so I have had them in the back of my mind on what tools might work best to support their academic achievement. I say this because I truly believe that if the tools help them out these tools can help any other student in the classroom. At times though it does seem overwhelming with all the information that we have looked at like Baggio, Clark and the SITE model. But for example, focusing on specific strategies like “mirror” effect on slides as mentioned by Baggio, concept cognitive learning load from Clark, and the SITE model it can really bridge lesson planning and collaboration among colleagues to support our students. I think that if appropriately blending just the right and enough ingredients from our resources from our 791 class, we can definitely have our students practice 21st century skills in and outside our classrooms. With these resources it can help my audience understand my action research, my practice and what I am learning in the Innovative Learning program. The SITE model helps me think and examine my students and audience in context. Creating the character profiles has supported me in empathizing with my students as well. It’s opened a new way for me to understand the struggles my students have when I present new material or new projects. And this is where the concepts of the SITE model support me as a teacher to lesson plan while I have my students on mind. This thinking also goes along as I start to think a little bit more on my capstone for this program. How will I carry out my message to my colleagues about what I have learned and how I plan to evolve my practice with what I have learned so far? I will keep the SITE model in mind when thinking about the sociocultural, technical, informational and educational sub context of colleagues and students.
My primary audience for the remaining of the two semesters are my students. I say this because I am still to figure out how to implement everything that I have been learning in this program. How am I going to structure my classroom now because it seems that it’s going to get a whole new “face-lift” once I implement everything that I want to with all the tech tools that I like? Of course if colleagues want to check out what I am doing I am more than willing to share out and explain things but being done with my second year of teaching I honestly feel weird or maybe even a little uncomfortable thinking that I want to be an “influence to change their practice.” As of now it seems that the best way for me to address this is to have all of my resources and information on a website I will eventually create. I think that the best overall way is to make it accessible and easy to follow for both students and colleagues. I would try to gather or create visual to back up my ideas with short videos explaining these videos by using Screencastify or Adobe Spark.
Some of the key ideas I found from Baggio, Clark & Dervin are the following:
1. We (teachers) are the facilitators to bridge gap among content and students. 2. As students walk over “bridge” they construct their own thoughts. 3. “Bridging the gap” should allow students to use their imagination allowing to synthesize thoughts and create new concepts. 4. “How do we structure a bridge that is designed with his/her success in mind?” 5. In regards to my study, the first chapter of Clark it made me think back on how I prepared all of my tools for gathering data. How detailed was I being when constructing these tools. Was I setting goals for myself and for my students and were the goals clear? 6. Also, all the training companies do is very structured programs, just like everything I plan to do in my classroom it should be the same. The trainees are my students. 7.In the 2nd chapter of Clark, it made me think more on how I can prepare note taking in my classroom, especially since I apply the 10-2-2 AVID note taking method. My driving question is: How does digital collaboration affect mathematics achievement and engagement among English Language Learners? I feel like my driving question is still the same at this point. Some of my new “need-to-knows” are: 1. How can the new tools that I have explored in EDUC 702 support my ELL’s? 2. Will my students be open to try these new tools? 3. What is the best way to prepare to present these tools to my students? Now that we have gone through the first semester of the master’s program and have delved a bit back into action research, it has crossed my mind on how I would like to apply new instructional strategies in the classroom and then knowing if and how they are supporting my students. My experience with my study last semester felt “rushed”. I even had collected data that I ended up not using in my research paper. Even though I am not sure when I will apply another in depth study in my classroom, I think I can make sure that I collect my observations, analyze student work, or have students fill out google forms to receive qualitative feedback from the students. I now have small experience analyzing all that data so then I can apply those skills when I conduct a new instructional strategy or a new task/project with my students. I hope that this will help me understand my students better.
These first two years of teaching I have been someone who has been willing to try new things but sometimes the activities I try just don’t work. Either I didn’t learn much about the tool I used in class or my students simply didn’t react to well towards it. Even though I have been willing to try new things in the classroom I didn’t know the best ways on how to try new things or which tools would work best. This program has assisted me in fixing that. At times it does seem that there are so many programs out there that it is overwhelming but working with the C-15 family they have been great at giving me feedback and suggestions. Therefore, I plan to keep the thinking and planning methods I have been growing on in the program and practicing them in my teaching practice. Some of that practice I hope to do with colleagues at my site. I think what I am trying to say here is that the program has made me get better at reflecting at my practice with the ability to better prepare for my students learning. The program has also reminded me of how busy one can be outside of the classroom with any extracurricular activities, families, homes, and social life. My students are the exact same. Some I know have it way more difficult than me. This has helped me better support them academically with giving them the right amount of work while making sure that we are all learning and supporting each other. This week we looked again at Dervin's article and Baggio's Chapters 1 and 2. After looking at them another time it helped to make more sense of the topics and also I began to be able to make some connections between them. The following link has my notes on the article, the book and includes 4 key ideas between the two at the end of the document along with some burning questions that I might have at the moment.
Key ideas from authors/readings As I began reading the Dervin article, my meta-cognitive process was pretty vague, especially in the beginning. I kept thinking to myself that it was very repetitive but all it was trying to tell me was how to break apart and understand a study. The methodology was to study the experiences relevant to information and communication system design, management & practice. But also I would go back and think of my study a couple of months ago and how I tried to make sense of my ELL’s in my class as they worked through the project I had them do. The author made it clear that the chapter focused on the qualitative approach of a study therefore, I kept going back to the question I gave my treatment group students on the project. The question I asked was how collaboration among their group was. This was the way that I tried to make sense of the article, tying it to my study. It also made me think on how to apply these methods to my study or how I could have applied these methods to my study. Taking notes wasn’t enough. To me, it started making more sense once I was reading through some of the exemplars. Exemplar 3 was a bit of an eye opener for me. It talked about how a library was trying to figure out a way on how to entice the Hispanic community. They found that the traditional methods of publicity had failed. But the sense-making project focused on users’ of the library’s audiovisual services and provided a breakthrough for them. They asked the users of what filmed they checked out but then asked them how the video had helped them? They were able to understand the users, see their point of view, and better tolerate the crowd. This made me think back on my study because I had asked my students how collaboration went for them. I now feel that I should have had a follow up question with if they felt that the way the project was structured helped them understand the content better. Or what would they prefer to do in terms of finishing the project.
I think that if I had to teach this to my students it would be using videos on YouTube, read articles, written reflections and having Socratic seminars to really have students to think critically and have engaging conversations. I would hope that through this the entire class can get an idea of what their peers want out of each other to better support themselves to be successful in the classroom. I chose to insert the picture from the Dervin Article, Figure 6.1, to represent how at the moment I understand making sense of sense making. I liked the idea of how some one who is trying to learn something new is represented by walking across the "gap bridge" of how each step is the person takes is a specific moment in time but when there is a gap and can't move forward, then what does that person do to successfully go through the gap? That is where the human comes up with a process of sense making in order to get through the gap and eventually to the other side and their journey only continues of sense-making after that. |