When I first entered the VOLT program, I had some experience on the receiving end of on-line teaching, having taken a couple of blended classes in my career, but I had no real concept of how to develop a class of my own. I had very limited experience with our school's LMS and no idea how to use it to provide content to students. I always thought of it as a reasonably powerful force, but did not know how to access it.
I have learned much during the past few months and I see places in my job where I can enhance my teaching by using some of it. I am not in a situation where I see myself going through a complete change in style and using on-line or blended teaching as the majority of my class, but I do see myself looking for ways to bring the philosophies and practices that we learned and shared into play as a way to improve the overall experience for my students. I can envision teaching units or lessons through the LMS and even keeping a supply of emergency lessons on hand which the students can access in my absence.
I particularly found useful the first couple of units of the class where we were actively trying out new things and sharing websites and apps that we were able to instantly see use for in our classrooms. From the very beginning, using Flipgrid to introduce ourselves, I could see value in what we were doing. We also spent time learning about and discussing our learning environment and how were were going to present, discuss, and assess the content we were looking to deliver. All of these things will remain with me as I seek ways to incorporate more technology in my class.
While interesting and informative, I found the unit on Digital Literacies to be more theoretical than practical and not as instrumental in helping me develop curriculum. I am sure, however, that all of the articles and discussions will be swirling around my brain as I make decisions about what to include and how to present it to my students.
I was very interested in our final (for me at least) presenter of the program. Michelle Picansky-Brock spoke about humanizing our classes and I suppose that I never really looked at it that way. I always felt that to be a good teacher, you had to be present and available to your students, but I now will be extra careful to make sure that I am not only present, but obviously present so that I do not even give the impression that a computer is running this particular show. Clearly, our instructors are aware of this situation and were excellent models of how to keep a class humanized.
Through it all, I have tried to preach caution and selectivity when deciding to move classes on-line. I feel that there is a great push to include more and more technology into classrooms and there are not enough teachers willing to say "Hey, wait a minute. Are we sure that that is better than what I am doing now?" Just because something is new and exciting does not mean that it is a better way to share knowledge. I am in favor of using technology and would have a difficult time working without it, but the deciding factor for me it whether or not to add something new to my instruction is if I am convinced that it makes me a better teacher. Technology will keep changing and schools will never be able to change as quickly. The idea of fundamentally changing the way schools work in order to include today's concepts of what students will need in tomorrow's work force is short sighted. Nobody knows what tomorrow's workforce will look like, but I bet that it does not look like what we think it will look like. The most effective thing that we teachers can do is to continue to teach kids to read, write, calculate, and solve problems. If students are really good at those things, they will be fine no matter what tomorrow looks like.
Kurish out.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Personalized Education
I am a math teacher (have I mentioned that, yet?) As such, I often find it difficult to find ways to personalize education for my students. After all, math is a fairly impersonal subject. I hardly ever hear the question "How do you feel about multiplying two by three, do you think that six is a good result, or should we brainstorm about the various possibilities?" There are only a few ways to explain why two times three equals six. If you choose a way that is not one of those few ways, then you are probably doing something that will cause problems for your students in the future. Math is very structured and step three cannot be completed until after step two.
That is not to say that there is no way to make it somewhat personal. One way to begin a discussion of a new concept is by providing the class with a problem that they can try to solve even though they do not have the exact mathematical skills to solve it. Then, after the class bounces ideas off of each other and comes up with their best attempt to answer the question, the teacher can provide the math skills that would make the job easier or more precise. From a personalization standpoint, a teacher could choose problems from an area that might be interesting to the students. Perhaps a problem related to sports would be interesting to some while a question about movie ticket sales would be interesting to others. If a teacher could provide a choice of questions, all based on the same general concept, but related to different areas of interest, then more students might find that they are engaged in the class.
Here is a problem, however. At the level of mathematics that I tend to teach, which is algebra 2 and precalculus, it is very difficult to develop these problems on my own. The best problems can be found on-line, and whenever a problem is found on-line, the answer can also be found on-line. It seems to me, in my experience, that it is more likely for students to look for the answer on-line rather than to try to solve it on their own. So I must battle that tendency. I can certainly ask the students to work on the problem in class without the benefit of a computer, but that is not possible in a blended or on-line setting.
So I have to be very careful about how I go about my attempt to take my classes into the 21st century. Isaac Newton had it so much easier with his students. He was one of only two or three people alive who knew the answer to his questions. That really reduced the chances of his students cheating.
That is not to say that there is no way to make it somewhat personal. One way to begin a discussion of a new concept is by providing the class with a problem that they can try to solve even though they do not have the exact mathematical skills to solve it. Then, after the class bounces ideas off of each other and comes up with their best attempt to answer the question, the teacher can provide the math skills that would make the job easier or more precise. From a personalization standpoint, a teacher could choose problems from an area that might be interesting to the students. Perhaps a problem related to sports would be interesting to some while a question about movie ticket sales would be interesting to others. If a teacher could provide a choice of questions, all based on the same general concept, but related to different areas of interest, then more students might find that they are engaged in the class.
Here is a problem, however. At the level of mathematics that I tend to teach, which is algebra 2 and precalculus, it is very difficult to develop these problems on my own. The best problems can be found on-line, and whenever a problem is found on-line, the answer can also be found on-line. It seems to me, in my experience, that it is more likely for students to look for the answer on-line rather than to try to solve it on their own. So I must battle that tendency. I can certainly ask the students to work on the problem in class without the benefit of a computer, but that is not possible in a blended or on-line setting.
So I have to be very careful about how I go about my attempt to take my classes into the 21st century. Isaac Newton had it so much easier with his students. He was one of only two or three people alive who knew the answer to his questions. That really reduced the chances of his students cheating.
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Technology Integration or Blended Learning?
Wow. It has been so long since I have accessed my blog that I actually had to use the link provided in Canvas to find it.
Anyway . . . I am a big fan of the SMARTBoard in my classroom. I use it everyday in my teaching. One of the things that I most enjoy, and that I find effective for my students, is the creation of screen capture videos of math problem examples. When I teach a new concept and one or more of the students in the class has confusion about it, they can ask me to create a video. All that is required of me is that I press a few buttons and work through another example problem. The result is that I have a video that includes what I am writing on the board and my explanation, much like a Khan Academy video, but better because it is me and I am more fun than Sal Khan.
I then take that video and upload it into a Google Drive folder that has been shared with the students. The students are able to access the video when doing homework or studying for a test or exam. It is also available for the parents in case they want to try to help the students with their homework.
All of that is, of course, technology integration. It is not blended learning in spite of the fact that I am posting the videos on-line. One way for me to turn this exercise into blended learning would be to post the videos in a space where students can access them and then have discussions about the concepts or answer further questions that I would generate.
That is one of the things that I will be looking into for the coming year. I will be teaching an integrated math class that includes some students who really struggle with math. I will be trying to get them out of the usual math class routine and get them to discuss the concepts with each other. A blended approach will also get them to write about math more often. Both discussion and writing will help them to understand the concepts better.
Anyway . . . I am a big fan of the SMARTBoard in my classroom. I use it everyday in my teaching. One of the things that I most enjoy, and that I find effective for my students, is the creation of screen capture videos of math problem examples. When I teach a new concept and one or more of the students in the class has confusion about it, they can ask me to create a video. All that is required of me is that I press a few buttons and work through another example problem. The result is that I have a video that includes what I am writing on the board and my explanation, much like a Khan Academy video, but better because it is me and I am more fun than Sal Khan.
I then take that video and upload it into a Google Drive folder that has been shared with the students. The students are able to access the video when doing homework or studying for a test or exam. It is also available for the parents in case they want to try to help the students with their homework.
All of that is, of course, technology integration. It is not blended learning in spite of the fact that I am posting the videos on-line. One way for me to turn this exercise into blended learning would be to post the videos in a space where students can access them and then have discussions about the concepts or answer further questions that I would generate.
That is one of the things that I will be looking into for the coming year. I will be teaching an integrated math class that includes some students who really struggle with math. I will be trying to get them out of the usual math class routine and get them to discuss the concepts with each other. A blended approach will also get them to write about math more often. Both discussion and writing will help them to understand the concepts better.
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