I have sadly already encountered some of the issues that Grant Wiggins expounds upon after shadowing a student. If I am not either teaching a class or doing school work sitting through a full block period can be quite exhausting, especially if you are doing something similar daily. When I observe in classrooms I usually do not stay for the entire block because the most effective strategies I have observed have been fairly short which keeps students engaged. I will be borrowing some strategies to combat this getting kids moving around the classroom with either an activity or just changing up seating for groups. For my class I don’t ever penalize a student for needing to go to the bathroom in class because they are sitting through over 2 hours of class. Even if the student takes a couple of minutes and just needs to get out of the classroom and doesn’t really need to use the restroom just to center themselves that works too.
One of the most important techniques I took away from this article was setting a timer for yourself so you are not the only one talking in the classroom. I think as teachers that can sometimes be pretty hard to step back and see what you are doing as incorrect and making the change so the students are the ones talking and learning in the classroom. When creating lessons teachers should make sure that their instructional time does not take longer than the activity itself will take. If a student is just finishing a simple worksheet or section in the book there shouldn’t be a preceding lecture that took 20 minutes to complete. I will also from now on keep as much sarcasm outside of the classroom if possible unless of course it is at my expense and is light hearted. I could see students become discouraged if you roll your eyes or are spoken down to. Wiggins, G. (2014, October 10). A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows 2 Students for 2 days-A Sobering Lesson Learned. Thoughts on Education Blog. Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/
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I agree with parts of the philosophy put forth by Thomas Friedman especially in closing when he talks about people/students have a variety of different types of talents and it can come in many different forms. I find this similar to the teaching strategy of universal design for learning or UDL for short. This strategy employs a variety of materials and concepts that allow the instructor to appeal to a wide audience of learning styles so student engagement is high across the board. The use of student choice can be utilized into UDL so a student can use their talent as an artist to critically analyze assessment data and create a great graphical design that employs all the information as a beautiful picture. I have been actively trying to get my students to increase their general cognitive ability through either the use of research practices when it comes to something like close reading for a primary source. I would much rather have a student learn a close reading strategy that can be applied to future material then remember and exact quote from the reading. Creating lasting understanding and showing students new strategies that can be easily employed are fundamental activities that should be practiced by all instructors. I also like his example of ownership because I believe that it is not practiced very extensively in most classrooms especially when it comes to group work and one student ends up doing the entire assignment with little help from others. That student needs to know the importance of humility and make sure the entire group gets to share everyone’s opinion or ideas. Students need to understand why failure isn’t a step backward but rather a step forward in their understanding of a topic which allows them to retrace their steps, fix the problem, and then finish with a now correct solution.
Friedman, T. L. (2014, February 22). How to get a job at Google. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=2 I was shocked to see that today’s students spend only 5,000 hours reading at college age and 10,000 hours playing video games. When I think back on my childhood I was a quite avid reader but I did spend a decent amount of time playing video games but more of a one to one scale then a one to two scale when it came to reading versus video games. Games, videos, and internet access are a part of today’s student’s life and the more they use it the more it shows applications in the classroom. If students spend 11 hours daily for media use make some of those hours targeted toward school work and learning progression. College students are academically adrift, they don’t always know what they want to do in life and some become confused thinking they will never use their degree but only know that it is required for a job. Recall is used to remember answers for a quiz or test but does not help a student progress in their quest for knowledge. Students need to know why what their reading is important and what they can link it to in their daily lives. First two years of college 45% of students show no significant gains in learning which could set that student up for failure their next year or have the students realize that they are able to do the bare minimum in the classroom and still graduate. More students are following the voice of authority and believe that the instructor’s diatribe is more important to their own critical thinking skills. Critical thinking needs to be at the center of learning because anyone can google an answer with a basic question. Become active in your educational experience which is great for this generation with sites like Youtube that allow people to instruct or let their opinions be heard across a large audience. Wesch, M. (2011, June 18). A few ideas… [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXpitAlva0&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp&index=17 The internet lets anyone be able to distribute text to anyone. With the proper security software this should be utilized by anyone and everyone when it comes to the educational world. I think sometimes technology in education gets kicked to the curb because educators or administrators are worried that students using the internet inappropriately which is easily solved with the use of proper technology. One issue with this technology is instead of finding and blocking the inappropriate content it will just block an entire website such as Youtube which is a great tool in the classroom. This is totally different than my learning which partially involved the use of the internet but that wasn’t about sharing ideas it was more a visitor approach to get in, get the information for say a project, and then get out without contributing. Peer production and social production are creating what students need today and more and more students are interacting online creating their own niche. Wikipedia is shunned at the college level as a possible source for research or material but people continuously edit and correct Wikipedia, how often does that happen in a text book? Ten years? The entirety of the output of mankind can now be found digitally thanks to google, and almost all of this information is free (if you include some document subscription services used at the university level). Student learning can occur from something as simple as sharing a link or getting students to be more digitally literate by using tools like Diigo. You could foot note an entire 30 page paper with the use of just links or use google docs and add them in at the end of quotes so the reader can just click that hyper link and see where that information came from instead of just posting a page number that you have to track down in an analog world. Wesch, M. (2011, January 24). Rethinking Education [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xb5spS8pmE&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp&index=15 I found Mr. Negroponte’s video quite interesting especially when described how writing code is the closest students can be to learning about learning. Students are able to go back and fix an issue with their coding instead of just throwing the entire code out and starting over again. I found this similar to our program with how our rubrics are set up for our lesson planning. If we make a mistake it is easily fixable by maybe just changing a phrase or matching wording with our learning objectives in mind. That way we are not just throwing out our entire six page lesson but learning what to do for future lesson planning. This is why Mr. Negroponte explains that students that write code are better spellers because they see what they did incorrectly and like our lesson plans they remember why that letter is incorrect and will remember in the future why it is spelled that way. I agree with his three fundamental flaws in the education system especially the way America funds schools versus the rest of the world. By funding our education system through real estate taxes that can lead to a poorer school receiving less funding than a school in a more affluent area. I also know that program improvement schools receive funding on top of those taxes but still a practice that could be changed for better funding overall. Age segregation is an issue because not all students learn at the same pace for different subjects and having students at different ages in the classroom has shown to be a very effective teaching strategy. Schools should not be run like a business with student progress only assessed through massive testing schedules. If schools become more lax on their idea of competition and more toward a mission focus they would greatly improve our school sites. An example utilized was Finland who do not focus on competition by not testing their students to death and focus more on allowing students to accomplish projects on their own creating deeper learning. Negroponte, N. (2015, April 4). Being Educated [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fIuZa_-H60&index=26&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp |
Bryan AndersenJust a teacher candidate that is super excited to impact students lives Archives
May 2016
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