CHOOSE AN ESSAY BELOW:
Digital Natives or Digital Learners?
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Just Keep Learning, Just Keep Learning...
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The Pedagogy of Tomorrow
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Digital Natives or Digital Learners?
Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants |
During my undergraduate career at Oakland University, I had specific views on technology and teaching. They were grounded in my own experiences and very limited knowledge to that point. One of my first real “teaching” assignments at OU was to read an article about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky. I still remember this assignment vividly as I attribute it to one of my first major shifts in thinking. After reading the article I began to think of people in two categories: digital natives or digital immigrants.
Going into my first year of teaching at a private catholic school (Notre Dame Marist Academy), I knew that all of my students would obviously be digital natives. After implementing a flipped classroom approach (from a recent Google conference), however, I realized that the philosophy of digital natives and digital immigrants did not hold 100% true for everyone. I had originally attributed this philosophy to an age-gap or sorts - younger generations would obviously be natives and older generations would be immigrants. As I worked through various new technologies involved in the flipped approach (read more here), I had many students that needed to be guided through the process of watching videos and completing online quizzes. I was shocked to see that in some cases I knew more than the students about technology! How could this happen?
Going into my first year of teaching at a private catholic school (Notre Dame Marist Academy), I knew that all of my students would obviously be digital natives. After implementing a flipped classroom approach (from a recent Google conference), however, I realized that the philosophy of digital natives and digital immigrants did not hold 100% true for everyone. I had originally attributed this philosophy to an age-gap or sorts - younger generations would obviously be natives and older generations would be immigrants. As I worked through various new technologies involved in the flipped approach (read more here), I had many students that needed to be guided through the process of watching videos and completing online quizzes. I was shocked to see that in some cases I knew more than the students about technology! How could this happen?
Correction: Digital Learners
After a few more years of experience with technology and middle school students, I realized that we aren’t all born in a digital age or a non-digital age. Each student is going to come to us with varying levels of knowledge about technology. It is up to us as teachers to provide the instruction that will allow students to become digital learners in a 21st century environment. As future generations grow up and go out into the “real world” to find jobs - they are going to be pushed in all sorts of directions to adapt their knowledge to become proficient in the ever-changing area that is technology.
With this new-found epiphany, I became much more interested in incorporating these technology-rich experiences into my classroom. I quickly decided to pursue a degree in Educational Technology to further my knowledge about technology practices. Starting my graduate career at Michigan State University was a big step for me! Going into the program I had a few goals in mind of what I wanted to accomplish during this time...
With this new-found epiphany, I became much more interested in incorporating these technology-rich experiences into my classroom. I quickly decided to pursue a degree in Educational Technology to further my knowledge about technology practices. Starting my graduate career at Michigan State University was a big step for me! Going into the program I had a few goals in mind of what I wanted to accomplish during this time...
- Finish the MAET (Masters of Arts in Educational Technology) program by Summer 2015 (typically a 2 year schedule).
- Seek out a position in Educational Technology or Instructional Technology (maybe even apply for a director of technology position for a district).
- Begin to incorporate more technology within my own classroom to help students develop the 21st century skills they will need to excel in the future.
As I reflect on these goals and look back at what type of teacher I was when I began the MAET program and what type of teacher I am now, things have definitely changed (in just one short year!). One of my goals in starting this program was to learn new ways to incorporate technology within my own classroom to help students develop 21st century skills. During my time at MSU, I have been given many opportunities to achieve this goal. Each and every one of my classes has shaped my outlook on how to provide technology-rich experiences for my students. One of the second biggest changes I saw in my technology philosophy was during my first semester as I learned about TPACK theory (Technology, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge http://www.tpack.org/). This theory shifted my thinking to focus on LEARNING first and secondly to find technology that can support specific learning targets. Before learning about TPACK I would start with finding the technology I wanted to use and then search for ways to implement it into my curriculum. This was all backwards! Shifting my focus to the learning has allowed me to create much more organic, rich learning experiences for my students during the past year. Another course I took involved learning about the Stanford Design model. This course showed me that proper design does not come from haphazardly putting together resources and lessons. Good design involves thinking (and a lot of it) to produce quality outcomes from your students. Incorporating good design practices along with TPACK will ensure that my students experience an atmosphere that pushes them to develop 21st century skills through the use of technology.
Another one of my goals was to graduate in the summer of 2015. I’m so excited that this is actually happening and I will complete the program in August of this year. This is typically a two year program and I wanted to complete it quicker so that I could gain the knowledge and information necessary to pursue other opportunities within the field.
My last goal was to seek out a position within the educational technology sector. Since I have shifted my technology focus in the classroom, I’ve been able to create many more opportunities for students to learn 21st century skills. I am becoming a little less interested in achieving this goal immediately and more interested in waiting a few years to move into a focused educational technology job. I just don’t know if I’m ready to leave the classroom and work in an environment where I wouldn’t have interaction with students on a daily basis like I do now. I have however acquired a position that allows me to stay in my teaching position but also offers me the flexibility to pursue a job within the field. This year our district created new positions for instructional technology coordinators at each building (as an extracurricular activity). I pursued this position and received the job! I now work with another colleague to create professional developments that teach other teachers how to incorporate technology within their classrooms. We also give one-on-one support to teachers who need help with specific technology within their classroom.
Another one of my goals was to graduate in the summer of 2015. I’m so excited that this is actually happening and I will complete the program in August of this year. This is typically a two year program and I wanted to complete it quicker so that I could gain the knowledge and information necessary to pursue other opportunities within the field.
My last goal was to seek out a position within the educational technology sector. Since I have shifted my technology focus in the classroom, I’ve been able to create many more opportunities for students to learn 21st century skills. I am becoming a little less interested in achieving this goal immediately and more interested in waiting a few years to move into a focused educational technology job. I just don’t know if I’m ready to leave the classroom and work in an environment where I wouldn’t have interaction with students on a daily basis like I do now. I have however acquired a position that allows me to stay in my teaching position but also offers me the flexibility to pursue a job within the field. This year our district created new positions for instructional technology coordinators at each building (as an extracurricular activity). I pursued this position and received the job! I now work with another colleague to create professional developments that teach other teachers how to incorporate technology within their classrooms. We also give one-on-one support to teachers who need help with specific technology within their classroom.
Just Keep Learning, Just Keep Learning,
Just Keep Learning, Learning, Learning…
A reflective essay on my future goals for learning as a teacher, learner, and professional development leader.
As an educator I am in the business of learning: Not only are my students learning, but I too continually strive to expand my learning in the field of pedagogy, technology, and the world around me. I believe, as educators, it is so important to seek out new and exciting opportunities to learn. Becoming a life-long-learner allows us to stay up to date on the current trends in the world of pedagogy, find new ways to engage our students, and make learning fun! The Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State has allowed me the opportunity to achieve all of these things and more! I never realized just how much more information I would learn over the course of a year and a half. Technology is always changing and evolving as the years, days, and even minutes pass by! So many of the types of technology I used and learned about in my undergraduate degree has already been replaced with “better models”.
As a result, educators are in an important position to develop 21st century learners that have the skills necessary to function in our future world. With every new technology that is developed we are changing the ways students learn, communicate, and function in day-to-day life. In order to keep up with this trend we must be in constant pursuit of our goal to reach all students. By educating ourselves in the realm of technology, we can keep pace with the trends that are shaping the world of pedagogy and begin to use these in our classrooms to develop 21st century thinkers and learners.
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Flipped Mastery Gamification.
One of the trends that I am looking to learn more about and implement within my classroom is flipped-mastery-gamification. This is the combination of three different trends flipped learning, mastery learning, and gamification. Two years ago I began the journey of flipping my math classroom. It completely “flipped” (no pun intended) my idea of learning and really pushed me to use a backwards design approach to my teaching (read more about backwards design here). While it completely flipped my idea of classroom teaching, the results I received from my students were better than I had ever hoped for: Students had better test scores, less anxiety and stress, more fun, higher homework completion, more collaboration in class, and even a deeper understanding of the content. After a few years of honing my skills at strategies of this pedagogical view, I have begun to look into mastery learning (read more about mastery learning here). I stumbled upon the topic of mastery learning through Twitter and a few teaching conferences. Because of the flipped format I have already created, implementing a mastery format should be relatively easy. Our district also recently adopted Schoology (a Learning Management System) where I will be able to house all of my classroom content. My plan is to continue to read blogs and complete more research on the topic of mastery learning to hone the format for next year’s class. The third type of learning I also want to learn more about and incorporate (hopefully by this coming year) is gamification. This blog shows a teacher’s journey through his process of first developing a flipped classroom, then moving to flipped-mastery, and finally on to a flipped-mastery-gamified learning environment. He shows that it took him 3 years to do each of these well. My plan this year is to focus on developing a flipped-mastery strategy, but also try to incorporate some of the gamified elements into the mix as well (using XP, having levels, gamifying some vocabulary, etc.). I don’t want to overwhelm myself and get in over my head, so I am going to have to do a lot of research, thinking, and discussions with other teachers to find out what will be best.
Setting Goals.
Along with changing the format of my classroom, one of my goals is to create a classroom environment where students are self-managed learners who continually progress monitor. One of the ways I purpose to do this is by focusing on short-term and long-term goal setting with them. Because of the flipped-mastery format of the class, I want students to advocate for themselves while focusing on their metacognitive skills. If students know more about how they think and learn, they will be able to assess and determine what it is they need to do in order to deeply understand the content. I truly believe that goal setting is a real-world 21st century skill that students aren’t ever “coached” on during their time in an educational setting. It is always something that is talked about, but as teachers we need to direct, guide, and model these strategies that students can use. My plan is to have students set goals each week, progress monitor, and continually self-assess to see where they are, where they should be, and how they plan to get there. In order to do this I need to plan strategically, research on the best practices to implement goal setting in a middle school environment, and also reach out to other teachers who have used goal-setting in their classroom. This puts the accountability of learning the content on the student and not the teacher. It continually reminds them that they have a purpose and goal in mind.
Professional Development.
Recently I began working as the instructional technology chair for my building. As part of this position I am in charge of creating professional development workshops, teaching staff about new technologies, and helping them implement these new technologies into the curriculum. This position is so exciting for me because I’m able to help others in a field I am so passionate about. One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced so far is trying to develop the “perfect” teacher workshop for technology. Technology has always been a sore spot for many teachers because they want to stick with what they are accustomed to already. Many teachers feel that they are digital immigrants and it will take them years to learn a new topic. Through a personal project that was started as a part of an MAET course, I followed Stanford's Design Model to walk me through the process of figuring out one solution to this problem. I tackled each of the modes of this process one-by-one over the course of a semester to come up with a polished solution to these difficult questions. Although the initial idea for this was fabricated through a project, I really would like to make it one of my future missions to put these ideas into place and create a few “Teacher Tech Labs” for my own staff. You can read more about the process of how I came up with this idea here. All in all, I want teachers to feel comfortable and excited about learning new technology - not frustrated and unsure. I want them to be able to see the successes of other teachers so that they are more encouraged to implement technology within their own classrooms.
The Pedagogy of Tomorrow.
Throughout my few years of teaching I had always been told that I was the “techie”. People would always come to me for help and I absolutely loved walking them through how to troubleshoot these issues. I quickly realized that I not only had a knack for technology, but really loved finding new and innovative ways to teach using technology. After one of my friends told me about the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University, I knew that I had to pursue a degree in educational technology. Michigan State University’s MAET program is nationally ranked and award winning. This is one of the main things that drew me toward this program. I have always had a love for learning, but I wanted to make sure that my master’s degree was from one of the best programs out there. I wanted a program that would give me the edge and experience necessary to completely transform my knowledge of teaching and learning.
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In the short time frame of a year and a few months, I have almost completed my coursework to earn my degree. This innovative program has offered me the opportunity to expand my pedagogical knowledge in ways that I never knew possible. Not only have a learned a great deal about instructional technology, I have also learned even more about how I can change my teaching to support student learning in a variety of different areas. Throughout my journey, teaching has actually become pedagogy; an art that is embellished with technology, design, understanding, and theory.
Pedagogy is an art that is embellished with technology. This aspect is one of the main focuses of the MAET program and was probably one of the most significant areas of development in my own teaching and learning. Although most of the classes throughout my masters degree have influenced my philosophy on technology in some ways, a few stood out as significant contributions to my pedagogical shift. During my year one summer cohort I took a class called CEP 810 (Teaching for Understanding with Technology). This class not only focused on educational theories but also taught the foundational knowledge of TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge). TPACK is the meeting or trilogy of three types of knowledge: pedagogical, content, and technological. When these three ideas work together they form the idea of TPACK. This theory really changed my way of thinking about how to incorporate technology into the classroom in the sense that we need to reverse our thinking: we first need to think about the learning, and secondly find tools (technology) that will get us to that learning. Another class that also influenced my technological knowledge was CEP 805 (Learning Mathematics with Technology). In this class we looked specifically at how to analyze and choose the best online tools that provide support for all students. We developed a rubric to think through when looking for these new tools for our students. The process of creating this rubric helped me to expand my vision of what technological tools can actually provide and make sure that that the tools that I choose not only meet the learning objectives but also push students to think instrumentally rather than rationally (more on this later). Last year I took on the job of technology chair at my building. In addition to teaching, I am responsible for creating professional development workshops and providing one on one help to the staff. The TPACK framework has also influenced this facet of my teaching as well. Many teachers have always complained that they aren't given enough support to actually implement the technology they learn about during these sessions and they usually leave feeling unmotivated and defeated. In conjunction with a class called CEP 817 (Learning Technology by Design), I worked to redesign the way we approach and teach professional development to change this negative connotation. The framework of TPACK shifted my focus from the technology to learning, and the Stanford design model pushed me to change my perspective to first empathize with the staff to create something that met their individual needs as teachers. I began to approach the use of technology from an entirely different angle because of these new theories. I felt more equipped to choose resources and technology based on the types of learning outcomes rather than just the "cool features". To be honest, I would have had absolutely no knowledge going into this position about instructional technology if it weren’t for the MAET program. CEP 810 and CEP 817 gave me the knowledge of TPACK and design theory that pushed me to think backwards and focus on the needs of learners and learning objectives first and then search for technology to support that learning second.
Aspects of design are found in almost every facet of our lives, especially in pedagogy. I never realized how engrained the ideology of design was in the area of teaching until taking CEP 817 (Learning Technology by Design). This class taught me how to really engage in the process of design from start to finish when planning lessons and activities. One of the most intriguing parts of the Stanford Design Model is the concept of empathy. Empathy is the first step in design and pushes creators to take time to view the problem from their user's point of view. In our world this concept is apparent in many of the good examples of design; automated soap dispensers, collapsible baby gates, and even portable CD players. All of these items were originally created when a need arose and someone designed a product to address that need. In my own teaching design has many critical implications. From the classroom layout to lesson planning and activities, incorporating design into each of these areas allows me to always keep a focus on the specific needs of my students. Classroom design must incorporate the best practices of collaboration, community, and learning. Lesson design must focus on the end goal for students first, then be designed accordingly to meet these objectives. Activities within the classroom must be designed to utilize techniques that develop 21st century skills in students.
Design is also incorporated in the development of online learning management systems. During CEP 820 (Teaching Students Online), I was assigned a project to develop an online unit of instruction using the LMS (learning management system) Schoology. During this class I was able to learn about how to properly design curriculum in a blended or online environment. The timing of taking this class was fantastic because my school district was currently in the process of implementing Schoology district-wide. Throughout CEP 820 I was able to begin creating my own online course that I could implement within my classroom. I have been running a flipped classroom for a few years now and this course allowed me to combine all of my content that had previously been in separate locations into a one-stop-shop for my students. Once again the theme of design came up here because this helped fix a problem that many of my students had. Previously all teachers were using different types of technologies to post materials online and students had to constantly navigate to different areas to find what they needed. Schoology allowed them to have all of their content in one area with one set of credentials. Since this course I have continued to make improvements on my Schoology site while trying to keep the 5 modes of design in mind.
Understanding is a critical component of pedagogy and one in which my own understanding of understanding has changed dramatically throughout this program. Previously I had the idea that if a student scored well on a test, they must have understood the material. After taking many courses in the program, however, this thought quickly changed. A mastery of content and skill does not specifically imply understanding. Specifically in CEP 805 I read an article about instrumental vs. relational understanding by Skemp (1977). This article discussed the ways in which students understand and learn mathematics. Many students believe they "understand" a topic but when faced with a slightly different problem they use the same pattern as before without taking into account any adaptations based on the context. Students who understand instrumentally simply are memorizing a pattern and sticking to a set of rules to get to the final answer. They are unable to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate due to this low level of understanding. Their knowledge consists of lower level thinking skills that lead them down a single path. As Skemp states in his article, "all they want is some kind of rule for getting the answer. As soon as this is reached, they latch on to it and ignore the rest." (P.4 Skemp 1977). Relational understanding involves the use of higher level thinking skills in which students can make the transfer of base level knowledge to an unfamiliar context. When presented with a situation that doesn't follow "the rules", they can adapt and conceptualize the problem in order to get to the answer. I have seen this situation so many times as a teacher and I do not want to perpetuate this thinking. I want students to leave my class knowing how to adapt the information they've learned to new situations that don't just "follow the same pattern". As a teacher it will been one of my main goals to foster this type of understanding in my students through the activities, projects, and information I present. I have started to modify the curriculum so that the answer is not the focus of every problem. Incorporating more real-world problems for students to practice on a daily basis will encourage higher level thinking and the ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts with practice.
Theory is a concept that is deeply rooted throughout the history of pedagogy. We continually change the face of education when we find new theories for better learning and outcomes. Theory has just recently begun to change my thoughts and ideas about pedagogy and I have finally realized its place within education. Throughout my MAET career, I have been immersed in learning about constructivist, behaviorist, cognitivist, and many other theories. CEP 800 (Learning in School and other Settings) was the first class where we began to discuss exactly how theory connects and applies to us as teachers. Theory is not about finding the “right” way to teach, nor is it about finding a cure all for education. Theory is about experimenting with different avenues of teaching and learning to find the sweet spot of which one works for you. As educators we can combine several aspects of these theories together to create a pedagogical approach that works for our specific situation. We cannot possibly find the one true way to teach because our students are so diverse - each are created with specific preferences of learning, backgrounds, and prior knowledge. From CEP 800 I was able to blend the thoughts of each of these theories to begin developing my flipped-mastery-gamification approach that I will implement this year. Another class that changed my perspective on online learning theory was CEP 820 (Teaching Students Online). Going into this class I had no idea how to develop an online learning platform that would encourage collaboration, communication, and exploration. Being involved in many online classes myself, I knew going into this class what was wrong with online learning, but I didn’t ever have the right answer for how to go about changing this. This course taught me to use the backwards design approach when developing online learning so that I could ensure that my objectives were taught and carried out correctly through the materials I provided to my students. I also learned how to create discussions and get students involved even through distance learning. Throughout my program I learned that theory is not the answer, but it is one of the steps that get us closer to our ultimate pedagogical approach.
All in all, the MAET program at MSU guided me through the creating, changing, and polishing of my own pedagogical approach. I am extremely blessed to have had this experience and I truly feel that my teaching will be revolutionized because of this program. Each and every one of my courses pushed to think outside of the box, challenge my own misconceptions, and dive deeper into my thoughts about teaching and learning. I know throughout my teaching that I will continue to change, polish, and create new meaning of my own through my experiences in education. The MAET program at MSU was just one of the big stepping stones along the path to the pedagogy of tomorrow.