Typically, I enjoy reading and responding to educational articles with my opinion in writing or visual demonstration. I take notes by hand or on my laptop during meetings and classes to retain information. Studying takes the form of highlighting, printing out papers that require deeper reading, and underlining key phrases and passages. I also learn well by asking questions and by doing and creating. I am not afraid to try a new technology; worst case scenario I have to delete something and start all over again. I do not find that off-putting.
I have learned, through the IT&DML program, that the Learning Management System we use works well for me as a learner. G+, Drive, Communities, Twitter, Google Groups, etc. are used asynchronously to target instructor and student goals, and allow for seamless communication between students. I am a visual, task-oriented learner. I ask many clarifying questions and complete work in a methodical, systematic manner. Our LMS allows me to communicate at my convenience with my peers and instructors. If I am working on an assignment during a planning period at work or after my kids go to bed, I can post a question on the Community or in a Hangout and am guaranteed an almost immediate response from someone (thank you, night owls!). Feedback is both specific to my work and connected to the work of others. I enjoy the fact that after a reflection is posted, my peers' comments cause me to further think about the discussion points of that week. One of the many reasons why I joined this IT&DML cohort was to further my understanding of contemporary issues in instructional technologies; consistent, thoughtful conversations that occur throughout the week and into the weekend have already made me a better teacher and learner. I love the way the Communities are structured this semester in terms of Week One, Week Two, Questions, etc. If I want clarification on the Week Three assignment, I first think to check in the ED 722 Community and then go to the sidebar and select the appropriate week. Again, my learning style is pretty methodical and thorough.
Describe knowledge, skills, dispositions that could make me a successful online or blended educator.
My philosophy of education stems from John Dewey, and while his writings date back to the early 20th Century, the themes are universal and can be applied to ‘what it takes’ to make me a successful online or blended educator. Dewey writes, "When we, as educators, draw upon our students' individual and collective experiences, students become more active learners, capable of finding success in all traditional subject matters. John Dewey guides us with the idea that we must, "abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience... It is continuous reconstruction, moving from the child's present experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth that we call studies," (The Child and the Curriculum, 1902).
Collaborative learning, content creation, using students' experiences to build on learning and integration of 21st century skills will lead to increased student engagement and deeper learning. As an educator, I must have the disposition to make this happen.
We must take ownership over scaffolding student experiences so that students can be successful online learners. There are many things we can do to help students in online educational programs; again, they are similar to the skills needed from Dewey’s perspective and can be applied to this approach, as well.
- Be student centered. Focus on the student, not the content
- Coach. Online instruction is about facilitating interactions and problem solving, not lecturing from a podium.
- Be flexible. Asynchronous learning can happen outside the normal hours of the school/work day, but we need to be mindful of other activities such as sports, work shifts, family, evening and weekend obligations.
- Provide continuous feedback or give concrete time frames for when students should expect to receive responses. Just as instructors expect students to be checking online for posts/work/information, instructors should be available for feedback soon after assignments are due. Gone are the days of getting student work returned within a week or two.
- Create a sense of community. This will help students feel supported and encouraged.
- Know the content.
Some common LMS characteristics can be related to elements of teaching practice, and can overlap to be effective in online settings. Some of them are:
- tracking student progress
- interaction through comments and responses
- collaboration between instructor and students, and between students and students
- allowing content uploads
- accessing anytime and anywhere for asynchronous participation
To do this, students' prior technology knowledge and backgrounds must be identified. Access to technology and digital texts must be addressed. Above all, the teacher must provide opportunity, be sensitive to students' cultural models and build meaning while at the same time fostering skill fluency.
My approach is imperfect - but it seems to be working. Students have structured choices in my classroom as to the technologies they would like to use. PowerPoint can be redundant but often times it's what teachers expect - how wonderful, then, to enable students to use a newer presentation tool like PowToon or refine what they know about iMovie (click here to see some of their projects). Embedded within these projects are universal technology, presentation, and Common Core skills that I am responsible for teaching.
A critical component to my teaching is the reflective, or metacognitive component that I address and circle back to with every student. Sixth graders each create blogs at the beginning of their semester with me, and during the course of a project, they blog a reflection about the process they are undergoing. They also communicate ways they might apply what they are learning to other aspects of their lives - both personal and academic (click here to check out Liya's very precocious reflections).
What elements of teaching practice would need adjustment in order to work successfully with students in online environment?
Group work can be a large component of online courses. In the classroom, I have had to address issues of power in groups in order to make sure that each student is and feels heard. My informal observations ask questions like: Who talks more? Who dominates conversation? Who does the typing? What is body language like? Are students sitting in a semicircle around the computer or is one person off to the side? Each of these observations may or may not need on-the-spot interventions.
It is clear to me, now that I am fully immersed in this process, that in order to have children have a successful experience with collaborative work, challenges must be anticipated and teachers must scaffold support.
“It is not just the incorporation of technology in pedagogy that facilitates learning, but it is instead the design of the environment and the interactions and types of connections that the technology affords.” (Ally, 2015) When learners engage in real-life applications of technology and meaningful activities, they learn, retain and internalize both content and technology skills, as well as gain the ability to become problem-solvers and global thinkers. Isolated technological instruction is flat and stagnant.
The democratization and virality of what some call Web 2.0 cannot be minimized, and we as educators must apply these changing mindsets and expectations to our students. Whether or not we subscribe to the idea of our students as 'digital natives,' we must allow for the multidimensional way consumers and producers lines are blurred and intersect. Just as the rules and the norms - the 'Ethos Stuff' (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007) of New Literacies - are participatory, collaborative and distributed, so must our teaching be.
Lankshear & Knobel (2007) posit that the New Literacies are 'new' because of the mindset of users. Web 2.0 tools redefine these New Literacies to have four elements: socially recognized ways, meaningful content, encoded texts and Discourses. These definitions "mobilize very different kinds of values and priorities and sensibilities." Mindsets about our contemporary world change information from being a commodity to being a relationship.
What supports will I need as a teacher?
Professional development and exemplars will be critical to me, as a teacher, as I develop my skills and dispositions as an online learning instructor. Collaborating with colleagues, developing my Personal Learning Network, and continuing to upload to my Hub will be critical to this learning. It will also be essential for me to evaluate and research exemplars in the field of online instruction.
Throughout my IT&DML journey, I have continued to show evidence of personal and professional growth through artifact curation. My Hub has evolved from a skeleton of blog responses to links containing tutorials, how-to videos, unit and lesson plans, and assessment tools. I presented at our district’s Tech Camp in November and added the page of resources and links to my Hub so that my colleagues could access them during our Professional Development day. Those resources can be found here.
My Professional Learning Network has grown exponentially through my use of Twitter and TweetDeck. I do not measure growth simply by the number of followers I have or accounts I follow, but by the content that I am exposed to, and continue to publish, via these tools. Current articles in education via Edutopia and retweets from colleagues come to me when I want, where I want.
Continuing down the path of curating the content that I publish as well as the content that I use for support is critical to my development as an online learning instructor. Trying, erring, questioning, and collaborating will sustain growth.
Link to Hub: www.digitalfluencyed.com
Twitter: @TechTina
Storify: https://storify.com/TechTina
Ally, Mohamed. "Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning."Theory and Practice of Online Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2015
Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2007). Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 Practices and Insider Perspectives. E-Learning, 4(3), 224-240.
"The Skills Both Online Students And Teachers Must Have." The Skills Both Online Students And Teachers Must Have. Edudemic. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.