When I think back over the last few months, the way that I want to design my instruction moving forward has changed. We have covered a lot of different topics in our readings, and there are so many different strategies and/or viewpoints that it feels overwhelming when I try and think about how I am going to apply them to my classroom. In the past I have made the mistake of trying to do too much after a book or conference, trying to change too much too fast, and then really not doing any of the new things I learned very well. As I think about the upcoming school year, my goal is to pick a few areas where I can improve and just work on those. Otherwise I will end up doing the same thing that I have done in the past.
Moving forward, my goal is to approach technology and feedback differently. I really want to move past the substitution level with how I use technology in my room. Now that I have a better understanding of the SAMR model, I want to keep that in mind when I begin to incorporate feedback more into my daily lessons and classroom culture. I think that Flipgrid is going to be a very valuable tool and am excited to see the impact it might have once I really learn how to use it. During my initial round of research, I was definitely just using the Peergrade website as a substitution, and wasn't using technology to increase the learning in my room. Feedback itself was driving the learning, not necessarily the website. I hope to change that moving forward by the simple fact of just being more aware, and using Flipgrid, blogging, etc... to help students with strategies that I wouldn't have used in the past. I think that all of our readings really come back to one main idea. If we continue to try and view learning through the eyes of our students, we will continue to progress as educators. Our goal for instruction should always be what is best for them. How can I change my practice? If I do make changes, how do I know they were truly effective? If they weren't, what can I do differently? What needs do they have that I might be missing? What other innovative things are my colleagues doing that I could learn from? A classroom is a constantly evolving thing. Each year is so different from the last as far as students needs, curriculum instruction, changes in technology, etc... Through our readings and the time that I have got to spend working with my cohort members, I feel ready to make some pretty fundamental changes that my students will hopefully benefit from.
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Over the course of the last two semesters, my comfort level with using technology has gone up. Previously, I chose a few sites that I was comfortable with (slides, Kahoot, etc...), and mainly stuck with those. Reflecting on how I was using technology, I was definitely in the substitution phase. The products that were being created weren't necessarily improving the learning that was happening. The students enjoyed using it, and the products looked more appealing than they were in the past, but I'm not confident that I was elevating the thinking/designing/learning process that I really want them engaged in. As I begin to think about the upcoming school year, my goals are to move up to the augmentation phase and really begin to work on expanding on how I use the technology. A lot of this will apply to my action research and how I really want to use feedback in my classroom. Rather than having students give feedback just through text, I want to focus on sites like Flipgrid and work on how students can learn to critically assess their own work, as well as receiving feedback from others. I'm excited about the upcoming school year and some of the changes that I'm going to make.
Thinking about my prototype, I still think that there is some room for improvement. I liked using the site that I found. As I was looking through some of the other cap stone projects, and was thinking back to Baggio, I figured that I might try and learn a new site that would help me create some of the visuals that we are going to need to include in our final products. Creating the prototype took some time, but I am happy with the look of it. The challenge for me is in the content. With the decision to use so little words, I had to be very mindful about the words that I decided to use. I found it difficult to convey all of our readings, change with future instruction, future goals, etc..., into such a small space. I know that our goal with visuals is to use as little text as possible. I definitely didn't want to overload the visual with too much writing. But I also could have added more in there to really convey what I have learned and where I want to go moving forward. Maybe it's just a balance that I am still trying to figure out and will hopefully improve as we continue through our program. Our practice and action research really work together in tandem. Through our action research, we can experiment with what strategies/activities will be effective and which ones won't. Part of this crazy job that we have is being willing to try new things, and be accepting that sometimes they aren't going to work, and they are going to blow up with 35 kids in the classroom. We then need to be willing to be critical of our own practice and try and figure out how we fix or alter it. I feel like this action research just puts a more laser like focus on what we all do in our classrooms all the time, but helped us develop better skills in how to determine how effective it was.
Luckily I didn't have to change my driving question, I just needed to change the process in how I go about finding the answer (hopefully). The plan right now is to incorporate Flipgrid as a way for students to present their findings, provide feedback on others, and make any necessary changes before final submission. I really am excited about the change because I am hopeful that the level of engagement will go up, and kids will kind of "forget" that they are learning because they will enjoy what they are doing. I feel like a lot of the ARCS model really fit with what I have always tried to do in my classroom. When students are in a safe environment, and feel that they have been put in a place to be successful, the odds go way up with student performance. There were definitely some strategies (like introducing facts that might contradict previous beliefs), as a way to help sustain their attention for a longer amount of time, that I found I could easily apply in my own classroom. These easy to apply types of models/theories are the ones that I find to be the most useful. I feel that some of what Clark said, action research, the ARCS model, and the discussions with everybody in the cohort, has helped me to become a better teacher (I hope). Moving forward, I want to continue to try and apply what we have learned in the upcoming school year. I am going to start the year with Google classroom, and say goodbye to useless ECHO (except for the grade book). I want to continue to build feedback into my everyday practice. Our next round (with hopefully more time) of action research should help me find new ways to engage kids with something that has proven to have a high effect size on student learning. I want to use some of what my group and I learned from our ARCS presentation as a way to hopefully sustain the attention span of my kids for just a little bit longer. I think all of this will be helpful due to the fact that we don't have any curriculum for next year, and we have to create most of it from scratch. Which is all the more frustrating because not having access to resources like curriculum was one of the reasons that the Flat Earth gave of why students are struggling. But that is a conversation for another day... I think that the audience I want to address is both my students and my classmates. Over the course of the previous and current semesters, I have looked at this as an opportunity to learn from my instructors and classmates as a way to foster my own growth as a teacher. Everything that we have planned for up to this date has really been student focused. I have used the assignments and discussions as a way to help my students access the content in different ways than I have in the past, which in turn has made me much more open minded and willing to use technology more in the classroom. But now I am realizing that with our capstone project, we are also targeting the adults around us as well. I also understand why the adults around us are also our target audience . I think of all the good ideas, feedback, and strategies that I have been able to learn from the other members of our group. I see why we wouldn't want to limit our findings to just our students, but with others who might be able to benefit from our findings as well. Looking forward, I want to try and make sure that I have both groups in mind. While I am still learning what is involved with our capstone project, and I understand that students won't be viewing it, I still want to remain student centered as much as possible.
When I think of how I am going to share my findings from Clark, Dervin, and Baggio, I think that showing examples of these ideas being applied as real world examples in the classroom appeals to me. While I am still a little unclear on the outline of the capstone project, I think that trying to explain some of these theories to somebody who hasn't read it wouldn't be very useful. I think that showing examples actually being used in the classroom would be much more powerful. If I could provide examples of what a unit or lesson might have looked like before and after our readings, that might help close that "learning gap" of what I want them to see. For example, I could build off of the research on visual images and show how I use that in the classroom. Another example might be to take Clark's instructional system design, and break it down step by step in showing how each one might be applied in setting up a lesson/unit in the classroom, rather than showing the chart on it's own with a quick explanation. Could I show the diagram, but provide clear examples of each step to show how it helps drive a more effective lesson? I think that by providing clear, real world examples, it will be much easier for me to share my findings and others use it as a true resource. When I try to think of the adults as the end user, I have to try and think how they are going to try and access the information. It has taken me many readings of that Dervin piece to start and wrap my head around it. So just like I have to keep in mind how my students might be viewing the information put in front of them in the classroom, I know that I need to make sure I do the same for my adult audience as well. Each of the authors above has opened up my viewpoints on teaching in a different way. The first one that I wanted to talk about was the readings from Clark. There was a specific quote that really stood out for me. When discussing training in a work setting, she mentions that "you will need to invest effort to adopt the mindset of the novice." If I am going to apply this to teaching in my own classroom, I need to remember to always come back to this. I need to build every lesson/unit with the assumption that many of my students come with limited prior knowledge. Many of the topics that we discuss in the class are difficult, and students haven't had any experiences or practice with them in the past. In the future, I need to do a better job of asking the right questions to help identify what prior knowledge they do come to class with. Another part that really stuck with me was the focus on learning an not teaching. This is always our goal in the classroom. I liked the breakdown of the instructional design system as well. It's really a focus on the end user, and meeting them at the level of their own needs. I kind of seeing it as a lesson plan in reverse in the sense you are building tasks, assessments, and learning goals only after you understand who you are marketing your content to. Integrating what the student wants out of the lesson and what I want them go get can be two totally different things and it is up to me to connect the two in a way that benefits the students. Some other key takeaways:
As we begin to talk about action research again, I have started to think about the process that we just finished, and where I want to go with it moving forward. After some of the discussions and articles we have read, I wonder what kind of changes I could make that would help my students have a better understanding of the content. I also wonder what kind of changes I could personally make that would help me better understand how my students view the process of learning. While I feel like I have always done my best to differentiate my lessons as much as possible, I also realize that having a better understanding how students view their own learning will help me make the curriculum more accessible to them. The sense making article took me a couple of readings to start to understand what Dervin is saying. I think that taking the time to learn how the students are learning, and why they make the decisions they do, will help me become a better teacher and help the students with content that can be very difficult for a lot of them.
When I think about how my own learning impacts my classroom, a couple things come to mind. The first thing I thought about was how my own experiences through this program have reminded me of the challenges of being a student. There have been many times over the last 5 months where I have felt completely lost, stressed, and just overall struggling to make sure that I am completing the work and doing it correctly. A lot of the content that we have covered has been new to me, and it's tough when you aren't always confident in the work that you are submitting. What this has done though is give me a reminder of what it must be like for my own students in my class when we are discussing something that is new and challenging. Learning something new takes time and practice. I feel that this has been an unanticipated benefit for me personally that I will carry with me when we begin school again in the fall. The other thing I thought about was how the action research is supposed to benefit us. The idea is for us to become better educators, so that we can better help our students. While our first trial through the action research process had its flaws, I did get to see the benefits of the process. We should always be looking for ways to improve. We should always be reflective of our own practice and be willing to learn new ways to help our kids. When I went through the peer feedback process with my kids, I saw how it could benefit them. At the time that we conducted our research, I wasn't using peer feedback at all. Due to the improvement in writing that I saw, it will be a strategy now that will become part of my classroom routine. As we move forward with new driving questions or adding to existing ones, I think that the learning process through this lens can have positive impacts on us and our students. Thinking about my own metacognition processes is kind of a strange idea. My focus this year has been on helping students understand their own processes and how to be more aware of where they are in their own learning. But I haven't really stopped to think about my own metacognition processes. As I was reading I covered a piece of paper in random quotes and ideas. I do this every time I read or watch videos for class but I really had never really given it much thought. I have a hard time retaining information if I just read or hear it. Part of my own ability to learn and retain information is to be able to write as I go. This also made me think about what gaps I still have in my understanding of how students learn. I have always been very critical and reflective of my own practice but this article really made me think about the gaps that still exist in my own knowledge of how I can improve to help students in their learning. When trying to digest this article there were some quotes that fit perfectly. While I know that the article focuses on research, I want to connect this to our students and learning as well. One of them acknowledges the "chaos of individuality." I think that this really speaks to the sense making methodology. Each student is so different from another, each perception of the world so different, from day to day and even from class to class. I think that what she is trying to say is that we are always looking at how students obtain information from the system that we have constructed. I think that we all recognize the challenges that a lot of our students come in with. But understanding the behaviors that lead them to use certain tools in the process of learning is a much more difficult aspect to understand. Why did the students use a website rather than the text to look for an answer? Why did they decide to ask their partner for help this time rather than the teacher this time, when they usually raise their hand for help? The steps that they take are designed to help them make sense in their own world, in their own unique way. With 36 students in a lot of our classes, the complexity becomes even more overwhelming. I think it's important to always be cognizant of how our students process information. We should always be flexible in our own practice to adjust as the students are constantly changing in how they obtain information. There was another part in the article, or possibly a lecture that she did that I ran across, where she asked whether users of the system should bend to the system or vice versa. I think that it is a little of both. We need to have clear expectation for students to help them close their own gaps, but be flexible enough to change our own plans to our student's needs. In regards to collecting information and analyzing it, it makes me think of whether I was asking the right questions in my own research study. My focus was really on whether the structure that I had set up helped the students in their learning. Looking forward, should my focus be more on why the students chose the path that they did, as to better understand their own viewpoint in the learning process? Should I be looking more on the "tools" that they used and why, rather than whether the tools I gave them were successful? If I was having students read this article and analyze the content, it would need to be broken up into smaller chunks. A big piece of the article focuses on the importance of communication. I think that videos, class discussion that focused on one piece using a site like Padlet, and a lot of focus on the academic vocabulary would be necessary. The writing is so dense, but I think that you could take a few important topics and have students just focus on those as to not overwhelm them, but make them more award of the own processes that they use in their own learning. You could then build in activities that students would have to write about why they chose the processes they did, and ask them to explain why they chose the ones that they did. |