I love using PhET in my chemistry classroom as a student lab or as a demonstration! Check out how you can use this great tool in your classroom. (Simulations are for math and science).
10 days of my life as a teacher and a mother! Tara
I had a lot of fun with the Instagram project. I definitely see the value and use of this tool in my classroom as a great way to document my students' learning daily for parents and/or family members to see what is going on inside the classroom with their student. It is also a great way for students to know what they missed if they are absent. I also think we can use Instagram for my students to document an online project showing what they learned in chemistry for an entire unit. One aspect of Instagram that makes is so user friendly in the classroom is that teachers and students can use #hashtags to personalize the learning and make it specific to each classroom, this also makes it easy for students to track their peers progress. I want to implement Instagram in one of our units this semester in my chemistry classroom.
Below is a great TED talk with Novelist Chimamanda Adichie. She has clear warning for us only hearing a single story when creating an understanding about someone. She talked about how a single story can create stereotypes that are not only inaccurate but hurtful as well. A single story that can lead to misunderstandings and misconceptions definitely carries over to education. One way I believe this to be true is that a lot of students sitting in classroom around the world are learning from one teacher out of one textbook. After viewing this video, this is a single story in education. Today's students want to create a learning environment where they are collaborating and communicating with their peers, not only those in the classroom but from around the world. It is up to us as educators to facilitate this authentic platform for learning that allows students time to play, discover and create online. Ms. Adichie talked a lot about power and how power plays a big role in creating this single story. I believe it is time that we as educators shift the power onto our students so they can make their learning experience personal and more meaningful to them as individuals. Our students want space to make their own journey in life.
My Instagram story above is just a 10 day sample of what I do everyday, as a teacher and mother and it tells many different stories about me and my life. One of my favorite quotes from the video: "To show of people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again...and that is what they become." Instagram allows space for our students to show the world many different aspects of their life both socially and academically, and because of this, Instagram can be a very powerful tool for our students learning and creating many stories about their lives. Chapter 7: Knowing ------> Making ------> Playing
Quote: Page 97. "Much of what makes play powerful as a tool for learning is our ability to engage in experimentation." I choose this quote because play seems to be the common occuring factor throughout this book and in my chemistry class I love providing my students with time to experiment while learning the content. I never really connected play with this experimentation until I read this quote but now I believe they go hand-in-hand. Question: Do you think about play as a disposition or as a game? Connection: I see a connection with this chapter and our 20% project. The goal was not about an output but rather about an outcome...and play was a focus around this learning. This project offered each student a choice within boundaries. My 20% project is my time to have fun, struggle, research and enjoy learning something new with my daughter. This is play to me. Epiphany/Aha: I don't think I offer my students enough choice and play in my classroom. Through this time to play my students will be able to discover and inquire about science so it is meaningful to them....not how it is meaningful to me. Chapter 8 Quote: Page 104 "The ability to engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interest-driven way is a unique feature of today's media environment." The key terms here are technology and interest-driven. These are two aspects of today's classroom that are very crucial for engagement. I think about myself and my interests while searching the web. If day after day I was asked to research something that I had no interest in, I would be completing the task to simply get it off my to-do list. There would be no personal connection made, no depth of understanding. My fear is this is what is happening in classrooms today. Question: Do your students see the power of communication and collaboration with the internet? Connection: The obvious connection with this chapter and our technology class at CSUSM is that as we progress through this unit our professors' hope is that we will move from hanging out ------> to messing around ------> to geeking out. We will see the value of the internet as a collection of resources to implement into our classroom. Resources that ultimately will transfer to a higher order of thinking and learning for our students. Epiphany/Aha: Again, not about me and my learning but about watching my daughter connect with people who make YouTube videos. My daughter is obsessed with watching specific channels on YouTube and specific people that make videos about make-up. What is so funny to me is that a few months ago I found that she had been commenting on these YouTube videos and for the first time she received a comment back from the star of the video (they come to my email address)...and you would have thought it was Christmas here! My daughter was SO excited to see what they replied and she could hardly contain herself that someone "famous" thought her comment was good enough to get a response (these channels she watches have a million plus subscribers). She had been hanging out watching the videos for over year, then began to messing around and commenting/replying to YouTube channels. I'm sure before I know it she will be geeking out (I don't think she is there yet). My point of telling you this story is that my daughter is making connections online, in areas that interest her. She is connecting with people that without the internet and YouTube she would have never known about...as a mother this is authentic learning and my 9 years old already engaging in authentic audiences. On a weekly (sometimes more) I get an email notification that is for my 9 year old. :) Chapter 9 Quote: Page 117-118. "As we watch the world move to a state of near-constant change and flux, we believe that connecting play and imagination may be the single most important step in unleashing the new culture of learning." I choose this quote because our world and lives change everyday. Science changes every day. Making connections with that change and our students is important. Along with connections, proving opportunities for play based learning either using technology or not should be a key aspect of every lesson we plan. Question: Do you agree that connecting play and imagination is the key to creating innovative and creative students? Or do you believe the child's environment plays a bigger role in their destiny? Connection: A connection I have with this final chapter is our tech class this semester. This class offers us many opportunity to play around using social media. Through this play we are making connections with other educators, whom we can learn from and seek advice from while we are beginning our journeys as teachers. This class is helping us to create that online presence that will not only help us as professionals but will also provide us with a tool our students can use as well. After all it is all about our students at the end of the day, and through this technology class I have learned valuable skills that will help engage my students in creative play using the internet. Epiphany/Aha: I know I need to implement more opportunities for my students to have choices, play, be creative and innovative on their terms. They need to discover the science and use technology as a tool to enhance their learning. I need to come to school prepared with a platform for them to engage in authentic learning beyond my classroom walls. Chapter 4
Quote - Page 54. "Blogs are a medium for learning, but they do not teach. Rather, they generate the space for a collective to emerge." I choose this quote because while blogs and forums provide a digital collective for students to collaborate using technology, they do not replace the value of face-to-face interactions that we provide in the classroom. Giving students access to an online blog is just one aspect of creating a new culture of learning in our classrooms. This online space for our students forces them to really think about what they are putting out there because everyone will be able to view it, and provide feedback, not just their teacher. Question: When creating this collective, such as an online blog, for a high school class, do you open this blog up to the public or keep it a closed community? I know that having multiple views and opening it up to the public is beneficial but are there risks for opening it up to the public? Do the benefits outweigh the possible negatives? Connection: I definitely see a connection with this book and all the classes that we have taken so far at CSUSM. We have had many opportunities to comment and receive comments from our peers through our own personal blogs, Edmodo (for science methods) and through class specific Cougar Courses online forum. Through these sites I have received a lot of feedback from my peers and professors, most all of it has helped me grow and mature as a science educator. I am very appreciative of the time that each of my classmates and professors takes to respond to one of my posts and I see this interaction as an extension of our "regular" class day and therefore continues my learning beyond the CSUSM campus. Epiphany/Aha: After reading this chapter I am even more motivated to create a blog on my website for my students so extend and expand their learning in my chemistry call through. I want my students to have that same excitement that I have had in the past receiving feedback on my own posts. I want to create a learning experience for my students where they can authentically learn from one another using a medium other than traditional paper assignments that only I review. Chapter 5 Quote: Page 57. "Collectives are not simply new forms of public spaces. They are built and structured around participation and therefore carry a different sense of investment for those who engage in them." I choose this quote because simply creating an online blog or forum is not enough, it needs to have participation and activity for it to be both useful and meaningful to our students and their learning. Question: Do you agree with that authors when they say, "almost every difficult issue we face today is a collective, rather than a personal problem?" Why or why not? Connection: I definitely see a connection with this chapter and my class work at CSUSM. Many times throughout the semester we have been placed in groups to complete projects, IEP Meeting, ITU Website, just to name a few. There is no question that collectively the product is better than what I could have done individually. While completing these projects we were collaborating and communicating all of our ideas and thoughts into a product that usually far surpasses what I had expected the outcome to look. I agree with this chapters message that collectively we work better than individually. Epiphany/Aha: It is very true when we were told as children that learning never ends. I believe this concept to be even more true today with the power of the internet and online forums/blogs where people can come together and learn from one another. This online or virtual collective world does not replace that face-to-face interaction. But one thing these online collective have provided us is a common place where people can learn what they want, how they want to at whatever time is best for their lives and this is the power of the internet. Chapter 6 Quote - Page 77 "It's not about being taught knowledge; it is about absorbing it. Memorizing facts is just that memorizing, if this information goes unused it will be forgotten in as little as a day or two. If we as educators shift our classroom from memorizing to application of the knowledge so it is meaningful to each of our students we can help each of them to absorb it. This transferring of knowledge from teacher to student is not how they learn. Students learn by doing. They learn from their mistakes and failures much more than their successes. Question: How do I know if I'm balancing my classroom with both explicit and tacit knowledge for my students to understand and absorb the chemistry content? Connection: I know the directions are to make a connection with our classes at CSUSM and although I could easily do that but after reading this chapter I could not help to think of my children, especially my youngest. She is so set in her ways, she wants what she wants now! That I totally had to reconstruct my parenting around her learning style (which is much different than my older child) which simply stated, she needs to try it for herself and create an authentic experience that is related to her. For example. Whatever my husband and I are eating my 2 year old wants to eat. My husband and I like very spicy food. About a year ago my two year old insisted that she wanted to eat our spicy food after many times of telling her it is spicy and will burn her mouth. She was basically throwing a fit, so I gave her some...try it for yourself and you will see. Sure enough she did not like it, but she needed to determine that on her own. Me simply telling her it was spicy was not enough for her. She needed her own experience to create a spicy or not spicy conclusion. After all she was only about 1 at the time and probably had no idea what the word "spicy" meant. Epiphany/Aha: I never thought of my connection as me as a parent I was passing along my prior knowledge to my daughter about the food being spicy. The problem is my 2 year old had not yet experience what spicy means, I was trying to transfer my experiences onto her...which did not work for her, she was not at all happy with that. It wasn't until she tried the spicy food herself that she then determined for herself (not because I told her) that she did not like the food because it was too spicy. She created her own experience and now has something to pull from. This exact same situation applies to our students, they need to experience the academic content themselves to really learn their own meaning and understanding...just exactly like my 2 year old. Find the article titled, '3 Ways Colleges Use Instagram here! This article highlights the following three applications/benefits of using Instagram:
1. Ask Questions 2. Feed other social networks 3. Encourage participate in major events In this article the author highlights the three ways colleges use instagram. One of the ways is through questions. The article talks about how they were going to post a photo of what some administrator thought represented the school. This changed one day with the administrator asked the students what they wanted to see the university post. This is a great way of making a connection with the students and the campus. The university specifically asked the students what they wanted and when the responses came in the University responded. They found through these pictures the University was able to connect past, present and future alumni and students. Also, smaller colleges use Instragram to build more of an authentic audience by posting photos to many different social media networks. This provides more changes for people to follow events and know what is going on at the University when without it only a few people, mostly current students would know about it. Through photos we offer a glimpse of what is occurring on campus. This is a great way for people not present to feel like they are a part of the event and the university. The applications listed in this article are specific to colleges and universities but I see a value to using Instagram in high school. One aspect these visual posts that transfers to a middle or high school setting is that through Instagram we can proivde a snaphot of what is happening inside the classroom. The visual aspect of Instagram is what makes this app so appealing for both teachers and students. I can personally see a couple of benefits of using Instragram in the classroom. One is this can be great for parents/guardians to check-in with their student. It would also be a great way for teachers to post what students missed if they are gone from class for the day. Also, by giving students assignments that center around the topic we are studying it expands our students learning beyond the classroom and helps to make connections between the content and each student's lives. It also creates a forum for fellow peers to comment on and give feedback, therefore opening up discussions about the photo or video that relates to the current topic. Instagram can been a tool that gets students thinking and talking using the academic specific vocabulary outside the classroom. Engaging and motivating our students in our classrooms is important but even more important is extending their learning beyond the classroom walls. It also creates an authentic audience by opening up our students and posts to classmates from other periods or even from other students from around the country or world. This authentic audience provides our students with feedback from someone other than their teacher and from other views/projects that canter around the same content. My educational philosophy beliefs center around my students. One aspect that I love about using tools like Instagram is that it tells a story. Not only about who are students are as individuals but also about our community and culture. How do these articles align with your beliefs about education? Reflection is at least 300 Words. Chapter 1
Quote - Page 32: "What mattered most to him were not the programs he wrote or the games he played, but his engagement with others." I choose this quote because while I was reading Sam's story about Scratch I was sure he was going to say that creating games was the reason why he was creating a Scratch computer program but what he liked most was the responses he received from fellow animators on Scratch. He craved that authentic response from people who shared the same interests as him. Question: What matters most to you? What you create and post online or the responses you receive based on your product? Connection: I see a connection between this chapter and our 20% project. I as unsure about my project until I received feedback from my peers. They not only gave me the encouragement to continue on with my sewing project but they all commented about how great it was I was completing the project with my daughter. I loved receiving this feedback and now every time before I post about my sewing progress I think about my peers and if they will continue to enjoy my progress with my learning something new. Epiphany/Aha: I do not provide my students with enough opportunties to receive feedback not only from their peers but also from students beyond our classroom. I'm going to create time after spring break where my students have to grade each other's homework responses, including feedback as a way to provide more peer-peer communication within my classroom. In addition to this, I would like to create a classroom blog on my website. I would like to create more opportunities for my students to share and receive feedback from their peers. I believe this is definitely missing from my classroom. Chapter 2 Quote - Page 37: "In the new culture of learning, the classroom as a model is replaced by learning environments in which digital media provide access to a rich source of information and play, and the processes that occur within those environments are integral to the results." I choose this quote because to me it sums up the new culture of learning as a way in which the internet is integrated in a way to provide our students access to new and unique ideas, opinions that extend their knowledge base beyond the classroom walls. Question: In this chapter it talks about the classroom environment as being an integral part of the new culture of learning. How do you think culture emerges from the environment? This aspect of the chapter has me thinking okay this sounds great but what does this look like in a classroom? Connection: This chapter I definitely see a connection with the shift in education from transferring information (teacher) to student to the student exploring and discovering the information to make it meaningful to them. We, as teachers, seen as the end all be all of information...because ultimately we have the internet and even we have become accustomed to saying, "Google it!" Embracing our changing world because of the internet is the first step to changing our classrooms. There is a connection between what I'm learning in my classes at CSUSM to what this chapter is about. Through discussions with my fellow teacher candidates and professors I have been exposed to a new way of teaching. This student centered, student lead way. Epiphany/Aha: Before reading this chapter I never looked at the traditional way of teaching as being a programmed way of teaching students to follow specific directions and everyone in the class come to the same product or output. This test based approach to cramming as much information as we can to our students as quickly as possible so they can pass a test and get measurable results. This way to teaching is not motivating and meaningful to our students. We need to create a more authentic environment where students expectations are set not by the teacher but by the motivation within each student. Chapter 3 Quote - Page 47: "Children use play and imagination as the primary mechanisms for making sense of their new, rapidly evolving world." Question: This chapter talks a lot about Wikipedia: Do you as an educator allow students to cite Wikipedia as a valid source? Why o why not? Connection: This chapter, the focus around play and imagination really was eye opening. I cannot imagine my young daughter's life without play...so why don't we continue that play based learning through all of our schools K-12 and beyond. As children grow up they are constantly learning through play. They imagine, pretend, create, get dirty, and ask a ton of questions all the time. Unfortunately, there comes a point we we remove the play aspect from learning. There comes a point where we believe that memorizing facts and information become more important than playing and discovering. I definitely see a connection with this chapter and what we are learning in our technology class about the importance of reaching out and discovering educators that can offer something to new for our classroom and students. Through these new authentic relationships, we can as educators, have an opportunity to expand our views and ideas about teaching. We now have a tool (the internet) that has the ability to change the way our classrooms look today. Scary, no not really, it sounds fun, energizing, and there will probably be a lot of playing and discovering by both teachers and students. Epiphany/Aha: I need to implement more opportunities for my students to learn through playing in my classroom. After all hasn't some of the greatest inventions and creations come from people that were just playing around, having fun and discovering. I need to have a bit more fun in my classroom! Click here to read the article by Catlin Walker.
This article is about creating a scavenger hunt in the classroom as a way to engage students in learning outside the classroom. Do you see yourself being able to apply this idea to your current classroom? Of course I do! Currently my students are working on a new unit about solutions. They could document a photo with a #hashtag about different types of solutions and mixtures they come across in their daily lives. This is a great way to not only extend the learning but it helps to make the chemistry content we are learning inside the classroom realtable to each student's lives personally. Also, they may help to engage their family members in a conservation about what is happening inside their classroom. I think this is a great project that I will try to implement ASAP! Could you use it as is or would you need to make modifications? I think initially implementing this project it will be great give students examples of some of the different solutions and mixtures that they may possibly see but I would not provide a list of items that they "had" to find. I would rather my students discover the science for themselves and find new and unique examples that define them as individuals. With that said I would set up clear expectations for the assignment, for instance they have to post at least 1 example per week and any additional examples will be given extra credit. As the semester progress I will have higher expectations for their outcomes on the scavenger hunt. Click HERE to view the article.
How does this challenge help prepare students to participate in a global society? I think that creating a #hashtag for everyday is a great way for students to use key vocabulary that is being covered inside and helping to make connections outside our community--extending students thinking about learning beyond the classroom walls. This extends and expands their thinking about the content to a global society. This is important because if students are getting and receiving feedback from peers from around the word they are more likely to put out a better product than just something that their teacher looks at. Providing #hashtags also gives students new ideas and ways to approach the same content from a global prescriptive. I would like to try this in my classroom-and #hashtags provide an easy way for me to track my students progress! How do these teachers empower collaboration and innovation? Teachers serve as facilitators for our student's learning. Therefore creating #dailyclassroomhashtags is a great way to increase student collaboration via the web and it also extends the collaboration beyond the classroom. Most all of my students have a cell phone and they are checking it all day long to see if someone commented on their post (either through text or a website). This feedback they receive from there peers either validates their post or gets them to rethink their post based on the new ideas and views from their peers. The same thing can also be true for our students and them learning the content that is specific to my classroom. Exposing students to this peer feedback offers all our students a different viewpoint and can help to spur innovation and creativity to produce something new and unique to get "noticed" online. |
AuthorHi! This is blog is for my EDSS 530 class, secondary education for the 21st century. Tara Archives
April 2015
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