Social Presence Project (PGP) - 07/22/10

07/22/10

1. What specific goals do you have between now and next summer in your teaching practice?  2. How specifically do you plan to accomplish these?

Pedagogically, I have learned a lot about teaching from reading A whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. According to several studies, we are more likely to retain information delivered through story. The reason this is such a powerful teaching tool is that it addresses personal relevance and context first. In the age of "information overload" (spoken from the perspective of digital immigrant), I feel my students need to understand WHY they are making an effort to understand something more than ever. If there is nothing about a topic that appeals to you on a personal level, it is difficult to motivate to learn it. Stories make information personal and provides context. I think people thrive on connecting with other people, understanding each other, having a common ground and even expanding that ground by making further connections to different people, different cultures, and information that triggers connections between what you know and what you learn. Nobody can learn in a vacuum because all things human are connected. 

In my TPACK challenge I talked about a book on my curriculum few of my students liked because they found the language difficult to decode - in essence they were unable to see why the work was personally relevant to them because they were unable to connect to the story. The language was the obstacle. That's why I will focus on addressing each literary work with my students' own stories in their own language first: What they already know; their own experience which they will be building on to relate to another story, the one we'll be reading. Then we will look at the language they used to tell their stories, see if they use any metaphors or other imagery, and explore ways to relate the story through such use of imagery or metaphor. Once familiar with expressing their own story in this way, will we begin reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Over time, by exploring works by authors expressing themselves in different ways, telling a story set in a different culture, place or time, we expand our understanding of the works we study and the characters in it and the world we live in. My hope is that through this process, we will learn and grow by making many more personal connections. 

In A whole New Mind, Daniel Pink uses an example of a drawing teacher, Brian Bomeisler, who repeated the same key phrase "Drawing is largely about relationships" throughout the semester. By doing this, the teacher refocused the students attention on the main idea - relationship, how things go together. How parts make a whole. In his presentation on Wednesday, Punya Mishra talked about a science class where the teacher similarly used a key phrase that connected the human being to protein using different complimentary visuals throughout the semester. I want to incorporate such key ideas and phrases into the curriculum of all my classes, whether it is my Theory of Knowledge class, my Global Issues class or my literature classes. And that brings me to my technology goals and how my pedagogical goals work in unison with my pedagogical goals:

My students come from all over the world so on the first day of class they all have many different experiences and ways of knowing and learning. This sets the stage for making personal and intellectual connections across cultures and continents but it also requires differentiated learning tools in the classroom because their experiences and learning styles have often developed very differently. Technologically, I want to explore tools that facilitate such differentiated learning because I hope to engage all of my students. One thing my students all have in common is that they are more tech-savvy than I am. They are all familiar with social networking interfaces, games and other digital media. I intend to use a Wiki for each of my classes to organize information, upload images, presentations and for student to student and student to teacher communication. The reason I think a Wiki will be the best way for communicating and organizing information are as follows;

- The familiar interface will enable easy access to information

- Some students feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing via chat (and if they don't they can still raise their hands :-)

- Visuals can more easily be incorporated for visual learners

- Presentations, focus group work and other relevant information can easily be shared and stored in a common "cloud"

- Students sharing a common experience have a central place to connect, ask questions and collaborate

3. Which goals do you think you can accomplish on your own, which do you need help with, and where might that help come from?

In the spirit of learning, making personal connections and expanding my own understanding, I need to set aside time to reflect - to maintain perspective. 

What is my purpose here? Why is this worth understanding? Why am I teaching this? What is the larger context? What is the main idea? The metaphor "I can't see the forest for the trees" comes to mind. When I am busy I can easily loose track of what is most important and as a teacher my job is to help make connections, to help build upon what my students already know. Starting from what we know is essential. Learning through experience is essential. 

Only I can be honest with myself about whether a lesson worked or not. I can discuss why it worked or didn't work with my peers and ask for suggestions about how I may go about it differently next time if it didn't work well. As Punya Mishra stated, the best part about being a teacher is that we are always learning. That is indeed why I love teaching. I can share what has worked with my peers and I can learn from them. I will definitely stay in touch with my MAET cohorts to exchange teaching and technological experiences as we try out our new tools and teaching strategies in our classrooms over the next year. 

Storybook in Five Items

Vodcast

De-Motivation

By Paul, Candace & Birgitte

TPACK challenge (Phew!)

TPACK Problem description

Students often have difficulty relating to the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Meaning is derived from extensive use of imagery and it can be difficult to distinguish the storyline from the similes, personifications, metaphors and symbolism that characterizes the language.

Content Components

Understanding imagery, simile, personification and metaphor as literary devices, distinguishing one from another and understanding the tone and feeling this language creates.

Pedagogical Components

Differentiated learning, multiple strategies addressing personal relevance.

1. What is the Pedagogical Content Knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible? Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

In order for the students to want to understand The Heart of Darkness they need to see why the work is personally relevant to them. My students are not sailors in the early 18th century, but on a human level, they can relate to the tone and feelings expressed in the work. They have also been children with a sense of adventure and by breaking down the use of imagery in the language into simple literary terms, the story will unlock a tale full of mystery and adventure.

a) Perhaps I would bring in a movie scene of sitting around the camp fire telling scary stories, such as the film Now and Then or Stand by Me because they contain scenarios similar to the introduction to Heart of Darkness. Marlow and the sailors are sitting on the boat telling a story while they wait for the tide to come in. My students respond well to film and they will be more likely to make the connection between the two scenarios. Next I would begin by asking them if they liked to read fairy tales or adventure tales when they were younger or if they told each other scary stories when camping or on sleepovers. Then I would ask them to take 5 minutes to think about and write down a time that they were on a journey, when they felt that they were afraid or in an unsafe place and what images came to mind when they thought about this. I would then ask them to write down and post in our wiki chat what images came to mind. By doing this, they will use their own words to describe an image, much in the same way Joseph Conrad uses imagery in the Heart of Darkness.

b) Then we would begin the book by reading the first scene out loud. This is the scene where the main character Marlow tells the sailors about his adventures on the Kongo river. This portion of the book is relatively easy to read and it sets the reader up for the story to come.

c) For the next lesson I would ask them to read the assigned pages and write down at least 5 uses of imagery in the Heart of Darkness. The next class I will ask them to bring the images they wrote down on 5 separate pieces of paper or sticky notes and work in groups of 4-5 to sort the imagery into categories – similes, personification, metaphors, etc. Then I would ask them to choose one of the images from the Heart of Darkness and take 5 minutes to think about how they could use it to describe their own experiences that they wrote about in the wiki chat the previous class.

2. What is the TP knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)

The most important technology I will use to approach Heart of Darkness is the Wiki we will use consistently throughout the class. The reason for using this piece of technology is that my students are very familiar with this type of social networking and it would be a natural extension for them to bring this type of technology into the classroom to address the literature they are reading. We may use Edmodo because it has a simple interface that allows chat and a lot of teacher control in an enclosed environment. This Wiki will be used to post important links (to reliable sources for reference materials and resources, an agenda, materials covered, weekly assignments and a log of what we have covered. The assignments posted to the wiki will include:

a) Writing (or speaking) from the voice of one of the characters.

b) Writing a passage in the literary style of the author

c) A personal responses to Marlows’ view of the natives and linking this type of cultural thinking to similar scenarios in their own lives today (this should be relatively simple for my students since they are in an international environment where cultural misunderstandings and prejudices are somewhat familiar)

d) Student posting images they feel represent the mood, landscape or characters in the Heart of Darkness to create a visual library that represents the book.

Again because my students often relate more easily to the feelings expressed in a movie, I would bring in a key scene from Apocalypse Now, (which is based on the book Heart of Darkness) in the second or third lesson, using http://handbrake.com/. I will search for my film clips at http://movieclips.com/

3. What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible? Be sure to think about representation.)

Using several technological approaches to access the Heart of Darkness will make the material accessible to more students. Posting assignments and responses questions in a wiki is a better way to communicate for some students who may be too shy to participate in a class discussion or ask questions about the work. For most it will be familiar setting for communication and a natural extension of the classroom. Uploading images to a central location and using visuals, such as film or images, to represent feelings and emotions may help make the language of the Heart of Darkness more accessible to many students.

Vodcast

Vodcast

Podcast topics

1. Learning through narrative story telling: How we learn new material through anecdotes, narrative story and visual images. 

2. Personal relevance: Why it is so important to understand why we are learning what we are learning.

3. Learning in context: Connecting what we are learning to "the bigger picture".