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.
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