Category: Social Media and Personalized Learning (Page 2 of 2)

The concept of digital citizenship and the effects of technology and social media with students made me reflect a lot on my own practice. How do we prepare our students to use the internet and social media sources safely? What does that preparation look like? Will that learning transfer from home to school? I feel that often the focus is primarily on the task at hand, and not looking at what it might look like for students that have had very little exposure with technology, or how to use it in a way that is both positive and meaningful. I have already in my short time at my current elementary school, contacted our tech support to assist me with adjusting safety settings for the google search engine. After several sessions with the public health nurse and sexual health educator, I was quite surprised to see what kinds of images students could access with supervised time in our computer labs. Enquiring minds wanted to know… far more than we were prepared to share!

The example Dr. Couros used of soft vs. hard technology- where students have used their cell phones for example to take pictures of their class notes stuck out for me. I have previously been open to students taking pictures of notes we have collected, especially when I taught at the middle and high school level. I have to question the practicality and wonder how effective this is? What seems like a practical solution to students with written output learning disabilities is not a one size fits all use of technology, especially if we consider how many students are reflecting back. Still I appreciate some of the useful options of allowing students to bring their cell phones to school, especially when it comes to very specific and useful applications. A scientific calculator application for your cell phone makes specific math courses more accessible versus having to purchase a scientific calculator.

Lastly, the comment that was made, “If you can google it, why teach it?” makes me wonder if we may in fact loose the concept of curiosity. If you can easily google the answer for pretty much anything, are you left to be curious and have wonder about anything? I’d like to think so, however now seeking that answer may be as easy as the click of your finger. The journey to get from point A to point B is much shorter. Will this discourage learners to think more critically and independently about their own ideas? Hinder their ability to question and be curious?

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/diary-st

https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190256692.001.0001/oso-9780190256692

MLTS- Reflections on this documentary

This documentary, Most Likely To Succeed, found at http://teddintersmith.com/mltsfilm/ made me think critically about our current state of education in my local school district. We have a strong focus on using ADST and STEM to support more project based learning opportunities for our students, which shows a positive shift in thinking from the historical model of education. This former model  that embodied solely a system of acquiring information without critically thinking. The documentary focused on looking critically at the current skills required for today’s learner.

In today’s world, content knowledge is everywhere and can be so easily accessed on the internet, so the emphasis needs to be placed on creativity and innovation. We need to think about how we can better cultivate the learning environment to support our leaners to become independent, innovative and confident thinkers. Creativity needs to be celebrated where failure simply becomes part of the natural learning process.

As the documentary discusses the acquired skills required from today’s learners are not so much cognitive skills, rather more about teaching the skills to productively use this body of knowledge taught.

Project based learning lends itself to encouraging students to think more critically about their own learning process, how they best learn, what they personally need to be successful and focuses more on the journey taken to get from point A to point B, rather than just the completion of a finished project.

Our school district has focused a lot this year on ADST and various project based learning initiatives from a district wide bridge building contest to Sphero Olympics to school wide cardboard day challenges to as well as season themed stem challenges. It is definitely a step in the right direction and supports the idea of focusing on the following skill sets:

• Teamwork skills
• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Logical thinking
• Critical thinking
• Self-awareness
• Self-reflection
• Empathy
• Feedback

In thinking about this I am curious as to what the next steps will be? After reviewing multiple data sources to reflect on and further develop our school improvement plan , it is evident that problem solving and problem based learning still needs a lot of work. We did a core competency survey and found at our school that many students have difficulty with problem solving skills, yet enjoy making and building things. This is definitely a positive direction to continue on, but I believe a lot of the difficutlies we see with problem solving and project based learning have to do with the fact that our students are not yet as resilient as we would like to see them. This concept of growth mindset is essential to student success but is not something that will happen overnight. Fear of failure and fear of looking different from others is something that we grapple with. In teaching and instilling creativity, we too need to challenge our students to take risks, not be afraid to fail and recognize that trial and error is part of project based learning, but it is not something that will happen overnight and historically is not something that has been supported.