Literacy is the key to humanity’s advancement; the ability to beneft from another person’s lifetime of learning in a fraction of that time is what has allowed our level of technological sophistication to advance to the point it has. Similarly, in our time in this program teacher candidates have been reminded time and again that “good teachers borrow, [while] great teachers steal”. Now, we’ve been given an article to read that combines both of these facts.
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Chapter One: Arc-Of-Life Learning.
Quote: “What happens to learning when we move from the stable infrastructure of the twentieth century to the fluid infrastructure of the twenty-first century, where technology is constantly creating and responding to change?” This is the main question I feel has been driving this class throughout the semester. Question: What can we salvage from our existing system that might also be beneficial in a new, twenty-first century school system? Connection: I think that the piece on Scratch connected nicely to other content. In the prerequisite EDU 422 class, we learned how to use Scratch as a part of a unit on computational thinking. We’ve touched on this topic in several of our classes, and I think that sort of problem-solving skill is invaluable in today’s world. Epiphany/Aha: I think that while online learning is becoming more and more common, it’s important to acknowledge multiple learning styles. Everything we’ve read has focused on helping students who would learn much better with technology, but it’s important to keep in mind that some students (myself included) do best face to face, with more rigid structures to keep us on track. (Click "Read More" to continue)
Michael Wesch certainly has a lot to say in this talk, and most of his message is quite thought provoking. Similarly to what we’ve been seeing in the Wagner book, he states that our school system is doing a poor job of preparing students to be leaders in the future. This has been a (heavily) recurring theme in the work we’ve been doing, so I have no trouble accepting this argument.
(Click "Read More" to continue) I felt that this video had a lot of interesting things to say about the different manners in which people interact with modern technologies. Online, many feel that the issues of race, nationality, sex, and age fade away. I would argue differently, as the Internet is often a source of some of the most infuriating ignorance on these topics, but either way, there are new divisions presented in online culture that don’t exist in the outside world.
(Click "Read More" to Continue) Will Richardson raised a lot of points in his “Why School” book that resonated with me personally. While I was fortunate enough to be successful in my own classes in high school, looking at how much the world around us has changed since I graduated in 2009 and how little teaching methods have does raise some concern. Like many of my peers, I have found that one of my most pressing concerns in my classroom is integrating technology. While my last clinical practice site had a considerable number of computer labs and chromebook carts, it seems that my current site, in spite of being double the size of my last site with over 3000 students, has only one computer lab with 40 computers. My classes are all over 40 students, and as much as I want to include more technology in my curriculum, this is a significant roadblock for me.
(Click "Read More" to continue) Word Count: 12047
Mood: Anticipatory Being this close to the end of my coursework, I have had a chance to finally decompress a bit and get started working on this project with a bit more focus. Of course, going back into it after that time away, I found that there were a lot of pieces of what I had already written that I no longer liked as much as I had originally. So, while I did add a fair amount to my writing, I also spent a lot of time going back and editing pieces of what I had already created. Some of this was going back and deleting or re-wording passages that I wanted to take a second look at, but I found myself adding a lot to those sections as well. Word Count: 7222
Mood: Harried This week, I've been kept pretty busy with TPA stuff and designing materials for each day of lessons at my school site, but I have been able to make some good discoveries about the world in which my story is set. After researching and reading columns from NaNoWriMo (here and here), I have made some significant strides toward fleshing out the world in which my story takes place. It’s been really helpful to me to think my way through making sure the setting for my story really feels alive and moving. (Click "Read More" to continue) Having read all of the Wagner text, I feel that I have gained a lot of new information about the importance of using technology in the classroom. One concept that I found particularly engaging as a part of this reading was the idea of the seven essential survival skills for the 21st Century. I think that each of his ideas for these skills are accurate, but some of my definitions might differ from the originals.
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Drew SpillerTeacher candidate working toward single subject credentials in social science and english. Gamer. Writer. Lifelong learner. Archives
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Access the Diigo Outliner I am using to collect tools for my 20% Project here.
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