Reflective Blog #3

Reflective Blog #3

1. What are the takeaways from the articles on 21^st Century Skills and the Common Core AND/OR the material from John Hattie that will influence your technology.

In the article on 21^st Century Skills, I like the idea how they emphasis the skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. I think these are the ultimate goals of teaching and learning in all subjects, but it will be very hard for educators to achieve. For example, teachers can arrange their students in different groups, and give them group project to do. However, it is very hard for teachers to teach their students how to communicate and collaborate with their team members. Technology may be very helpful in this aspect. Many students are good at social network by Internet. Using Internet as a way for collaborating may work very well for some students.

I also like the idea of Common Core State Standards. I think it will be great that all states in America have a common standard for teaching. I believe if all states use one good core standard it will benefit students much more than create their own teaching standards. If all schools use the CCSS, students won’t have problems when they transfer from one state to another. I think it is also benefit students in job hunting. Teachers can use Internet to communicate and exchange teaching experiences with other teachers all over the nation. The CCSS will benefit both students and teachers.

      

 2. How your project experience has helped you?

I think my project experience helped me a lot. When I was trying to collect materials for writing the project I found out a lot of interesting and useful software and teaching strategies. Most of them can be used in my future classroom. For example, I found a great dictionary website. It explains the meaning of English vocabulary clearly and also introduces some relative words by connecting to the target word. The whole system is created as a network system. It looks pretty, especially when we use it on iPads. I think it will be very useful when I teach students English language arts in the future.

I also think that my project experience influenced my idea of making teaching plans. Before taking this class, teaching plans are designed to make sure that all teaching contents are included. After writing projects for this class, I found writing teaching plans is a great chance for teachers to check what technologies can be used in the classroom. I knew that many technological devices are not fully used in modern classroom. This class helped us to create a kind of “habit”. Now I think we all have the habit to think how we can use technology as much as we can in our classroom. I think it is very good because teaching with technology makes learning interesting and efficient.

3. How you see technology being used in your own classroom?

I am a full time student now, so I would like to talk about how technology being used in classes that I took before. Most teachers prefered to use PowerPoint, videos, and projectors in their classrooms. They also liked to share documents with their students by Internet and sent emails to make announcements. However, only some of them actually used technology as a teaching strategy. Only half of them included online discussion, BlackBoard grade evaluation system, or other technologies in their teaching. I think all teachers knew how to use them, but they were just not accustomed to use them in their classrooms. I believe it is a common phenomenon in modern classroom.

 4. What your future plans for technology in you teaching?

I think, first, I will do some research in my future classroom. I will try to find what educational technologies are exited here. Then I will try to analyze how many of them can be used to serve my teaching. Third, I will try to search how my colleagues are using technologies in their classrooms. Finally I will try to use the technologies which fit my teaching goals most to help my teaching. I will use most of the technologies to ask students to preview and review my lessons, so I will spend less time on lecture. In this way there is much more time left for students to do critical thinking and creative activities.  

5.   How do you plan to keep up with technologies.

I believe keep my knowledge of technology up to date is very necessary. I think in the future I will keep extending my personal learning network which can help me to discover and collect useful teaching strategies. I will also pay attention to build the network with teachers in my working district. We can collaborate and exchange teaching experiences with each other.  Reading journals about educational technology which related to my teaching subject will also be my choice. I believe attending some conferences online will also be a good option for me. I think as far as I realize the importance of using technology in classroom, there are many ways can be used to keep my knowledge up to date.

6. What are outstanding issues or question you think need to be addressed as you continue to learn about and use technology?

I think this class introduced me a lot of great ideas and useful information. Before taking this class, I thought the development of technology has nothing to do with me because it will never be my teaching subject. However, after this class, I’m looking at technology in a totally different way. I will be interested in what the newest technology can do right now, and whether it can be used in my teaching. I can’t wait to use the knowledge I learned here. However, I do have two concerns.

First, I’m wondering what I should do if there are not many technologies I can use in my future classroom. Not all schools have fully equipped with new technologies, especially not all countries are as developed as the US. I know there are some ways that I can use traditional teaching devices to teach which have similar results of using technology. I just think I will be very disappointed if I won’t able to use technologies I learned here.

Second, I know we had discussed about this many times. I think I will still struggle with the role of technology and the role of teachers. I would like to use as much technologies as I can in the future. However, I’m wondering whether teachers should use technology as a method to serve their teaching, or teachers should play a role of assisting students to learn knowledge through technologies. I would happy to know which way is best for learning.  

  Reflecting Blogging Assignment #2

1. How can a teacher find balance during this transition from more traditional knowledge-based content standards and more process-oriented skills? 

I think there is a deep gap between the traditional knowledge-based content standard and the process-oriented skills. It is not easy for teachers to adjust their teaching during the transition, especially for some science related subjects.

In my opinion, there are two main difficulties for teachers. The first one is new lesson plans. For the process-oriented skills, teachers need to give up their old lesson plans and organize something new to fit the new teaching style. The new inquiry-based learning style is very efficient to higher students’ talents and skills, but it also needs teachers to pay more attentions and energies in their teaching. They need arrange their class in a new way and prepare more than just lecture their students. The second difficulty is that the new inquiry-based learning has a different class schedule comparing to the traditional knowledge-based learning which fit the existing standards very well. The new teaching style may need more time and it may lead problem of not finishing the standards in time.

As far as I am concerned, the way to find the balance during this transition includes a few steps. First of all, teachers need to spend a lot of time to organize new lesson plans which are the inquiry-based learning style.  In the new style, teachers become facilitators rather than instructors, so they have a come up with more strategies to attract students and lead them to a right direction in the learning process. The second step is checking the standards. The traditional standards are not useless, they are very important in teaching and learning. Standards are designed to make sure all students can get equal and good education. So teachers can regard the content standards as a “Checklist” in order to make sure the new inquiry-based learning doesn’t miss any important information.  The third step is evaluating and improving lesson plans along with teaching. The new teaching plans may have some weaknesses in the very beginning teachers need to evaluate their lesson plans after class and keep improving them.

I think if most schools are transited to the inquiry-based learning, we be new standards need to be created to fit the process-oriented skills.

 2. What are key factors that help improve the success of inquiry-based lessons?

             In my mind, three main factors to improve the success of inquiry-based lessons are the teachers’ efforts, students’ interests, and a good evaluation system.

The success of a teaching method is decided by how well the lesson is designed by instructors. Inquiry-based lessons will not make teaching easier, in contrary teaching is harder than it used to be. Teachers need to spend more efforts in preparing to have a success lesson.   

Interest is the best teacher. If students are interested in the lesson, the lesson will has more opportunities to be a successful lesson.

            The inquiry-based learning is different from the traditional teaching style. It is hard to be measured, and its teaching result is even harder to be tested. So a good evaluation system is very necessary to test whether the inquiry-based learning has a similar or a better result comparing to the traditional way of teaching. It is one of the factors to improve the success of the new teaching style.  

 3. What role can technology play in assisting those factors? Give specific examples.

            Technology can make teaching more efficiently.

            Technology can help teachers to prepare their lesson plans. For examples, teaching could communicate with other teachers in the same district by “curriculum mapping”. This software can track students’ learning records and teachers’ teaching contents.  Teachers could learn from other teachers’ successful experiences and avoid the negative influences. It can save teachers time, and their lessons will be well prepared.

            Students are interested in technology.  For example, the games designed for education purposes. Teaching with technology will attract students’ attentions, and students will interest in the content taught by the new technology.

            Technology can measure assessment very well.  The way of assessment by technology can be vary. Students may even not notice they are being tested, and the test can be standard, accurate and fun.

Reflective Blogging Post #1

1. What were some of the factors that played a role in ensuring positive results when technology was integrated in the classroom?

There are three factors to keep positive results of using technology in class.

First, the technology used in the classroom has to fit the goal of the class.  In Besnoy and Clarke’s article, we find that students enjoyed reading by using technology. If the content of the class is “increasing students’ interests in reading” then it is a very positive result of using PDA. However, if the goal of this class is “improving students’ reading ability” then it is not successful.  When teachers choose a new technology, the technology has to fit the goal of this class.

Second, appropriate monitoring is necessary. Students like using technology, and many of them are good at technology. However, they are get use to using technology for chatting and playing games online. For this reason, teachers have to make sure that students are using technology to study rather than playing games.

Third, teachers’ regular training. Technology updates every day. In order to keep positive results when technology is used in the classroom, teachers have to get regular training. It can make sure teachers get all updated information of new useful technology, and it will help teachers to use technology in a more effective way.

2. What are ways that you can, in your own setting (or for those not currently in a classroom, in your future setting), ensure that these factors are present or absent? (Be specific to your situation; do not make general statements.)

I’m not currently in a classroom, but I’m sure I will use technology in my future settings.

First, I think I will design a lesson plan to set some specific goals of my lesson. Then I will try to find a kind technology could be used which fit my teaching purpose most. For example, if I’m going to teach writing, I probably chose to use “Blog” in teaching. I could use it as a strategy to help students get peer responses.

Second, I think I will try to get supports from the technology department in my school. I will ask for their help to limit students’ using of technology in class. Students will freely use the technology which related to the lesson, but the function of chatting and palying games will be limited.

Third, I hope the school I’m going to work for will have regular training for me. If there are no supports from school, I think plenty of useful resources could be found online to help me keep my teaching technology updated.

3. How would you go about evaluating the success of a unit, lesson, etc., that involved the integration of new technology?

I think the evaluation of success integration of new technology could include three aspects:

First, a good technology should be easy-to-use. Time for lecture is limited. The time supposed to be spent on content teaching will be occupied by technology instruction, if the technology is very hard to use. This is a kind of waste of time.

Second, whether a new technology is successful, should be evaluated by students. If students are interested in the new technology they will pay more attention to the class, and that is what teachers want. If a new technology is even boring than traditional teaching it is better to be gave up.

Third, a good new technology has to be very useful which is evaluated by teachers. If the technology fit the lesson content and teachers could teach easily by using the technology. It would be a successful technology.

4. Finally, what could you do to disseminate successes and failures to your colleagues, administrators, and school board members? 

I think most schools have routine conferences, and these conferences could be a nice chance to share these successful and failure experiences with all colleagues. I also think sending emails to colleagues when some urgent failures happen are necessary. In a school district, creating a “group” online by Skype or other software would be helpful, especially for new teachers. All teachers could be categorized by the programs they are teaching.  Teachers could share interesting teaching experiences, and searching successful strategies from their colleagues in the group.

About myself!

Hi! 

       My name is Ye Han. You can call me Sophia. 

    I'm a Chinese. I'm 23 years old now. I came to the United States this January to study the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language) program. This is my third semester in GVSU. I'm trying to find how can I teach English to Chinese in a happy and efficient way.

     

     When I first came to the United States, I feel America is different from China in almost every field. The politics, the culture, the society, the economy are all different. However, the more I learn, the more commons I can see between these two countries.

     I feel excited to learn how technology improve learning.

Thank you!