Thoughts on today:
I am feeling better about the final project. I have an interest I want to pursue and it is one that I want to learn more about. I am finding resources that are useful and using blogger to share these.
Thinking about the themes and presentations from today I think education could be heading in a very innovative direction. The task seems very daunting though. How do educators, especially in public schools, make this shift? Administrators and school boards are looking at standardized test scores and sometimes judging teachers on this one data point alone.
Common Sense Media:
I like the filter feature, so I can narrow the types of media by age range. There are many resources on the site and even a curriculum available centered around digital citizenship.
For me digital citizenship is knowing how to use technology appropriately. To be honest I am not sure of all our technology policies at school. I show my students which apps they are allowed to use on the iPad and computers. We practice this and have to revisit it many times throughout the school year. My expectation is that they will only use the apps and programs I have shown them and practiced with them.
Don't Lecture Me:
It all made sense to me. Learning and interacting with my peers is what works best for me. Working in kindergarten this is what we do. Students learn from each other and through exploration, though I would say we work on a more concrete and explicit level. While I do this in kindergarten I also have a lot of material to go through in a year and have to move my students from point A to point B. One of the points brought up was not being able to cover as much material in a year and I feel that in a public school we do not have that much flexibility. We also have to participate in standardized testing and as I mentioned before the administrators and school board are very focused on these scores. How can we make this shift and move away from the traditional education system?
@ your comment about limited flexibility within public schools.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this and feel this pressure, but I think the podcast reported a study of only a 10% success rate at the beginning of the year and then 14% at the end of a college term! It's very clear that covering the range of information isn't producing the test scores that the administration likes to see. I guess the question we need to ask ourselves as teachers is what is the bare bones of the content that MUST be covered and how can thinking and conceptualizing be promoted? Will this ensure that the bulk of the information can then be accessed and learned/owned?