Collaboration Reflection Post #2

My second collaboration meeting with Jim was just as fun as the first.  This one was much more focused on teaching methods then our last meeting, mostly because so much of my Stage 3 work was spent thinking of strategies and methods that I want to use with my students throughout this unit.

I found that a lot of what I want to use for strategies are things that Jim is familiar with, which is AWESOME!  He already uses Venn diagrams, ThinkPairShares, Frayer models, and is familiar with Wordles.  He also use to be an English teacher so he's interested in the slam poetry and other writing my students will be doing during the unit.

He isn't as familiar with working the i-Movie program or Garage Band, but the best thing about him is that he's eager to learn new things. Even if he doesn't have his own students use these same pieces of technology with his content in his class, at least he is open to learning about those tools.

Chapters 11 & 12: Inservice/Preservice Teachers & TPCK

As I read these two chapters, many quotations really hit home about the state of education today. One I enjoyed in particular was, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow” (223). Such a true statement! Our students will need very different skills in their future and teachers cannot just rely on how they themselves were taught to get the job done. Technology alone faces teachers with endless content they never had when they were in school, but MUST expose their students to now.

This brings me to another great quote: “Tomorrow’s teachers must be prepared to rethink, unlearn, and relearn, change, revise, and adapt” (225). Bottom line, if teachers are not open to this idea they will never be successful with preparing their students for the future. I work with so many teaches who just go through the motions during technology workshops, but never really consider how it’s all relevant for their content and their students. (Granted, we are also don’t get to experience these technology workshops in content directed sessions which could help with this.) Why is it when fellow teachers try and share new ideas and practices with their colleagues there are always so many who feel as though their own teaching quality is being questioned??? And what if it was? Is it a bad thing that we are expected to evolve? Change? Better ourselves and our teaching?

I have to agree with Sammie’s post about seeing the benefits in observations in other classrooms and other schools. I also wish this was done more frequently. I’d certainly love to get out there and see other teachers and how they’re adapting to these ever changing times. If more teachers were open to ideas like this then teaching strategies would be improving at a much more rapid rate.

Chapter 10: The role of TPCK in physical education

To be honest, I have never really given much thought to how physical education teachers assess their classes, let alone the challenges that might arise when throwing in the technology aspect into the situation.  After reading this chapter, I realize technology is a crucial tool in assessing student performance in physical education.  The author mentions the ability to gather data to evaluate student performance and with the number of students that phys. ed. teachers have to keep track of, the right kind of technology is needed for this.  I also understand that the cost for technology for this concentration is huge, but luckily districts like Mt. Blue have the one-to-one laptop program, which helps alleviate many costs and opens up many opportunities for technology to be used in a physical education classroom.

It was refreshing to read about student motivation being important.  Physical education, like many classes, is a difficult subject to get every student motivated for.  Students are more motivated when they have instant data and feedback.

This chapter appeared a bit more forced, or awkward than the others.  I almost felt like TPCK is more difficult to find overall in physical education.  Maybe if the chapter had also focused more on health education that would have helped.

Integrated Unit Meeting w/Social Studies Teacher

So...with only a few hours to go I'm just now realizing that I did this wrong. Bummer. Basically, I had my meeting with my colleague who teaches history at Mt. Blue and shared my unit plan with him, so far.  (I didn't realize I was suppose to assist him in creating his Stage 1.)  Here's what we talked about:

I shared my unit with him and we discussed how he still has yet to read The Book Thief.  He seemed to really enjoy my theme The Power & Value of Words.  He mentioned how it is a really great yearly focus and could come up in almost any of his units.

Then we moved on to the topic of the Holocaust and what he'd cover in his history class.  We bounced ideas back and forth about topics he would talk about with his students, which were: discrimination (racism & sexism), bias (profiling & stereotyping), hate (anger, frustration, & scapegoating), dehumanization, social hierarchy (classes  - superiority/inferiority), perfection (positive/negative).

Jim is really excited to be teaching these topics and ideas at the same time and we even talked briefly about co-teaching a lesson or two together (no specific details yet).  Jim is really energetic and I think he will be really fun to work with on this.

Chapter 9: Science, technology, and teaching - The topic-specific challenges of TPCK in science

When I think of science it is one of the first subjects that I think completely relies on technology.  You can’t teach science without it!  It’s the first place I learned to how use a microscope, a Bunsen burner, and did real research about the world around me with computers.  (And this was before the access our students have now.)  Science opens up new worlds to our students and now with the technology at our fingertips we can actually show them things that were never available before.  When I was in school science was a subject that depended on their financial budget to buy technology for class.  Now students can just go on the internet to watch lab experiments, see tornados and volcanoes in action, and watch other fascinating things they might not be able to study the same way otherwise.  They can hear about it from their teacher, or learn about it from their textbook, but the internet has given them the power to see it happen.  It’s amazing!  I am personally a very visual learner and would have benefitted from these teaching tools when I was in school.  Everyday their are now students who succeeding in their science classes because of the hands on learning and the technological learning they are experiencing.  Many of them might not have had the same experience if it wasn't for those strategies being in place.

Chapter 7: Perhaps a matter of imagination - TPCK in mathematics education

I hate math! I mean reeeeaalllly hate it.  Math was a seriously scarring part of my high school experience.  First of all, it doesn’t come easy to me.  The subject doesn’t just make sense like words do.  I could even fake my way through history…no biggie. However, math took extra time, many late nights, and tears for me to actually understand and succeed throughout my classes…and even then the actual comprehension was questionable.

My own personal troubles with the subject aside, I also never had a math teacher who even attempted to make math interesting, intriguing, or engaging.  Not only were the subject and the teaching method boring, but all my math teachers were on auto-pilot for my four years of high school.  They didn’t care that I was struggling and they didn’t even offer much intervention with my problem.  I was made to feel that if I couldn’t keep up with the rest of the “school of fish” then I needed to just find my own way.  My freshman year I went so far as to get a tutor over the summer so I could get my math credit.  I felt stupid and a burden on my math teachers.  To this day those negative feelings about math still haven’t gone away.

This chapter had a few really great quotes pertaining to how TPCK can make math teachers better at their jobs.  On page 159 the text refers to TPCK teachers as “caring teachers who are comfortable with change”.  This is something all teachers should be.  On 161 the text says, “A successful program would most likely need to encourage an ‘imaginative openness’ for classroom experimentation in using technologies for learning mathematical content”.  There is no doubt in my mind that I would have enjoyed and succeeded much more in my own math classes if I had been encouraged to have “imaginative openness” and if my math teachers had even attempted to integrate technology in their teaching (besides calculators and the occasional overhead projector).  The last quote I want to share is from page 162 and it reads: “When a trusted and caring teacher is leading the class discussions, patiently giving alternate explanations for difficult concepts, or simply helping students to periodically ‘mess around with mathematical ideas’,’ then these students will indeed be more willing to push their personal limits in understanding mathematics”.  It’s sooo true…and boy, do I feel cheated.

TPCK Chapter 8: Placing the magic in the classroom TPCK in arts education

This is a topic that I’m passionate about.  Teaching Language Arts, I really try and incorporate as much art into my teaching as I can.  There is so much to relate back to the literary elements of the curriculum and art appreciation is a way to draw kids in visually to what you’re trying to teach them.

I really wish our students at Mt. Blue High School were closer to some of the great art museums in this state.  Luckily, the internet has made it easier for them to go out and find art themselves that can relate to the curriculum.  They can access museum websites but they can also create their own art through photography, film, and web illustrating that they never could use before.  The internet has been a great way to bring art into the classroom more.

TPCK Chapter 5: An integrated framework for educating world language teachers

I’m lucky in that my department at Mt. Blue High School is a very tech savvy department.  I have close colleagues to learn from and bounce ideas off of, when it comes to technology.  However, if I were asked to name teachers (other than from the English department) who utilize technology a great deal in their classes, then I would answer “the world language teachers”.  One of our world language teachers is also a half time tech integrator and another teacher is that department heads up the tech department at the high school.  Their department is one that is constantly trying new tech strategies with their students and pushing themselves further to stay up to date with technology.

Email (though some would consider it an older strategy at this point) is still an important way to communicate with students and share information and files.  World language teachers at Mt. Blue use GarageBand and i-Movie to administer tests that assess students ability to speak various languages.  This is a much more productive and efficient way to complete this task compared to the way they use to assess this.  I’m thankful to the world language teachers for sharing this technology with students because now when those students come to my English classroom, many of them already know so much more about these programs than even I do. They are teaching me how to use it!!

This chapter mentioned that teachers need time to acquire knowledge about technology and suggested this be done “within a low anxiety environment”.  I believe this to be a crucial element to getting more teachers to embrace teaching with technology.  I’ve seen workshop days when teachers just get overwhelmed and discouraged at the strategies being shared with them, just because the environment they were in wasn’t conducive to learning.  Breaking teachers up into their comfort levels with technology is one way to keep those environments more “low anxiety”.  (This also helps those of us who are more comfortable with technology feel less frustrated and allows us to still learn new strategies at our own pace.)

TPCK Chapter 6 Toward democracy: Social Studies and TPCK

Something I’m very passionate about is the conversation about how we as educators are preparing our students to be digital citizens.  One of the actions described in this chapter talks about the need for students to develop critical media literacy skills.  I consider this to follow under the digital citizen category.  Students need to learn these important technological skills so they can gather information from a wide variety of media, however students also need to learn about navigating that technology and assessing the quality of the information they are sifting through. The content is important, but if these young people are to function is a technological society they will need to learn how to access the info, sort through it and look over the content with a critical eye.

With that all being said, it is my belief that many teachers think this is “someone else's job”.  When do I have time to teach students the difference between a valid website and one filled with false information? How is it possible to cover that with the rest of my curriculum? Veteran and even newer teachers struggle finding time to add things into their curriculum, but it CANNOT be an excuse to just not teach technological literacy. It cannot! Students don’t have computer classes separate from their core classes anymore. It needs to be embedded in the curriculum that we teach them in math, science, social studies, etc.  This is the only way they will retain the information and even see it as useful to their lives. The answer is that it is ALL of our jobs...so why aren’t we all doing it?

Chapter 3: TPCK in K-6 Literacy Education: It’s not that elementary!

There was a time when the term literacy referred to one’s ability to read and write.  This cannot be the case is education today.  Students and teachers both need to learn to read and write using books, newspapers, magazines, and other printed literature, but they also need to learn how to read webpages and navigate hyperlinks and other web resources.  Teaching literacy now means teaching technological literacy as well.  The definition of literacy is constantly changing with the state technology. Therefore, our teaching must as well.

A quote from the International Reading Association is used in chapter 3.  It states: “Literacy educators have a responsibility to effectively integrate these technologies into the literacy curriculum in order to prepare students for the literacy future they deserve.”  While I believe this to be absolutely true, it is my experience that in some instances students knowledge of the technology surpasses their teachers.  Educators need to be open to their students having many more skills than teachers do about some technology strategies.  I’ve found that many educators are more apt to shy away from programs they have little experience with.  Students having more skills than them seems to scare them, so they just say no.  This kind of mindset is much more harmful to our students than those educators realize.

I understand that this chapter focuses on K-6 grade levels, but I if I’m to relate this to my teaching I need to talk about secondary grade levels.  I still hear, at middle and high school levels, teachers who are more apt to say that teaching reading should be left to English teachers.  Literacy initiatives are happening at many schools, (Mt. Blue included), and the goals hold all teachers accountable for the literacy of students.  I’m not saying accountability is ALL there, but educators need to understand that the expectation is that we all do need to start making sure that students are engaged with literacy strategies...in all content areas.

One last thing I wanted to mention about this chapter are just a few opinions about some of the technology mentioned in this chapter.  I personally use ReadWriteThink in my classroom.  I find it to be quite affective with students at certain levels.  However, I personally find Rubistar (which was also mentioned) to be quite a dated program.  It just doesn’t work for me.  The English department at Mt. Blue High School uses common rubrics in each grade level, broken up by standards anyway, which makes Rubistar obsolete really.

TPCK: Chapter 4 Leveraging the development of English TPCK within the deictic nature of literacy

While I’m glad this chapter supported certain ideas such as allowing adequate training time and creating a stimulating learning environment for students through the use of technology, I also found this chapter lacking any actual new insight for me. Nonetheless here are a few of my thoughts:

The main reason preservice teachers don’t use technology is due to the fact that they themselves were not taught by teachers who incorporated technology.  Most students who grow up to become teachers do so because they generally enjoyed the teachers they had (or at least a few of them).  Technology alone wouldn’t be a necessity to keep them engaged and learning.  Then, in their own teaching, they are just doing what they know which is to follow the examples of those who taught them.  (Besides, technology has evolved a great deal since 2000…eleven years is enough for me to question the validity of the study at this point.)

There was also mention of teachers relying on past experiences.  This is what teachers do!  This is how teachers (new and old) survive at difficult times…by relying on what they already know and what experiences they’ve been through.  Just because a teacher does this, doesn’t necessarily mean they are closed minded to learning new things.  As a new teacher, though EVERYTHING is new, technology included.  In my experiences I have found that some veteran teachers rely solely on their experiences (or “what they’ve always done”) and resist trying new technological strategies in their teaching.

When schools provide educators with the time for content centered technology education, then more educators (new and veteran) would be willing to incorporate these strategies in their teaching. Laura used the internet and Nell used her own personal time and motivation, something many veteran teachers are not willing to do.

Relating this to my own personal teaching: Mt. Blue is fortunate to have the one-to-one laptop program and lots of other technological resources.  We are still lacking the content centered training and the time in which to plan and integrate it all into our teaching. Until we get this, we will not be where we need to be in terms of technology integration.

First Post: Thoughts on Blogging

I've been blogging with my students for the last few years and have enjoyed it immensely! However, the school I teach at does not give us the freedom to use blogger, so I'm looking forward to using it for this class. I know it to be far easier to use than other blogging platforms.