As a cautious and sometimes skeptical person, I entered this class with a critical eye when it comes to changing my current educational teaching practices and view of the US education system as a whole. However, through the readings, projects, and reflections I have come to see learning and teaching from a different perspective. One of the overarching conclusions I have come to is that as James Gee said “humans + tools are a winning combination” (pg. 83) Human capacity to think deeply and learn new things is not its best natural function. However, tools, like computers and the internet, can make that process more efficient and effective. If we separate the two, particularly in education, we are not allowing all the potential learning and creation to come about.
So what does that mean as a teacher? Well, our education system currently does not do a very good job of training our students to use the tools nationwide. There are many inequalities when it comes to access to tools, classes on how to use those tools, and opportunities to practice using them. Additionally, our school system still has old-school expectations for students that just don’t match the needs of our world. Our education system needs to address both these inequalities and needs to maintain and grow our economy.
This class has helped me create a more clear vision for a successful educational system. First, education practices need to be grounded in scientific research around how thinking occurs. Background knowledge and explicit teaching is essential for learning new things. As Willingham says, “Memory is the residue of thought”. (2009, pg 47) If students are not thinking specifically about what you are hoping for them to learn, they will not learn it. Therefore, teachers need to make content engaging and relevant. Additionally, because our students now live in a generation where you can find information quickly and easily, our school system does not need to put as much emphasis on memorizing information. Our system needs to shift to teaching critical thinking skills and give our students opportunities to make connections with other students, experts, and teachers around the world. We also need to better address the technology gap when it comes to the use of technology and teaching skills of how to use technology if we hope to keep up with the education system throughout the world.
What can I do? Going forward I have set a few goals for myself when it comes to helping create a successful education system. First, I need to be a more globally connected teacher. Before this class, I enjoyed looking at teacher content on Instagram or Tik Tok however, I never contributed to the creation of content or the conversations around it. For my students to see me as a continued learner I need to allow myself to be vulnerable and share some of my ideas or thoughts. Second, I NEED to give my students more opportunities to use technology to create, research, and study topics they are interested in. While I use technology every day throughout the day in the classroom, my students are not necessarily using it to learn new things about topics they are interested in. Interest drives learning. I have a goal going forward to try to do more genius hour projects and allow my students to have more say in what they want to use their laptops for. Third, I need to build time into our day to teach digital literacy skills and digital health. My students use technology every day at school and home. If I do not start teaching them how to effectively use technology now I am not setting them up for success using those tools. Fourth, and most importantly, I need to see teaching as coaching. A quote that I can’t stop thinking about by Seth Godin says “ It's stupid to have the same lecture being given handmade 10,000 times a day across the country when we can get one person to do it great for the people who want to hear it”. Teaching should no longer be lecturing. Students can hear about any topic they want on the internet from someone who can probably explain it better than I can. However, what I can do is coach my students on how to find, explore, and create new things.
Here is a link to a google slides presentation I made about my journey to becoming a more globalized teacher! Check it out for ideas on where to start.
Here is a link to a presentation I made which has many different ideas of how you can incorporate globalization into your classroom.
References
Gee, J. P. (2013). When Not to Trust Experts. In The Anti-Education ERA: Creating smarter students through digital learning (pp. 83–99). essay, Palgrave Macmillan.
Richardson, Will. Why School? . TED, 2012, https://drive.google.com/file/d/15tvoUmpKvWsgi_3s-JwJBpB46h3VH3kN/view.
“STOP STEALING DREAMS.” TEDxYouth, TED, 16 Oct. 2012, https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc.
Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? In Why don't students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how The mind works and what it means for the classroom (2nd ed., pp. 41-117).
I agree with your sentiment about Godin's theory about video instruction. Teachers do need to do more than lecture and find more way to get students creating and building knowledge. I do still believe that a lecture from a teacher is still better than a lecture from a video because of how personal those moments can still be, but I think it's important to remember that we have those resources available to us to help us and to individualize instruction.
ReplyDeleteIf you can build in some of the digital literacy you write about into your practice, you can make a lifelong impact on your students. It changes the way they see technology and it certainly changes the way they think about themselves as creators.