Technology For Learning
EDUC 5367
As a High School Choral Director it is my objective to make my lessons fully engaging and aligned with State and National Standards in Music Education while encorporating 21st Century Skills to help students become literate musicians and safe and effective digital learners.
EDUC 5367
As a High School Choral Director it is my objective to make my lessons fully engaging and aligned with State and National Standards in Music Education while encorporating 21st Century Skills to help students become literate musicians and safe and effective digital learners.
REFLECTION on assignments and coursework for EDUC 5367
This class gave me a lot of tools, background information, and plenty of food for thought about where to go from here as an educator. I always believed that technology would improve my teaching but I never realized the many and varied ways that I can implement the resources that are already out there and FREE! I feel like I am a step ahead of most teachers (and administrators) in terms of what is coming down the road which is a great place to be in the world of education. We have PD scheduled next month as an introduction to the Common Core Standards and I already feel like they are old hat. No one in my building knows anything about Glogster, Posterous, Weebly, Museum Box, Toondoo, or any of the other creative and savvy tools we have been introduced to.
21st Century skills are already needed in our lessons but no one in my building calls them that yet and they haven’t learned to harness their potential to improve engagement, understanding, and overall skill level the way I have. Finally, our students are already digital citizens and most in the building haven’t acknowledged that and certainly don’t treat the kids that way. I have found over the past 8 weeks that simply understanding that the kids speak a different language and addressing them on their level has improved their ability to communicate with me. I am also excited to discover that they are not smarter than me! They have some tricks up their sleeves to be sure, but they don’t know these web 2.0 tools yet and my mastery of them has gained their respect. My piano class has a project each year dealing with researching a composer and performing one of their pieces. This year I have been able to teach them to use Glogster as a way of presenting the information in a new and satisfying way. I have also revised my rubric reflect aspects of digital citizenship and the 4Cs to help improve student’s ability to bridge the assignment to other subjects and areas of their life. Making assignments relevant to the real world is always a powerful way to help the students authentically own their work.
There are some aspects of class that I still have reservations about. I don’t want to delve into the muddled world of Facebook for any reasons—even a good educational one. I feel strongly that the concept of Facebook is based on voyeurism and instant gratification- 2 glaring problems in our cultural today. I do recognize however that students don’t read email anymore and that has become an ineffective communication tool. I have enjoyed demystifying Twitter as a class and hope to implement use of it in the near future for announcements, quotes, fun facts, and info sharing in concert choir, musical co curricular groups, and perhaps even my music technology class. I would also like to take part in more professional sharing using Twitter and hope to experiment with that soon.
I love the educational guru Howard Gardner- expert on the theory of multiple intelligences. He wrote: “Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.” (http://www.leading-learning.co.nz/famous-quotes.html#teaching) That is really what this class offers us educators as it pertains to technology. Sometimes we are so bogged down with the day to day problems in class that we are trapped into a routine of teaching what we know, how we know it. We love to teach “the way we were taught” because it is easy- but we know that utilizing technology can be easy too- with some practice and solid theory behind it. Thanks for this opportunity to experiment with many technologies that I would never have found on my own or that would have been too foreign to try out without encouragement!
Marcy Webster
This class gave me a lot of tools, background information, and plenty of food for thought about where to go from here as an educator. I always believed that technology would improve my teaching but I never realized the many and varied ways that I can implement the resources that are already out there and FREE! I feel like I am a step ahead of most teachers (and administrators) in terms of what is coming down the road which is a great place to be in the world of education. We have PD scheduled next month as an introduction to the Common Core Standards and I already feel like they are old hat. No one in my building knows anything about Glogster, Posterous, Weebly, Museum Box, Toondoo, or any of the other creative and savvy tools we have been introduced to.
21st Century skills are already needed in our lessons but no one in my building calls them that yet and they haven’t learned to harness their potential to improve engagement, understanding, and overall skill level the way I have. Finally, our students are already digital citizens and most in the building haven’t acknowledged that and certainly don’t treat the kids that way. I have found over the past 8 weeks that simply understanding that the kids speak a different language and addressing them on their level has improved their ability to communicate with me. I am also excited to discover that they are not smarter than me! They have some tricks up their sleeves to be sure, but they don’t know these web 2.0 tools yet and my mastery of them has gained their respect. My piano class has a project each year dealing with researching a composer and performing one of their pieces. This year I have been able to teach them to use Glogster as a way of presenting the information in a new and satisfying way. I have also revised my rubric reflect aspects of digital citizenship and the 4Cs to help improve student’s ability to bridge the assignment to other subjects and areas of their life. Making assignments relevant to the real world is always a powerful way to help the students authentically own their work.
There are some aspects of class that I still have reservations about. I don’t want to delve into the muddled world of Facebook for any reasons—even a good educational one. I feel strongly that the concept of Facebook is based on voyeurism and instant gratification- 2 glaring problems in our cultural today. I do recognize however that students don’t read email anymore and that has become an ineffective communication tool. I have enjoyed demystifying Twitter as a class and hope to implement use of it in the near future for announcements, quotes, fun facts, and info sharing in concert choir, musical co curricular groups, and perhaps even my music technology class. I would also like to take part in more professional sharing using Twitter and hope to experiment with that soon.
I love the educational guru Howard Gardner- expert on the theory of multiple intelligences. He wrote: “Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.” (http://www.leading-learning.co.nz/famous-quotes.html#teaching) That is really what this class offers us educators as it pertains to technology. Sometimes we are so bogged down with the day to day problems in class that we are trapped into a routine of teaching what we know, how we know it. We love to teach “the way we were taught” because it is easy- but we know that utilizing technology can be easy too- with some practice and solid theory behind it. Thanks for this opportunity to experiment with many technologies that I would never have found on my own or that would have been too foreign to try out without encouragement!
Marcy Webster