Hello all!
If you are a LHS student, this is the home page of my blog. If you would like to access your course content, choose either the “Geometry” page or the “AP Calc BC” page. Welcome back!
If you are one of my peers or are a professor from Walden University, you can view my recent posts using the “Walden Blogs” page.
In this reflective post, I will be discussing how my learning throughout my educational technology course at Walden University will better prepare me to be a 21st century educator. During the course, we studied three web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, and podcasts) that are becoming pervasive components of classrooms today. This essay will discuss my growth as an educator with respect to these technologies and how I plan to incorporate them into my lessons over the next two years.
My technology skills were deepened throughout this course as my colleagues and I were granted the opportunity to experience the aforementioned technologies in realistic settings. I was able to keep a professional blog, work collaboratively with my peers on a wiki, and create my own podcast. These experiences allowed me to not only deepen my own technology skills, but also to give my ideas on how I may use them with my students in similarly realistic scenarios.
The course resources along with my own observations over the last few years have taught me that the structure of instruction and learning is changing, and it most cases, for the better. While I have been drifting away from my math textbooks for years, I still ran my courses in an old-school fashion where I was the essential provider of knowledge through direct instruction. This year, I have made a pledge to allow my students to utilize the powerful technology they have at their fingertips in order to discover a good amount of the information I have previously spoon fed them. Although this may be difficult for me, I must be willing to hand the reigns to my student and allow them to discover and present the information to one another. Not only does this make sense from a learner’s standpoint, but it will give my student practice with several 21st century skills that are being sought by colleges and employers alike. I am eager to teach my students how to learn rather than what to learn as my role changes from omniscient being to learning facilitator.
As a 21st century educator, I can use the very same tools I am teaching my students to utilize to further my own education as it pertains to technology. I can us my RSS aggregator to stay abreast of new technologies and 21st century teaching practices; I can read the blogs of other educators and learn how they are utilizing technologies and practicing 21st century learning. My colleagues and I can create a collaborative wiki in which we can share ideas and resources with one another. There really are no boundaries when it comes to learning at this time in my life. I simply must continue to learn as technology and new ideas will not wait for me.
I plan on accomplishing at least two long term goals relating to technology and 21st century learning within the next two years. As I was new to some of these technologies and ideas prior to taking this course, I aim to start small and gradually build upon these ideas as the years go by. The first idea is to either use my new school web page as a blogging platform or else use my Edublogs account in order to create a classroom portal. Here I will post assignments for my students, post the daily notes, require students to respond to some posts in which I may ask them to find helpful resources, and even have my students partake in some online discussions. The second goal will be to utilize a wiki in my AP® Calculus class in order to create a virtual textbook. While I would like to eventually do this with my underclassmen, I feel this group of students is mature enough to handle the assignment and allow me to work out the bugs I am sure to encounter. As I gain experience and confidence, I hope to expand the wiki creation to my geometry students as well. Both of these tasks can be done with little to no obstacles in my way, therefore, there is nothing preventing me from reaching my goals during the next two school years.
During the first week of this course, I took a survey which assessed my current familiarity and proficiencies with various technologies, some of which were mentioned above. I must admit that in week one, I responded “sometimes” or “rarely” to many of the statements. Unfortunately, since I was on summer vacation during this course, my answers did not change because I did not have students who could experience my newfound expertise. However, I expect that as begin to expose my students to the aforementioned ideas and technologies, many of my answers will change to “often”.
In conclusion, this course was a valuable and refreshing learning experience that gave me exposure to a technological mindset which I fully embrace. I am excited to add blogs and wikis to my repertoire, and to also deepen my curriculum by adding learning experiences that allow my students to attain valuable and necessary 21st century skills.
Initially, I was quite overwhelmed when I reached the website “Partnership for 21st Century Skills” (http://www.p21.org/index.php ). This reaction was due in part to the vast amount of information available within the website. In a short amount of time, however, I realized it was quite easy to navigate around the site and find what I was looking for. Being an educator who is fond of free resources, I naturally gravitated to the “Resources for Educators” links. I was happy to find more detailed definitions of some of the rather ambiguous 21st century skills descriptors I read about this week in my technology course at Walden. The documents I found most helpful were the literacy and 21st century skills maps for my content area (math). Within these documents, the literacy/21st century outcomes (or standards) are stated along with a grade level appropriate example of how the outcomes could be reached via a project or activity. Overall, these resources are solid and clear up some of the gray area surrounding 21st century skills.
I would not say that there is too much I disagree with on the site and I have no argument that students need these skills in order to be competitive. However, there is a statement or two that irk me. The first statement, taken from the P21 mission page is the following, “There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces” (“Our Mission”, n.d., para 3). While I agree that the said gap exists, I am not convinced of its profundity. Many of us teachers have built curriculum around these skills and have been for years. The gap will closing naturally, without a massive curricular overhaul. Furthermore, new teachers, many of whom already possess many of these skills, are entering the educational field with a strong handle on various technologies and are using them with their students regularly.
The second statement that troubles me the suggestion that in order “to successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by fusing the 3Rs and 4Cs” (“Our Mission”, n.d., para 4). This sounds very much like a sales pitch and I am certainly not convinced that this is the solution to the intellectual stagnation that is the legitimate cause of all academic “skills gaps” in our country. What about motivation, determination, ambition, and the desire to learn for the sake of learning? I’m fairly certain these are the skills that have made myself and many others successful in life and any other necessary skills were acquired using the aforementioned traits. It takes more than educators on board to address these cultural problems and I hoping there is a time in the near future when the importance of education and learning is addressed by more than those in the educational field.
Again, I do not want to give the reader the impression that I do not value these skills or think it is important that our students learn them; indeed I do. For my own part, I plan to continue to address these skills within my classroom as well as share and utilize the astounding new technologies with my students. However, I plan to continue to gradually add more activities, projects, and technologies that foster 21st century skills to my curriculum.
Reference
Our Mission. (n. d.) Retrived from: http://www.p21.org/about-us/our-mission
Welcome fellow bloggers! This week I will be explaining how to I intend to use blogs in my classroom initially. The word initially is important here because I do believe weblogs show lots of promise, even within a mathematics classroom.
Before I articulate my intentions, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Thomas Baumgart and I teach one section of AP Calculus BC along with an assortment of geometry classes. My geometry students next year will all be in 10th grade or higher changing the dynamics of a class immensely. Gone are the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders on the calculus track. My geometry classes will now consist of students who are older and will likely need much more support. My blog site will hopefully be a mechanism from which these students can acquire the aforementioned support.
Heeding the advice of Richardson (2010), my plan will be to start small and use my Weblog “as a place to post homework assignments and relevant class links” (p. 45). I my blog will be a fine place to post my syllabus, course objectives, student notes, and the previously noted homework assignments. This alone will prove useful for my oft-absent students who need the previous day’s materials. This may be as far as I go with geometry next year as calculus is the class in which I intend on experimenting with blogging to a higher degree.
For my AP Calculus class, I will provide the same materials as with Geometry. However, I would also like students to also use the space to collaborate on problems and share resources.
I figure this is starting small enough to serve as a confidence builder for myself and should also enhance my students’ learning experiences to some degree. Please feel free to leave any suggestions or advice! Farewell!
Resource
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
This will be the blog site for Thomas Baumgart during EDUC-6710. Thanks for visiting! The older posts were done during a previous class.
As I look back on my week 1 discussion post at Walden University, I see some superficiality as to how I viewed my own learning. I would say I was spot on in describing how I learn. To recap, I learn primarily on my own without a great need of an instructor to guide my instruction and I’ve been this way for a great deal of my life. I do, however, enjoy and appreciate the presence of a “more knowledgeable other” or “MKO” (Kim, 2001) to help guide me when I become lost in my quest for knowledge.
My learning preference is described to a tee by two of the assumptions of Knowles Adult Learning Theory: my learning is self directed and is “motivated by internal rather than external factors” (Conlan, Grabowski, & Smith, 2008). I’ve always loved to learn for the sake of learning. This joy is the only motivation I need and the topic doesn’t usually matter. Therefore, I wouldn’t say I’m always interested in “immediate application of knowledge” (Conlan et al, 2008) although this is nice when it comes to improving/enhancing my teaching.
I also described myself as a “cognitive learner” which I’ve since learned is an incorrect way to view my own learning since Cognitivism is a learning theory rather than I learning strategy. Rather, I should have said that my learning is best described by the assumptions/conclusions of the Cognitive Learning Theory.
Since completing my Learning Theory Matrix, I’ve come to take each theory with a grain of salt. My learning can be explained to some degree by all of them. There are assumptions I agree and disagree with concerning my own learning, but each one of them has explanations I can certainly relate to. Regardless of how I feel concerning the validity of each theory, it has been enjoyable to study each of them and learn how and why certain learning models are developed and pushed in the educational field.
Technology certainly plays a prominent role in my learning today and is also an integral part of my teaching. This is something I could have easily described in my week 1 post concerning how I learn. At the time, however, I simply took for granted how often I use technology and how it consistently helps me learn. For example, one of my favorite technologies to incorporate into my learning is the Evernote/Skitch combination which I learned from a colleague of mine. I download the course resources into Evernote, then, reopen them in Skitch. Skitch is awesome for interacting with the resources since I can highlight, add text, and/or add an image to the text I’m reading at the time. This has proven very useful throughout my time as a student at Walden. I also enjoy the availability of video and Wikis for supplemental learning tools. Finally, can easily store and retrieve some of these resources via my Dropbox account.
References:
Conlan, J., Grabowski, S., & Smith, K. (2003). Adult learning. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Adult_Learning
Kim, B. (2001). Social constructivism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism
Shown below, and posted in my previous blog entry, is my mind map for my network connections. I’ll be reflecting, in this blog post, on how 4 key networks have helped to facilitate my own learning over the years.
One of the main principles of the learning theory known as Connectivism is that “learning is the process of connecting specialized nodes or information into sources” (Davis, Edmunds, & Kelly-Bateman, 2008). Ever since I was an undergraduate, I would say that my own learning could be interpreted in this manner.
The nature of my own learning has evolved a great deal since the internet explosion. It suddenly became much easier for me to learn whatever I wanted since learning resources were suddenly a Google search away whereas they were once buried within the archives of a library. Even if I found a relevant source, the information I was seeking was often difficult to extract.
While creating my map, I thought of four main nodes that categorize my current learning: professional, graduate school related, personal, and to a lesser extent, social networking. The various branches from each of these nodes show the resources I use to accommodate my learning in each of these categories. The acquisition of new knowledge starts at one of these nodes. For instance, if I need help creating a Calculus lesson, my learning begins at the “Professional Learning” node. I would then turn to the AP® Calculus community, search one of the many forums for what I’m looking for, or, if I’m unsuccessful in my search, I can post a question on the discussion board and expect a veteran teacher to respond to me within 24 hours. It is possible (and even likely) that this teacher may allow me to extract a lesson, worksheet, or applet by allowing my access to his/her Dropbox share folder. This “cross pollination of the learning environment” (Davis et al, 2008) is a consequence of Connectivism. It is simply amazing to me that such a thing would have been impossible just two decades ago!
My Digital Tools
To compose a list of my favorite digital learning tools is as difficult as coming up with a list of my top four favorite movies, but here it goes:
1) Dropbox: Online storage space with a kicker: you can share resources by providing links to your folders. I use it daily
2) Wikipedia: Say what you will about its credibility, it is still great for gaining superficial knowledge about a topic;
3) AP® Learning Community: a must for any AP® teacher; free and unlimited access to advice, lessons, applets, you name it.
4) LinkedIn: Social networking with a purpose; I legitimately care about what people are posting here because it is relevant to my career.
References:
Davis, C., Edmunds, E., & Kelly-Bateman, V. (2008). Connectivism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Connectivism
Here is a Mind Map displaying my how my network learning resources can facilitate my learning:
This week at Walden University, I was asked to find two course resources from our library regarding two topics (the brain and learning and problem-solving methods during the learning process) and comment on their value. Below each reference, I’ve included a brief description of the content present in each journal as well as a quick critique of their merits or lack thereof.
Nuangchalerm, P., & Charnsirirattana, D. (2010). A delphi study on brain-based instructional model in Science/UNE ÉTUDE DELPHI SUR LE MODÈLE DE NEURO-PÉDAGOGIE EN SCIENCES. Canadian Social Science, 6(4), 141-146. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/756032463?accountid=14872
This article from Candadian Social Science reports the results of a study which investigated the opinions of 20 experts from various disciplines regarding a brain science approach to science education. The article then presents an instructional model for brain based learning using the results of the experiment. Through five techniques explained in the journal, (preparation, relaxation, action, discussion, and application science instruction can be theoretically improved in the classroom.
As a science teacher, I was intrigued by the title of the article, yet unimpressed when I read it. For one, it appears the article was originally written in French and then poorly translated, so I had a hard time understanding what certain parts were trying to say. Furthermore, although it presents techniques for improving instruction, it is very vague on how these techniques are carried out by the students and teacher. I can’t see much I’d take into the classroom from this.
Ifenthaler, D. (2012). Determining the effectiveness of prompts for self-regulated learning in problem-solving scenarios. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 15(1), 38-n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1287024877?accountid=14872
The second study I examined determined the effectiveness of two types of prompts (generic vs. direct) and hypothesized that students who received generic, rather than direct prompts during the problem solving process were likely to be more successful performers (p. 41). In a nutshell, a generic prompt is more open-ended whereas a directed prompt asks students to perform tasks that require mastery level understanding of what was read/presented during instruction. Not surprisingly, students were able to more effectively monitor their own learning when presented with generic prompts.
I can’t say that the results of the study were too surprising since I’ve learned on my own that open-ended prompts require the students to think on their own rather than be directed by me or a text. However, I don’t think I’ve ever thought of generic prompting as a promoter of self regulation during problem solving or a grantor of student autonomy. It turns out generic type of prompting is more powerful than I actually thought and I’ll be sure to incorporate it is often as I can.