"Google Forms, what a wonderful phrase. Google Forms, ain't no passing craze...It means no worries for the rest of your days..." Ok I'm going to stop the song here. I really like the versatility of Google forms. As I've been working more on getting deeper into the mind of my end user in my research, I can see that a tool like Google Forms will become very handy to get first hand information from the user and not simply observations from my end. I can especially see how useful it would be to gather information from parents, especially since at my school, we don't have our first conferences until November. While I haven't been able to use the add-ons yet because I haven't administered any Google Forms to any population of people, I love the idea of instantly having pie and bar graphs available to analyze results. I also want to learn more about how to create rubrics with Google Forms and add-ons which is my next step. I've already created mini peer writing evaluation rubrics but I'd like to turn this into a Google Form experience for students. They can simply rate each item on a linear scale. Then the add-on can compile the data and I can share that data with each student so they can start improving based on the collective suggestions of their classmates. I need to do a little bit more experimenting before I have this down as I've only installed Flubaroo so far which compiles data from multiple choice questions. Finding the time to give meaningful feedback to each student as well as guide those who need more hand-holding at the young age of 7 or 8 has been a challenge for me and the more I can get students to point out each others' strengths as well as give guiding words for improvement, the more my class can run itself and continually grow despite there being one of me and 25 of them. As far as other types of assessing in math or language arts, for example, I think my students would better benefit from activities done on Seesaw where they can draw out or voice record their thinking or even a different application such as Quizizz or Socrative which have a little more room for visual stimulation. Google Forms has room for visuals but is heavily text dependent making it appear a little more heavy and dry for the little guys just starting to get the hang of reading. One last way I'd like to use Google Forms is with my colleagues. It's a great way for me to gather and interpret information from my expert peers. I would like to create a specific Google Form for my grade level which will be comprised of two new members and two continuing members. I think it is a good idea at the beginning of a collaborative year to reflect on what our own strengths are, how we feel we can best contribute, what we know about our own work styles and ideas of accomplishment and productivity, and what we need from our collaborative team to feel that success as we work together.
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I am returning to the word autodidact...So many of the resources I've been studying continue to point to the importance of developing this quality in those we are teaching as well as ourselves. I am reminded of our journey not so long ago through distance learning and how many of my colleagues, as well as myself at times, were not used to the constant trial and error method needed to master new learning platforms and digital skills. We are living in an ever changing world. As stated by Clark, previously, learning was more based on factual recall and understanding of concepts. Today there are more and more jobs dependent upon procedural and process based knowledge. Personally, I've always appreciated knowing the why and how or procedures, processes, and principles behind the system I'm working in or task I'm doing, even if sometimes my job doesn't specifically require me to have this information. I feel I am better prepared to handle any unexpected situations even though the process of understanding this takes a long time. My students are entering a world in which they will need to be flexible to problem solve in a variety of circumstances. As George Couros asks in Innovate Inside the Box, "do students see the larger purpose in their learning?" or are they simply trying to obtain a quick result? When I conducted an interview with one of my students to help me better fill out my End User Profile, I was surprised to learn of the amount of time my student spends doing self-guided research, mainly via Youtube. He loves bugs and reptiles and desperately wants a pet gecko and already has a worm farm. I was embarrassed to think about all the time I had spent all year trying to load him up with other facts and concepts, and my failing to see all the learning he was doing independently. He already had the skills to find answers and problem solve on his own and I did not necessarily build on these. Likewise, as Couros quotes Simon Sinek, "'working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.'" Looking at the SITE Model Analysis questions I see that my students already have motivation to learn and many interests that fuel that motivation and I simply need to provide the tools and techniques to help them reach their goals. One area I'm struggling in, however, is my love for language and grammar, still knowing how at times it can be a relatively dry subject area for kids. When I think about guiding students to be independent learners in social studies, science, and math, I can almost see it. I am especially trying to understand how technology can aide in this process, in a healthy way, even in the primary classroom. However, my vision gets a little blurry when I think about student motivation and student choice-driven learning projects as they relate to learning parts of speech or correct verb conjugations (Spanish), an area of need I have noted at my school. How can I finagle the dryer facts and concepts of learning language into the more meaningful connection with real world procedures, processes, and principles? I know that tying language into a real world need, which language certainly is, is the key. I'm hoping to learn more tools to motivate students and simulate real world language use to help them see why these seemingly small elements are important instead of random pieces of information they need to memorize. Is there a place for social media in education? My gut reaction is to answer with a "no." This is, however, coming from a second grade teacher's perspective. I think there is an age appropriate time to introduce social media in education and maybe this timeline will change as our technological and online expectations change with time and culture. Currently, children need to be at least 13 years of age to have most social media accounts. For me, it makes the most sense to begin to start teaching students the power of social media and how to use it for good shortly before this age to better prepare them for the path ahead. According to "Teach Students to Use Social Media (the Right Way) and the Possibilities Are Endless," published on nprEd by Ariana Figueroa, this is what CJ Maple, a Kansas teacher did when he made a tweet that got 227,000 retweets. This clearly showed his third grade students how powerful online communication is and how quickly it can spread. I was intrigued by the New Jersey teacher Dipilato's use of Twitter to keep her students up to date with reminders about homework and relevant articles and information to class topics. She's absolutely right when she states, "'kids check their Twitter more than their school e-mail.'" Even more intriguing is the student perspective on teachers' use of social media in "My Favorite Teachers Use Social Media: A Student Perspective" from Education Week by Katie Benmar. She gives almost a scathing account of teachers' lack of cognitive investment into the expensive technology they are freely provided by their districts. Benmar stated that she enjoyed most, classes in which her teachers best utilized the technology and social media platforms available to them. While I am not convinced at this time that modeling social media use to my second graders is most likely not age appropriate, I am reflecting on my use of technology overall in my classroom. Technology is here whether we like it or not. Instead of following wherever the young crowd leads, as educators, we should be paving the way for the young generation to be responsible and harness the positive power of the tools available to them. Even the simple Chromebooks in my classroom that have cameras, microphones, and access to the world wide web, are not being used to their full potential. Next year my school will be getting Promethean boards. I know there is another steep learning curve ahead for me but I also know my students will enjoy the benefits of my time well spent in learning ahead of time and right along with them! I have been trying to connect the dots between several readings I have recently done. These include, Baggio's The Visual Connection, Clark's Developing Technical Training, A Structured Approach for Developing Classroom and Computer Based Instructional Models, The SITE Model, and Brent Wilson's Broadening Our Foundations for Instructional Design: Four Pillars of Practice. I think that these author's and texts are encouraging their readers to think about the end user of their product, training, research, or instructional design. Ultimately, the goal is to have these end users apply knowledge in the appropriate contexts. When I tried to apply these readings to my particular scenario, I think of my 2nd grade students. When I think about what I ultimately want them to have, I realize I don't want them to "know" new things or simply "have" knowledge, rather, I want them to have the ability to "do" new things. When I'm teaching my students, one of the most powerful things I can do to get their minds into the headspace where I need them to be to learn new content, is for me to connect to their prior knowledge. When I talk about stories that relate to me when I was their age or real life experiences we all share, they immediately have a place of reference from which to begin to build.
There are so many different directions in which I could go with my driving question and research and these articles remind me of so many different scenarios in my classroom that I want to work on and study. For example, context was a huge theme in the readings. One idea I am toying with for my driving question is regarding the educational efficacy of technology use for primary aged children. When I relate this to the importance of context for the learner, I think of a saying my high school teacher told me, which is that your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. Technology in the wrong contexts can wreak havoc on a child's development, but perhaps given the right setting or context, it can lead to great improvement. Another direction I'm interested in heading after much of the reading I've been assigned in courses 702 and 791 is how to create "autodidacts" in the classroom. As the article on the SITE Model states, "In this age of information overload, success depends on an individual's ability to use autodidactic strategies." I have long been intrigued by the power of giving students choice and have heard parents sing the praises of Montessori schools because students have more say about the direction of their own learning. The SITE Model describes the importance of making sure learning goals are in accordance with the learner's underlying values. How can I connect to my students' underlying values to create an atmosphere of intrinsically motivated learners? Recently, I have found a whole host of new digital tools I'd love to learn and use with my students. How will I find the time to master each of these? Having a personalized learning plan to map out how and when I will study these new tools so that I'm ready for the fall, is the first step. When the school start date arrives, teaching digital literacy will be a huge part of our "Smart Start" or first two weeks setting up procedures and expectations. I will rely heavily on age appropriate resources created by Common Sense Media. As we begin the year, it will be important to also keep equity at the forefront. After researching a multitude of anti-bias and social just resources for educators and parents put together by KQED Mindshift, ADL, and Common Sense Media, among others, I learned a few helpful tips for keeping equity at the top of the discussion. Emphasizing equity in the classroom is a way to make all students feel safe and valued. A way to do this in the beginning with young students is to provide opportunities for each class member to share about themselves, possibly through a bio-poem like this one. If we are still under distance learning circumstances, students could share a short video presentation of their own poem via Seesaw and post it to the Seesaw class blog after reviewing comment protocols with students. Even if students are back in the classroom, this could be a fun homework assignment that we could watch together in class and give live feedback on during a group session. On the websites I mentioned above there are great articles (The Atlantic) about how to react to young children's unfiltered comments on race and how to have healthy discussions surrounding diversity and compassion (KQED: 4 Tools to Help Kids Develop Compassion and Social Change). Whether done online via Zoom or in a face to face classroom community circles, focusing on these issues, when done in the right way, will not only help all students feel more included but will help students call out bullying and stand up for each other. In second grade, one of our major social studies units covers the topic of heroes past and present. This is a key area in which I can highlight people who've made a difference in recent or past history who have had different upbringings and experiences than my students. My classroom is usually a fairly equal mix of native English speakers and native Spanish speakers. There are not usually, other ethnic groups represented among the student body. By highlighting people from different cultural groups and upbringings, I can cultivate a respect for others and an appreciation for diversity in my students. A last resource that I've found to cultivate compassion and a stance for equity among my students is The Wonderment. Through this website, I can choose projects to work on with my students to better the environment, provide resources like books and education to students around the world, and much more. Having an ongoing project for students to learn about and invest in, helps encourage empathy and a focus on others and giving.
I've always quickly learned to be competent in the tools I really needed in second grade for the allotted time and devices given to us in the past, but I've also wished I had more technological skills to get a little more creative if ever given the opportunity and time...Well, this past March, I was given the time and was basically pushed out of the nest. It's interesting that during the first two weeks when students were using paper packets and the district was preparing lesson plans and trainings yet unknown to us teachers, I eagerly learned many digital skills to better connect with my students after our abrupt parting. However, once mandatory technological trainings began, I was completely overwhelmed. During those first two weeks of quiet, I learned how to better use iMove. I wanted to connect with my students as well as teach them something I'm passionate about, plants. I took photos of all the wild plants I found and knew they would be able to easily find and identify and I made a video scavenger hunt challenge for them for three weeks in a row. Each video got better and better. I learned that I have to export my photos from iPhoto to a separate folder and import them to iMovie. I would also record a little intro clip and conclusion clip simply using Photobooth and drag it into the correct video timeline spot. I struggled with the sound at first but then realized I could increase or lower the volume of each separate clip. Later my friend who makes podcasts, showed me how easy it is to find royalty free music on youtube and download the audio portion only for the background. Once I actually started teaching curriculum for distance learning, I used Screencastify heavily. I made math and language arts videos while modeling with the Math Learning Center's math apps page and my previously made Seesaw student template so students could see exactly what they would be doing to complete the assignments successfully. I later started to improve my Screencastify videos in Editor, part of the Screencastify extension. I found it to be a very simplified version of iMovie. I had used some teacher math tools in my videos from the Toy Theater website like their interactive hundreds chart but when I couldn't find an interactive thousands chart, I got a pdf file of numbers on hundreds charts from 1 - 1000. In my recorded video, I used Kami to highlight in different colors the types of skip counting and how they looked when starting from larger numbers and non-multiples of 10. Certainly my favorite new online educational tool has been Seesaw. While the learning curve was steep since it has so many capacities and I had to master it in order to assign anything, after a training or two and a phone call with a Seesaw expert, I had a better idea of how it worked. It's basically like a Facebook platform where pdfs or images can be uploaded or assignments can be created within the program itself or taken from other teachers in the community library. In Seesaw I learned how to create student activities with geoboard backgrounds, insert images and templates from our curriculum for students to work on and edit, and various other drag and drop, fill in the blank, design, and fluency exercises. Depending on the activity, I would give students the option to answer with the different formats, video, voice recording, typing, drawing, and or a photo. I could create lessons and give feedback through the same means. I loved how teachers can assign "skills" to each activity and then when reviewing grade with a number of stars that later show up in a color coded chart almost like a grade book. I plan to use this for assessing specific skills in the classroom in the future. I also learned how to create and assign a virtual classroom with many embedded links in fun objects in my picture that students could explore. I know I've only seen the tip of the iceberg of this online education tool.
My mind is swimming...where do I start? When we think about finding problems to solutions, we need to approach our thinking from many angles and examine the questions we are asking. Dervin begs us to remember that human behavior is influenced by context, or time and space. It would be great if all information was concrete and never changing but information only really exists because humans created some kind of understanding, assessment, or standard. Because of this, in research, we need to make sure we study the process of how humans solve problems or bridge gaps/discontinuity they encounter. Only then, can we begin to make some generalizations about how to solve problems.
Baggio, dives specifically into theories surrounding learning and the mind. She turns our attention to the most widely accepted learning paradigm today: constructivism. Constructivism, originally championed by Piaget and Vygotsky, is a learner centered paradigm, where the learner possesses autonomy and a willingness to learn. Here, the instructor takes a back seat, especially in today's world with information so readily available via the internet, and simply helps create the path between the learner and the information. This is in contrast to the previously held notions that the instructor was the main source of information. Baggio shares that learners take in new information primarily via visuals which can be stimulated externally and internally. In working with my students, I know that visualization is key. The hard part is getting and maintaining attention to get students to go on the visualization journey I am leading them to. These visualizations are powerful. I will never forget the way I had to especially encourage imagination instead of external stimuli when I had a student who was visually impaired in my classroom. Ruth Clovin Clark, in Developing Technical Training, warns of a common misconception. Often it's assumed that experts in a particular field are equipped to train others in their expertise. Like Dervin, she teaches how to be more efficient at finding solutions to problems, targeting specific deficiencies. I can relate to being on the receiving end of trainings perhaps not based on previous assessment of staff needs. I know that I often also feel pressure to implement procedures and teach content without first analyzing the needs of my students and then giving myself and my students time for trial and error. The best instruction comes when I find out first, what my students need, and then freely go from there. For a more in-depth look at the key concepts these three authors share, see this document. In second grade, students are finally improving with basic fine motor skills when it comes to computers such as right and left click, moving the mouse, steady hand movement to click on smaller icons on the screen, and even using the touch pad on Chromebooks (still difficult though!). When it comes time to start teaching them digital citizenship and specifically digital communication, I have realized that I need to start with something as simple as: what is the internet? When my students use school computers, all they see are colorful icons on the desktop and taskbar and one of those colorful icons (the circle with the blue center and red, yellow, and green surrounding it) leads them to most of the learning "games" they can use in class. Students in second grade need to be very clear on the difference between using programs on the computer vs. using internet webpages and applications on which action and communication is easily made public. I like to describe the web browser as the door to go outside. You never go into the front yard or street or go outside the classroom without first having clear permission from parents or a teacher.
Common Sense Media is a perfect teaching tool because it gives grade specific lessons on various aspects of digital citizenship. The graphics are age appropriate and eye-catching and the songs have a catchy tune and message too. Second graders, like most students, want hands on practice. They want to get on those devices as soon as possible. A good way to get them using computers but still learning about digital citizenship is through the Be Internet Awesome website through which students can play a game in "interland," Two sentences into the chapter, “From the Mind’s Eye of the User: The Sense-Making Qualitative-Quantitative Methodology” on sense-making by Brenda Dervin, I knew I needed to slow it down and look for some tools to make sense of all that sense-making. I opened up my trusty Kami Chrome extension and decided I would use some tools to help me categorize and digest the information. Usually I prefer to use just one yellow highlighter when I annotate but now that I'm studying post-graduate level articles, I decided I should use three highlighter colors. While I began with the idea of using colors to distinguish between main ideas, examples, and key terminology, I didn't stick to a super concrete plan for the colors and after my second day into the article, they ended up turning my pdf file into a colorful spritz of confetti with little rhyme or reason. I was able to relate some of the initial information with things I had briefly learned at some point in the past like differentiating between qualitative and quantitative research. The large focus of the article is on qualitative research and at first it would appear that the author is discouraging us from drawing any conclusions from qualitative research at all. However, after more reading, at least one of the actual purposes of the article seems to be "guidance for framing research questions, (and) for collecting data..." Through sense-making, we can "break with the undergirding assumptions that guide our current system designs which, in turn, mandate our research." In essence, we need to make sure we are looking at questions from all angles or even reevaluate our initial questions. All questions are valid, but if you are asking the wrong questions or even asking the question in a confusing or ineffective way, you won't get the solution you might be looking for. Discontinuity seems to be an important theme in the article but I am still getting my bearings around this topic. From what I understood so far, it is the bridge that humans have to cross when they face a problem or question. Discontinuity pertains to the human "behavior that is internally controlled." Human conditions change frequently in time and space and from human to human. If information has "complete instruction" or "continuity," it is specific to to a certain subset of human conditions. If we are not careful with our questions, we might fail at solving problems. Often people indicate, through rigid surveys or studies that they want something. Sometimes when the request is granted, the system or structure given goes unused because the initial study failed to show "where we might move our systems if we are really to serve people on their terms." The study made users bend to the structure rather than the system or structure bending to the user. The article continually points out how difficult it is to draw conclusions from individual behaviors which are varied and ever changing. But sense-making encourages us to draw conclusions based on human behavior at a "moment in time-space." We can, indeed, study how humans bridge "gaps" they encounter when faced with questions and problems. By making lists and using sequence phrasing, Dervin helped bring my attention to some key interviewing methods such as studies of information needs, studies of satisfactions, studies of images, all of which asks the respondent to focus on a specific experiences or recollections. Other kinds of interviewing methods include the abbreviated time-line interview, the help chain, and message/q-ing. If I had to teach this content to a high schooler, I would first do some yoga and take a long, hot bubble bath. Then, I would preface the whole article with an explanation or a video that demonstrates problems in research or even simple problem solving. By posing a problem or error to students, one can get them thinking in the direction of this article. Research helps us to answer questions and solve problems and by posing some examples, you can set the stage for better understanding the complex article. While the diagrams and visuals in the article are helpful, a video and or tying them to specific examples would be better. Examples that come from situations the high school student can relate to would be most powerful. Perhaps they've already participated in a study that utilizes the methodologies mentioned by Dervin and can relate to being confused by questions, or to looking for solutions to problems on campus or inadequate school structures that are currently in place. I would also teach them to effectively use annotation tools to help them break apart information and remember key ideas. Ideally, there would be a doodle which gives a simplified audio-visual explanation of the main ideas of the article, a little like this one. Technology and Young Learners:
There's one of me and 25 of them during a 6 hour school day with 6+ subjects per day. How do I reach all the needs? The potential for kids to slip through the cracks is huge but I can't let that happen. I feel passionate about prioritizing. How can I zero in on what's most important for each group of students and make sure they don't leave my class without that skill or characteristic? Some would say the use of technology is key in personalizing learning for each student. However, in the primary grades, I personally feel that it is important to strongly limit screen time. Students learn to use technology so quickly when they have a motivation to do so, that I feel they will not fall completely behind if they aren't using computers in their early years. Additionally, there are many studies that show that more screen time negatively affects children's social/emotional development and physical health. During the last two months of distance learning, limiting screen time has become, of course, impossible. How can I utilize new ideas and technological tools to make learning even more personalized and engaging but still limit screen time for young learners? Language: I feel passionately about language. This coupled with my perfectionistic qualities make me a likely, in some people's opinion, language nit picker. I am often surprised by the lack of education teachers and other professionals have when it comes to teaching kids about language and how it works. I see this in both dual immersion Spanish and English classrooms. The common idea seems to be, if some people say it, it's ok. However, I think that as teachers, we hold a huge responsibility when it comes to modeling what is correct and educating about what is incorrect. I don't like explaining away the English language with a simple, "English is just weird and you're going to have to memorize it." If there are reasons behind why we say what we say and write what we write, then I would like to know them so I can share them in my job. My knowledge of English grammar, though nothing extensive or deep, helped me immensely when it came to learning Spanish and a little Finnish. I was able to recognize patterns and draw parallels and noticed many classmates who didn't understand basic components of English grammar who struggled with the altogether new grammatical ideas in a new language. I don't want to apologize to students about the inconsistencies of language, rather, I want to give my students answers and structure so they feel more confident when they go out on a limb to try new phrases and conjugations in Spanish or English. I want them to feel like they have a structure in place already with their first language, to add in new linguistic components or even new languages. Phonics and Spelling: Along with this goes my passion for phonics. The fact that so many children in upper elementary grades and even high school struggle in reading, is an indicator to me that somehow we have been emphasizing the wrong points. So many adults still guess at words based on the initial and final sounds when trying to read an unknown word. I want to give my students strategies to confidently tackle any word they are given with English spelling. Site word reading based on pictures and books with repeated text may get kids to develop fluency but should not be used to measure complete reading growth. A students' knowledge of the basic building blocks of English words, no matter what the context, should be the indicator of their readiness for moving up in their reading. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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