The concept of flipped learning contrasts what is done in the traditional classroom. Whereas traditionally, teachers impart knowledge or lecture during the class period, and students practice the skills or apply the knowledge outside of class, as part of homework, the flipped classroom uses class time to apply the knowledge that was delivered via technology outside of class. Each of these methods comes with its own set of problems. Students who tend not to do their homework, or anything outside class time, miss out on either practice of (traditional) or delivery of content (flipped). The other problem I see with flipped learning is that so many students, and even entire districts, lack the infrastructure or technological devices to make this possible. Flipped learning also seems to require a great deal of teacher time being spent outside of class time preparing these videos, etc. Ideally, a combination of traditional and flipped classroom practices seems doable.
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In Sebastian Seung's talk entitled "I am my Connectome," he emphasized his theory that we are all coded differently, according to our DNA makeup, but that we are more than that, suggesting that the experiences we gain continue to grow our knowledge. His work was very similar to the talk on brain science presented by Laura Masters in that both stressed the importance of continuing to add experiences, thereby stretching and connecting more and more neurons within our brains. What I will take from this to apply to my teaching is simply that providing multiple opportunities to understand, apply, and master material will help my students' brains stretch and grow.
John Seeley Brown's talk, "A New Culture of Learning," pointed out the shift we are experiencing, going into an area of disequilibrium and flux. He bluntly stated, "Basically, if you're not curious, you're screwed!" That really sums up what I feel about some of my students, and it will be the focus of a bit of my research paper. Seeley shares his opinion that devices are "curiosity amplifiers," and as such, we should be encouraging their use. He mentioned the role that study groups, or collaborative learning as I see it, play in leading to knowledge acquisition, stating, "There is no better way to learn than to have to explain to someone else." I wholeheartedly agree, which is why other than assessments, I encourage student collaboration whenever I can. Howard Gardner's "Five Minds of the Future" presentation detailed a condition known as "about-itis," in which fact-knowing and memorization of data has become confused with actual thinking. For him, thinking is more the act of being able to process, synthesize, and put information together in a way that makes sense for an individual's use of that information. This definitely left me thinking about Common Core and its goals and testing, as compared with the standardized tests we're moving away from. The always-entertaining Sir Ken Robinson's discussion called "How to Escape Education's Death Valley" humorously pointed out the irony of No Child Left Behind's approach to bridging the achievement gap by simply making all kids show their success in the same way as others, ignoring the individual strengths. He says it is based on conformity rather than diversity. He listed the following three principles for people to flourish: showcasing our diversity, allowance for curiosity, and encouraging creativity. He stated, "Curiosity is the engine of achievement." Again, I thought about some of my students' lack of curiosity about some of the texts we read and tasks I ask them to complete, which furthers my thought about my own practices. Daniel Pink's "The Surprising Science of Motivation" demonstrated how, despite what we think, research proves that providing extrinsic rewards for work actually works against us, for these rewards simply narrow our focus and restrict our possibilities. He referenced the success of the Google model of 20% time, wherein employees are given that much time each week to dedicate how they see fit. They choose the time, team, task, and technique. This model has led to the production of some of the company's greatest products. Another English teacher at my school uses this model for his "Genius Hour" project, and he sees the engagement from his kids. Louis Mobley's "Can Creativity Be Taught" details his findings through his own work with IBM. He found that when people are stumped and forced to find a solution, it leads to increased learning. Creativity can also be improved by surrounding ourselves with creative people. Learning more about ourselves can also help. He approached teaching with the idea that no answer/solution was wrong, but rather a building block to something better. In looking at my own approach, I clearly have a lot of work to do in the classroom; however, I'm taking baby steps in the right direction. I have always said, "I can't teach internal motivation!" What I see, though, is that I can do things differently to pique student interest and curiosity, which leads them to become internally motivated. By allowing my students to choose their own topics and teammates for writing collaborative essays, I'm hoping to engage them and encourage them to ask questions they want to find answers to. Flexibility and time are key, too. In chapter 9 of her book, Darling-Hammond starts off with a quote from John Dewey, which, in part reads: "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children..." In an ideal world, we would all agree on these "wants," and even what it looks like to be "the best and wisest," but, we all know that agreement upon anything is a difficult achievement. Education is no different. In her third principle for creating quality and equality in education, Darling-Hammond pushes for equitable and adequate resources for schools and students. The difficulty with creating equity, which is seen in society as a whole, is that districts which have more (like basic-aid/community-funded districts) would not be willing to give up the funds and resources they have access to in order to help "level the playing field" for those in need. Although this aspect of her approach seems highly unlikely to come to fruition, there were a few other areas in which progress does seem to be occurring. For example, in terms of establishing meaningful learning goals, it does appear that Common Core is addressing this. Clearly, they don't go as far as the "international standards, curriculum, and assessments," that Darling-Hammonds is pushing for, but it's a start in the way that she discussed only a handful of topics being studied at length in high-achieving countries. Now, with Common Core, U.S. schools should be doing similarly.
The Teaching Channel's video "Conver-Stations: A Discussion Strategy," followed high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling and her students as they worked with Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. This strategy was used to have students consider an essential question as it pertains to the novel: Is evil ever justified? Working collaboratively, students engaged in re-examining parts of the book to find evidence and support for their opinions, going on to analyze the meaning of the passages they chose. Several times throughout the period, a few students from each group were asked to move to a new station, taking with them the knowledge and insight they had gained (or provided) in the previous group's conversation. This was definitely a lesson I would use in my ELA classroom, as it provokes critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity in terms of how students might have interpreted words from the excerpts. I would give this a 4 out of 5 as a 21st century lesson. Although no technology was implemented, I saw no way that it would have added to the work. Perhaps they went on to create a Google document in which to post and share all of the evidence and insight.
http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/lessons/collaborative_adaptation_languagearts A second video I viewed was from the Technology Integration Matrix site. The clip "Poetry Exploration" was found within the 9-12 Infusion section. In it, students worked in collaboration on a poetry lesson that would be taught to the rest of the class. They did research to choose a poem and learn about the author. Then, by using a technology site such as imovie, students put their analysis/interpretation with images and author information together. One group even corresponded with the author they chose, allowing her to provide feedback on their lesson. This lesson gets a 5 out of 5 because it was collaborative, creative, engaging, and required communication and critical thinking. I have done something similar in my classroom, wherein students used Animoto and the SOAPSTone reading strategy. http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/lessons/collaborative_infusion_languagearts The final example of 21st century teaching I explored was also on the TIM site, and it was titled "Communicating With Mentors," under 9-12 examples. In what seemed like a science class, student groups were conducting research for a project in which they were asked to find a mentor in the related field. They were given email addresses and deciding which group member was going to contact the mentor for possible contribution to or for feedback on the projects. This project clearly allowed for collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and utilized technology, but in terms of creativity, I don't know where I saw that. Obviously, with just a glimpse into the lesson, we never have all of the information, but I would give this lesson a 4 based on that. This definitely seems like an ambitious project, for both teacher and students, but one day I hope to get there! In reading chapters 1-3 of Beverly Falk's The Power of Questions, one of the first statements that caught my attention was, "Teachers who are new to research may feel confused by all these different conceptions and choices of research. Don't worry"(19). This certainly applies to me, having gone 13 years without being a student in any official capacity. Getting back into the routine of being a student was a bit difficult, but delving into a research project as part of that makes the whole situation feel incredibly daunting, so I'm hopeful that this book will continue to guide us through the process, gently, as it seems to have done thus far.
Earlier in chapter 1, Falk pointed out that, "John Dewey wrote of the need for education to begin with 'learners' passions and questions' " (2). As adult learners doing our own research, this makes perfect sense; however, in applying this concept to my 9th and 10th graders, I already question how this would work, since so few of my students demonstrate any sort of curiosity at all, let alone the kind of intellectual curiosity I hope to help them create. In essence, this thought lead me to wonder if I could use this as my research question, or, perhaps a sub-question. Some of the thoughts I wrote in conjunction with this idea included ideas about student motivation and drive and how to engage them without making the lessons about them, not wanting to "cater" to their whims. I then began to wonder about how I can help create a culture of homework-doers rather than students who prefer to simply copy off others, knowing I don't collect and read it. In chapter 3, Falk asks teachers to consider their own biases about their research topic. One of the biases of my own that I will have to face when looking at the use of technology for engagement, should I choose to focus on this, is feeling that technology often seems more game-like than I'm comfortable with.. Perhaps I chose the wrong tools though. It's very easy to see technology being used for playing and exploring, but I don't always see it paired with rigor that promotes in-depth critical thinking, which is my goal. In chapter six of The Flat World and Education, the author focuses on three countries that have radically transformed the way in which they approach education in general. "Steady Work: How Countries Build Strong Teaching and Learning Systems" chronicles the ways in which Finland, Korea, and Singapore have gone from under-performing systems to those leading the way for the rest of the world, seemingly swapping places with the U.S., which went from being an educational leader in the '70s to among the worst ranking systems today. Although most of Darling-Hammond's book so far focuses on all of the failings of the U.S. system, I did find a glimmer of hope when reading about Singapore's reduction of "rote learning" of content. The nation's prime minister emphasized, "We have got to teach less to our students so that they will learn more" (185). For me, this line immediately conjured up references to Common Core, where depth over breadth is the focus. In my teaching, I'm making a concerted effort to practice close readings and multiple readings of texts, asking students to engage with the texts by making predictions, creating visual representations, asking questions, clarifying, and summarizing what they read.
One of the key components I saw repeated time and time again in the reading was the importance of schools dedicating time and money to improve teachers. Darling-Hammond points out that, "A far greater percentage of U.S. teachers' work time is spent teaching than in most countries--about 80%, as compared to 60% on average for secondary teachers in the 31 OECD countries. In Edutopia's video "Singapore's 21st Century Teaching Strategies," the importance of making education fun and engaging was emphasized, as well as the need to have teachers who were tech savvy. The school at the center of the video demonstrated highly engaged students using Twitter and Facebook as methods for responding to teacher-posed questions and for participating in the class discussions, even commenting upon other students' thoughts. This demonstrated the shift in education mentioned in the clip, wherein the students no longer just consumed knowledge but produced it. On a scale from 1-5, I would give this a 4, only because I am an English teacher, and I would want my students to use proper capitalization and punctuation when posting. https://youtu.be/XZ0BGXMf83U Another clip from Edutopia entitled "Differentiating Instruction Through Interactive Games" focused on an elementary teacher who used gaming software to make his lessons "engaging and exciting for students." The interactive math games allowed students to receive immediate feedback about their knowledge of the content and move forward once they had demonstrated mastery. In contrast, for those kids who didn't succeed, the teacher was able to pull them into a small group setting to reinforce the skills. It was clear that the students were learning through direct instruction, as well, though, as they were able to identify key terms like "in all" and make the connection that those were signal words for addition problems when doing a think-aloud activity. On a scale from 1-5, I would rate this lesson a 5 due to its pairing of technology with direct/teacher-led instruction. This math teacher was very clear about the importance of using technology in conjunction with traditional teaching, valuing both of these "tools," and although perhaps not as exciting for the kids, they were actively engaged with the lesson even when working in small groups, using their whiteboard desks and markers to do writing. https://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning?language=en A TED Talk featuring Ramsey Musallam and his "Three Rules to Spark Learning," illustrated how this chemistry teacher used "blended instruction" to create engaged students. In his classroom, he applies three rules, which he was inspired to use after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, and having his surgeon use the same principles as he approached the surgery. The first rule for Musallam is curiosity comes first. Next, he says to embrace the mess. Finally, he practices reflection. According to Musallam, curiosity drives the questions. By embracing the mess, it allows him to set aside his fear of failure, instead finding the value of trial and error. Lastly, by practicing reflection, he forces himself to see the positives and negatives in his approach and to revise his lessons accordingly. One of the students featured in this short clip took it upon herself to go home and film herself applying a concept similar to the one she learned in class. Clearly, she was interested, curious, and motivated to explore the concept more. My concern with applying these three rules to my own teaching is that the vast majority of my students lack internal motivation, and therefore demonstrate very little curiosity. In my opinion, science classes, by nature, invite curiosity a bit more readily than English Language Arts. For this reason, I would rate this approach as a 3.5. It is my hope to get my students to develop academic curiosity, but they are far from this goal. |
Kirstin
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