In the past, I thought in the education program, I will learn how to teach; however, my preconception of what teacher do is challenged during PSI.
- Teacher is a facilitator
- Formative assessment
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One take away learning from PSI is: good teaching isn't about how you teach but rather how you ensure students learned.
In the past, I thought in the education program, I will learn how to teach; however, my preconception of what teacher do is challenged during PSI.
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Traditionally, school is seen as a stand along entity segregated from society and the working world. Beyond community members having to pay taxes to support school operations, school and society operate on two separate paths that never cross. Society, however, expects students coming out of school to understand and integrate smoothly into working world. After experiencing the painful transition myself, I realize early exposure and interaction with society and community members might had made the transition seem less foreign and intimidating.
How can new media be leveraged? In the past, attempts to bring community members, speakers into the classroom are often difficult and requires a lot of work and preparation from both parties. Issues such as security, safety, time, bringing in prep often result in teachers not bothering with the trouble. New media can make such attempts much more feasible. Classroom is no longer restricted behind the walls of the school building. With new media, guest speakers no longer need to go through the process of police check that often requires months to process. Guest speakers no longer need to take a day off work just to come into the school. With a simple set up of a laptop, webcam and microphone, students can easily see beyond the school walls to have a glimpse of society. The Tyrrell museum video conference had solidified my desire to incorporate new media and video conferencing into my classroom to breakdown the school walls. Tips for incorporating new media into the classroom:
Over the last couple of weeks, we had the opportunity to create and present lessons on Smartboards in our technology class. Graduated over 7 years ago, I never had Smartboards in my own classroom; it was not until university that I heard about Smart Technology and Smartboards. Until recently, I always thought Smartboards is a technological mystery and revolutional. I thought it was changing the classroom in how teaching was conducted. Boy, was I wrong…(a blow to my ComSci ego).
What is Smartboard? Smartboard is an interactive whiteboard that use touch detection for input. It was first created in SMART technology, company based in Calgary. Essentially Smartboard = touchable board + projector + Smartboard Software How I saw Smartboard being used? During the last couple of weeks, in partners/ groups of threes, we prepared and presented Smartboard lessons. We examined approximately 15 different lessons. They were all very successful mind I say, but all were very similar in the sense that the interactive part from the students include:
Why many teacher do not use Smartboards? We also discussed in class about why smart boards are not used in class. Now, I refuse to believe that there isn't a place for Smartboard in the classroom, some changes are required though. 1. Many teachers perceive creating lessons on the Smartboard as tedious and ineffective. Fix: There are alot of pre-made Smartboard lessons already being shared online, teachers don't always have to create from blank slat. Fix: Smart Technology, please improve the interface 2. Many teachers do not know how to use the Smartboard. Teachers aren’t provided with training to use the smartboard. Fix: school boards, please provide trainings for teachers on how to effectively use Smartboard. Don't assume that all teachers will know how to use it. There is a learning curved involve with any new piece of technology. Fix: Teachers, check online resources. Fix: Smart Technology, please provide lessons and tutorials geared for teachers on how to use Smartboard 3. Smartboard is single touch; it's very difficult to improve collaboration with single touch. In many cases as seen in the lessons, students are spending more time waiting to touch the board then actual doing activities on the board. When Smartboard isn't used correctly, effectively, it actually decrease engagement. Fix: Provide students activities to simultaneously do at the same time to reduce wait time. As part of our scholarly inquiry activity in technology class, Paul created a virtual amazing race challenge for our class. We competed as teams of 4-5 against other classmates to complete various search inquiries and virtual/ in person activities.
Was it engaging? Overall, I found the activity to be very engaging and fun; however, I could tell it wasn't for some of my other classmates. Certain tasks and activities were more engaging and fun in comparison to others. Activities I found engaging:
Activities I didn't find engaging:
The activities I didn't find engaging were ones that I felt was not relevant or applicable. Perhaps if the activities created for each search were directly corresponding, it would had been more interesting. Perhaps by creating searches, activities that's directly relevant to our learnings such as KSA, Program of Studies might had improve engagement of the reluctant students who was not engaged as they do not see the value in the activities. This is because, I feel students (my peers) at this stage in our education career want to get the most out of the time in the class to learn to become an effective teacher. However, the designed searches and activities could work great with High School or Junior High students to provide a break from the norm. Was it meaningful? Personally, I really enjoyed the activity and found it meaningful as an exercise that I would love to use in my own class to explore digital searches. Did you use online tools that you had not used before? As we weren't allowed to use Google Maps, I had to default to using other Map tools such as Yahoo Map and Bing Map which I haven't used before. I also used certain tools such as AskJeeves that I haven't used in a long time. Experience creating my own version of the Amazing Race: I didn't realize how difficult it was to create this activity for students, until I start to create one myself, which you can find here: Challenges:
Technology Resources for PSI Teaching Seminar G:http://learnteachwu.weebly.com/1/post/2013/10/ksa-10-technology-resources.html On Thursday, I delivered my 15 minute microteaching to my teaching seminar class on: KSA #10: Teachers apply a variety of technologies to meet students’ teacher/ learning. Overall, even though there's still a lot of room for improvement, given the amount of time, I feel it was a successful lesson. What is KSA? KSA stands for Knowledge, Skills and Attributes. There are a total of 17 KSAs that intern teachers (in their first two years of teaching) must follow to guide their teaching. Intern teachers must demonstrate proficient application and understanding of these 17 KSAs in order to be qualified for their Permanent Alberta Teaching Certificate . To find out about the other KSAs, please visit the Alberta Education Website: http://education.alberta.ca/department/policy/standards/teachqual.aspx What does KSA #10 mean? "Teachers use teaching/learning resources such as the chalkboard, texts, computers and other auditory, print and visual media, and maintain an awareness of emerging technological resources. They keep abreast of advances in teaching/learning technologies and how they can be incorporated into instruction and learning. As new technologies prove useful and become available in schools, teachers develop their own and their students’ proficiencies in using the technologies purposefully, which may include content presentation, delivery and research applications, as well as word processing, information management and record keeping. Teachers use electronic networks and other telecommunication media to enhance their own knowledge and abilities, and to communicate more effectively with others. " From <http://education.alberta.ca/department/policy/standards/teachqual.aspx> LESSON OVERVIEW: Based on the definition of KSA #10, I generated three objectives for the lesson:
Lesson Plan Summarized:
Technology Integrated:
TEACHING REFLECTION: Rather than examining strengths and weaknesses, I want to highlight the successes with this lesson and also areas for improvements in my teaching strategy. Successes Students generated a great list of resource as a class that they can build upon. Students created an extensive list of resources they have seen already and start on compiling a list of online teacher resources/ community. Given that the student group for this lesson are all pre-service teachers, this lesson, I would say, can be of value and use to the students. Integrating technology into the lesson: I feel I was successful in integrating technology into my lesson even though I did not utilize any additional tools that the students haven't seen before. In the lesson, I integrated PollEverywhere to gather students prior knowledge, Google Form as Survey, Google Spreadsheet to gather survey results, Padlet for Sponge Activity. I did this because of time considerations. I understood that it will take additional time for students to learn other tools and with the given 15 minutes I felt that it would not had been an effective use of time. The lesson would had taken longer if I chose to use new technologies Attention Getters: Even though, we been shown multiple different attention getters throughout the different sessions, I'm still struggling to identify what attention getters would work best in what kind situation. Being rather soft spoken and introverted individual, I'm still working on identifying ways to get students attention without having to raise voice and be respectful to the students. These are the attention getters that worked for me in this lesson:
Area for Improvements Be more explicit in connecting lesson to objectives: I found that even though I was successful in demonstrating and integrating various technology into the lesson: PollEverywhere, Google Form, Google Doc and Padlet. I wasn't explicit about connecting the lesson back to the meaning of KSA #10. This could had easily been done by asking a closure question of: "What are some strategies that we have used in this lesson to address KSA #10?" This will encourage students to make the connection between the activities that they did with the definition of the KSA and objective. Improve Engagement: The lesson was designed so that students were working in partners and focused more on self learning than instructor lecturing. I found, however, it was very easy for students while on the internet to stray from the lesson. I think to improve engagement, I will need to speed up the pace of the lesson, break it down to smaller steps and do check points along the way, as well ask questions to encourage discussion of the topic. Attention Getters that didn't work:
Next Lesson Given the time constraint, there was only so much I could had covered. If there's a subsequent lesson, I feel it would be of value to address these two following items:
Revised Lesson Plan
Activity Resources:
Activity #1: PollEverywhere Activity #2: Google Form Google Spreadsheet Results Activity #3:Padlet |