Reflection #8

Going Gradeless: Student self-assessment in PBL - By Matt Meyers

        The subject for this post centers itself around a middle school teacher’s discovery of a new teaching style and how it completely changed his philosophy and teaching as he knew it.  It seems to be more of a teacher’s blog that discusses his findings from Mark Barnes’ ‘role reversal: achieving uncommonly excellent results in a student-centered classroom’ and how he applied them to his classroom.  The generalized concept is using Narrative feedback in such a way that there is no need for assigning grades. Instead of assigning grades for every assignment, at the end of the grading period the student and teacher would discuss and agreed on a final grade based off feedback. The teacher in the following post was as perplexed as I was when first reading about this concept. At this point one is left with the questions: is that type of classroom possible? Would it be more beneficial for students? How would it effect their learning, and so on.  This 6^th grade teacher decided to test this concept and implemented into his own classroom with the goal to, “simultaneously promote mastery learning as well as increase students' ability to meta-cognitively assess their work against a given set of standards.” His results were astonishing, student interest had sparked high, with students consistently emailing him, asking about how they can do better. With the worry of backlash from parents, he surprisingly didn’t get as many emails from parents as expected (only 3 that said “sounds awesome”).  This blog makes one think twice about the traditional grading system, and whether or not it’s beneficial to student learning.  It seems to be one of those concepts that’s important to consider but still to be cautious of. Through application and trial and error, a teacher can discover for themselves how it effects their classroom and student learning. As I find it could be beneficial and the better option for some and not so much for others.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/going-gradeless-student-self-assessment-matt-weyers

Reflection #7

Virtual Escape Room

     What was once an individualized activity done at home on the computer, is transforming how students are able to work together and incorporate technology within educational learning. The virtual escape game is a computer game that puts the gamer in a real life setting, they are locked in a room and they must figure out how to escape through critical thinking, puzzle solving, and connecting clues within the time limit. Within the article, it explains that “The Virtual Escape Room is a great way for your students to work in small groups to solve a mystery together using critical thinking and problem solving. Students learn how to work together in teams, communicate effectively, go through the scientific method, and solve problems creatively.” I love how the scientific method is applied to the game, and how it exemplifies everyday use of the scientific method. Along with gaining educational learning, students gain better social skills in cooperative team work and its helps student to see what makes a good team member. Through collaborative discussion before and after the game, students can gain new knowledge from one another on what worked and what didn’t, how well each group worked together, and also students are able to apply the scientific method to their own understanding. It’s great to see the connections that games are making in the educational world. I think this would be a good activity to do within a middle school science classroom, as it seems they would benefit most. A great tip the article suggests is turning this activity into their own. Meaning, that students could create their own escape room challenge for each other. It’s such a beneficial idea to hold onto, as just like the virtual escape room its opens so many doors to the critical thinking process and further learning along with bursts of imagination, innovativeness, and team building.

http://ilearntechnology.com/wordpress/?p=5577

PLN

PLN (Personal Learning Network) Reflection post

       Within the past few weeks or so, I have been able to explore many new technology outlets (some that I wasn’t aware of before) for educational discovery. Along my journey of discovering my own PLN, I have found a handful of cons and many more pros in using the tools we were asked to use for this assignment. In using Feedly, my RSS feeds consisted of TED Talk videos, TED education, Edutopia, and dictionary.com.  I thoroughly enjoyed using Feedly to access new found information. I generally really like ted talks as I felt that they provide tons of information that easy to follow along with and its constant pushing individuals to think in new perspectives, I think ted talks are great for being well-rounded as a teacher and always consider new perspectives in teaching. The TED education was amazing though, I didn’t know that existed before, it’s quite beneficial  in the classroom in my opinion, for example there was a riddle about lockers, which made a great connect with factors, square roots and prime numbers. This is a perfect example of something that can be add as a classroom activity that is fun but stays on the subject.  For twitter, I followed Edutopia, DML research hub, Lee Kolbert, and Kathy Cassidy. To be honest I didn’t find much interest in twitter as a whole, though I really liked the articles and information that DML research hub was posting. The DML research posts ranged from technology in the classroom- to larger issues that affect education and schools. One of the articles I enjoyed the most was one that discussed the connection teachers must make with their students when having desired technology in the classroom. That the technology itself isn’t going to transform learning but how the teacher implements and uses the tech will be the deciding factor on how or if it transforms that classroom’s learning. In terms of my experience with classroom 2.0 Ning, at first I found it rather confusing and it took me a little bit of time to see where I could find the articles and/ or posts. It was interesting see the things that were posted, such a wide variety of topics that range from tools for the classroom, how to be aware and prevent teacher burnout, and living internationally. The Pros of my PLN experience is the discovery of new information and a wide variety of articles, videos and educational knowledge that are easily accessible in central hubs. My favorite part of the experience is getting to understand Feedly and how it works, and thus discovering TED education videos which I think will be a large benefit to possibly incorporate into my teaching later on. The main cons of this PLN experience, was that it took me a  little while to fully comprehend how to maneuver around  the sites at first, and  it was a struggle for me to see twitter with a clear  mind. I don’t understand the point in twitter for the most part, and I don’t like it as a media site, and I’m not big on hashtags. Though I enjoyed some of the articles I discovered through twitter, I realized that I could also have access to such articles like the ones I found through using Feedly instead of twitter. Even though I will probably only use Feedly as a source in my teaching, in the long run it was a profound learning experience.