קטגוריה: הוראה

My biggest challenge as a teacher-researcher was to figure out what kind of role I should play in the community. The traditional role of the teacher seemed inadequate. I knew that, as active bloggers and communicators, the students would not respond well to a teacher who enters the class blogosphere only to assign work or to evaluate their writing.

Once I started responding to student work in a readerly fashion and participating as a contributor, reader, and not just an evaluator, I realized that it would be unfair to the students to reduce all their rich interactions and complex online presence to a B+ or a 13/15. I realized that I needed to develop an assessment strategy that would take into account the complexity of student interactions online and recognize the process as much as the final product.

Then, I realized that none of the children asked me for feedback. It didn’t take long to realize that, a) they didn’t see me as a contributor in the community, and b) they associated me with corrections and grades. At this stage, they were not ready for corrections yet – they were simply interested in having conversations about their ideas. They needed somebody to talk to and, as their teacher, I was not at the top of their list.

… a teacher who enters a community of independent learners/writers/researchers to support and encourage student learning removes that hierarchical structure and encourages students to become more involved in the assessment process.

… one might be tempted to assume that if a technology is interactive in its natural user environment, it will necessarily be interactive in its academic user environment.

The idea then would be that if you know how to post to a blog, you automatically know how to assign a blog, and that when you do, the results will in most ways mimic the real-world application of the tool.

To the degree to which writing is a self-conscious social act performed with a specific audience in mind, the instructor, as the shaping authority of the “discourse community” is all-powerful and students are constantly aware of that power. This means that despite the importance and desirability of transforming a class into a blogging community, the first and most important reader in every student’s mind remains the instructor.

very few published articles are generated by failed assignments. Success stories are much more marketable; certainly more flattering.

Her analysis of the issues swirling around setting up and evaluating the success of a classroom social blogosphere are dead on. It makes me sense a hollowness in attempting any use of web 2.0 without a strong basis in pedagogy and analysis of the intricate relationships defined and created by each tool. These tools really do require rethinking.

The process benefit accrues when students make selections about what to note and when they use at least some of their own words to record that material. When students record lecture content using their words, it becomes easier for them to connect new material with things they already know. This process benefit is lost when students are provided with complete notes.

The researchers looked at the impact of the complete versus the partial notes on exam scores, final grades, and attendance. They found that those students who received partial notes performed better … and earned significantly higher course grades.

This seems extremely short-sighted to me, and somewhat old-fashioned with regard to what happens in the classroom. It sounds as though the recommendation is based on the idea that professors are going to lecture to the students so don’t give them all the notes. It apparently leaves out the possibility of NOT lecturing constantly and replacing that time with active learning opportunities based on the complete notes that students could have.

I am in a funk. I know I have done a lot this year with implementing constructivist philosophy in my classrooms, trying to more seamlessly integrate technology into my students’ learning, and growing as a learner myself. However, with that all said, I am in a funk.

How did I get here? I guess, sadly, I am depressed about my students’ achievement and focus in class … I just am feeling like a failure with these kids. No matter the assignment or what I feel like is an engaging activity, if the work isn’t done in class and only in class, they won’t do it.

How do I get all of my students to see the value in doing a good job, the value of learning? Am I too hard on them? Do I expect too much from them? Should I quit trying to change the world? ….

It is, admittedly, very difficult to listen to a densely packed essay, with many twists and turns, with a thesis, and then a deliberate modification of that thesis, and then generalizations that account for both the thesis and its exemptions. Difficult. Maybe that was what I was after. Hmmmm. There is so much claptrap about new media, it is possible that not only was I aspiring to modeling for graduate students the way one makes a nuanced and careful argument but also the way one takes seriously an idea about which there is a lot of goofball overgeneralization. “Difficulty” isn’t just an experience but a performative act of its own, one that says “Focus! Attend! Take this Seriously!” I’m not sure whether or not I pulled it off last night, but I think that aspiration to underscore the seriousness of New Media as a topic was partly my motivation (I had a choice until the buzzer and wasn’t entirely sure which I would do, read the paper or talk it more casually). And partly I wanted my paper to be an exemplification of what humanists do.

It is in this context, it seems to me, that teachers are irreplaceable as models of knowledgeable adults grappling with first principles in order to open their students’ understanding. Indeed, surveys have shown that such modeling is critical in students’ responses to their teachers: The two features of an individual instructor’s pedagogy that most engage undergraduates are control of the material and concern with students’ understanding of it. No matter how recondite or obscure the ideas may be, the phenomenon of a grown-up person capable of talking enthusiastically and sequentially can show students how they themselves might someday be able to think things through.

מסתבר כי יש פער ניכר בין יפי התיאוריה לעולם המעשה.

I think there’s an inherent contradiction between the concept of the blog as a personal website and its use in school as a writing platform.

The tough part is time, of course. Jeff was exactly right in that we teachers cannot ADD blogging to what we already do. There is not enough time in the school day, nor in a teacher’s life to do that. So we have to REPLACE part of our practice with blogging (or wikiwork, Tubing, Twittering, whatever).

These new tools can’t be used as add ons. They have to replace existing practices.

IT (Instructional Technology) is indispensable to most educational institutions. Its development and enhancement are crucial to the institution. But does improving IT improve “digital learning”? Sometimes. Not always. Maybe not even often. The reason is that IT is usually institutionalized from the top down whereas digital learning is shared, contributory, collective, collaborative, customizable.

In digital media and learning, the outcomes are less clear, the teachers have less of a determining role, and technology isn’t something delivered to others but is intrinsic to the larger learning project. Its building and application are part of the collective learning experience.

I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about the tools I will use next term with my classes (21classes? Edublogs? Ning? Wikispaces? PBWiki? MindMeister?) only to discover that what I’m really interested in is preparing the ground for learning.

I don’t want to structure and pre-define. I do not want to create a community or a social network for my students. Instead, I want to create the conditions necessary for the right kind of environment to emerge. Building an environment for the students is likely to result in failure: environments and communities need to be built with the students, with their full participation, through their work and their interactions with and about texts. It’s not just about choosing a blogging platform and letting the kids in. We need to move beyond the traditional approach of “pick the tools, add students and stir.”

Unfortunately, my curriculum is still to a large extent dominated by units, lessons, assignments. Those are the realities of teaching and learning in North America in the 21st century – it’s not about the process, it’s about the product.

“We explore, we discover and we share,” she said. And both “are absolutely wonderful jobs.”