In your blog, consider reflecting on your journey towards 21st century teaching practices (or leading them). After reading about what is expected (in terms of the standards, 4Cs, etc) and the path the journey takes, what are you feeling? What can you do in your classroom/school to engender 21st century teaching and learning? What do you need to learn? Include your thoughts related to the Darling-Hammond readings, too, as they apply.
After our readings this week; I feel very excited about returning to the classroom. Prior to the pandemic, I felt I had encorporated critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity in my everyday lessons. In addition, I had measureable increases in students success with my instructional practices, strutures, purpose, and culture. I understood that we are "educating kids for a future that we are not yet familar with" (Linda Darling-Hammond). And, of course; I had technology in the classroom and I was using innovative teaching techniques. However, after almost a year of teaching in the virtual distance learning classroom, I have realized I was not using technology and innovative practices as best as I could. I had laptops in my classroom. I taught the kids to log-in. I taught them how to access iRead and S.T. Math. I taught them how to go to napa county of education and log into the student safe portal. That was the extent of my 21st century teaching. Now after learning all the new tools and how to really implement in my classroom. I am reminded of the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow; students need thinking skills the ability to learn and reason, to think creativitely, make decisions and solve problems. In prior years of teaching, my student did not have the ability (in the most part) to make decsions or solve problems. I am currently using so many different ways of teaching my curriculum that my students are reminding me to include google forms, seesaw activites, quizz, kahoots, emails, google slides, and private group work in breakout rooms! I am now thinking of how when I am in-person with a WHOLE group of students what my classroom will look like as an innovative 21st century teaching environment. In the Flat World of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond states the following," Instead of investing directly in teachers' knowledge, a bureaucracy was constructed to prescribe, manage, and control the work of teachers, deflecting funds from the classroom." As many of us have stated in this Cohort, we and our peers have a lot more technology then we have ever had before. A huge part of this was it was a necessity for teachers to be trained in this innovative skills. Teachers were paid to go to new trainings for technology, we have experts we can contact (and will contact you back), we have a digital platform that has allowed us to form innovative and higher level thinking virtual classrooms. As I stated, I am excited to go back to the classroom and to continue the 21st century teaching and innovative lessons. However, I am not excited to go back to the rote-learning that the majority of the public feels children need to be educated inviduals.
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When I first started looking for articles and research for my topic; how to demonstrate deeper learning in our virutal distance learning; it was very diffcult for me to find research. However, after reading John Hattie's book; Visible Learning, I realized there was quite alot of information and research to support my IRB and my ARP. Hattie for me is standing out as a master in reserach in as he states in the article, Learning Strategies; a syynthesis and conceptual model by John C. Hattie and Gregory Donoghue www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201613; "it is best not to run separate sessions on learning strategies but to embed the various strategies within the content of the subject, to be clearer about developing both surface and deep learning, and promoting their associated optimal strategies and to teach the skills of transfer of learning." When I look at visuals like the one above, it helps me to understand how I am going to map out the Action Research for my driving question. I can demonstrated transfer of higher level thinking in my distance virtual classroom, I just have to use all of the tools for my students to achieve this transfer of surface knowledge of second grade standards to the deep understanding and the shift to higher level thinking. Another great resource for my IRB and ARP is the research done by the Common Sense Media on kids from zer to eight and the analysis of online activity of children. www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-kids-age-zero-to-eight-2020?j=8085517&sfmc_sub=170645953&l=2048712_HTML&u=157812502&mid=6409703&jb=92&utm_source=edu-ka_youtube-0-8-launch_20201117&utm_medium=email "This report is part of a series of probability-based surveys documenting media-use patterns among children from birth to age 8 in the U.S. The 2020 survey includes a nationally representative sample of more than 1,440 parents from all regions of the country, from lower- and higher-income families, with over-sampling of Black and Hispanic/Latinx parents to enable analysis by demographic factors within racial and ethnic groups." This resource from Common Sense Media is been an excellent reference for my Action Research Plan as it is from 2020 and has a great content that I have been referencing. As illustrated in Figure C; children from the ages of 0-8 years old are watching online videos 37% and Subscription services 29% of total viewing. This finding allowed me to get excited that when children attend my second grade classroom at the age of 7; it can be assumed that children are highly familar with online virtual acess. There is a skill and a will; I just need to do the thrill to see the higher level of thinking that does occur in my virtual distant classroom. The Common Sense Media research additonally allowed my to process my methology of my research and how to analyze and understand the data that I will be requiring. Another visual that I enjoyed analyzing and applying to my driving question was the following from the Common Sense Media research: Table like this have allowed me to understand where the 5 to 8 is expierencing in online videos. In reference to the top diagram of a model of learning: There is a skill and a will; I just need to master the thrill for my students to illustrate the higher level of thinking that does occur in my virtual distant classroom.
As Sir Ken Robinson pointed out in "Bring on the Learning Revolution" Ted talk, the two words that do stand out in Abraham Lincoln's speech is: "rise with". For me, this is exactually what my fellow teachers and I have down in the past seven months of this school year, we have risen with the occasion of the distance virtual learning classroom. For me, I have been developing my innovative classrooms through synchronous learning and asynchronous learning. I have introduced many digital platforms for my students to show their learning like Seesaw, Flipgrids, Edpuzzle, Kahoots, and google forms/slides. I, as an educator have understood that in the case of distance virual learning is new so I must think and act anew. However, I feel sometimes there is a linear narrative as Sir Ken Robinson states with education and we must have an evolution of the desired results of teaching. What drives me as an educator is that I want my students to understand the enjoyment of learning new things. As the young Dalton Sherman asks, "do you believe?" Yes, I believe my students will reach thier highest potential with my help and teaching. I want to support my students in whatever platforms helps them succeed in their own personal potential. I agree with the concept of we don't really know what the jobs of the future are going to be, so for me I must teach my students to have a desire to learn new things, how to overcome struggles while learning new things, and the happiness of learning new concepts. I want all my students to be authentic to their true self.
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