My Trouble With the Wiki Assignment and What That is Teaching Me

 The most difficult thing that happened to me this week related to this course was getting started on the Wiki page. I am forced to recognize something about myself. When I feel there is no realistic way I am going to be successful in getting my house as clean as it should be, getting my kids everywhere on time, getting my errands run, meals cooked on time, and my homework assignments done on time I find that I lose the ability to even try. I find myself not plugging in and going full throttle to achieve my goals but instead wandering around my little house accomplishing nothing. It makes no sense and it is the furthest thing from helpful but there I go a-wandering. This week, I looked at the information presented for the wiki page and apparently a part of my brain said, “Nope. Can’t do it. This is for computer-y kind of people or people who are clearly smarter than me.” So I put it off. Every day, several times a day this week I would log back into Blackboard and re-skim the Wiki module and every time I wanted to cry and drop the course. I was frustrated because staring at the computer wasn’t helping me and not staring at the computer wasn’t helping me and I didn’t want to use the Help Forum because it seemed like other people were already plugging away at their pages, including one of my own group members! Getting started on the Wiki assignment was so difficult because I’m honestly just not wired this way. The incredibly nice epiphany I had this week, though, is that I don’t have to be. My group member that has been plugging away at the page admitted that she was confused too but she was at it anyway. I don’t have to be “wired” for this class. If I already knew everything I probably wouldn’t be taking this class anyway! So I’m here to learn. I slowed down and instead of reading and re-reading and watching and re-watching the module information and the YouTube video in a panic I REALLY READ the information provided. While I have contributed basically nothing so far on my page (although I am pretty proud I figured out how to set up a Discussion Link thanks to the Wiki module) and I have no idea if I will be successful in the end, I already feel more sensible, equipped, and eager to get it moving. The answers were right in front of me. I just had to stop assuming I was too inept to read them (basically word for word…duh me) and actually read them. I am posting this blog at the risk of looking like a complete idiot here but it’s been awhile since I’ve had a week where I felt this much like a-wandering around my house pitying my own stupidity! I guess I’m hoping this will provide others with the belief that they are capable of doing things they don’t yet believe they can too if they just slow down and accept the help that is available to them.

GROUP COLLABORATION AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

 Getting to know my group members in this course has been an enjoyable experience. I am really interested in getting to know the person behind the name. I know it sounds crazy but I think sometimes I form my first impression of people from their name alone. It’s not fair and it’s not ok but it’s a personality quirk I have to work with. For instance, I know a three year old named Margaret. She’s beautiful, rambunctious, and ornery when she’s not being so sweet I could just eat her with a spoon. I also know a grown-up Margaret. She’s in her fifties but she acts like she’s eighty and she complains all the time about everything: the weather, the recliner she “has” to sit in even though it’s the “most uncomfortable chair”, the imaginary arthritis in her hands, her husband who is in his sixties but acts like he’s in his twenties. Get the picture? She’s a loveable grouch. I really need this three year old Margaret to be a complaining grouch because that’s just the label I’ve put to the name. My husband wouldn’t let me name our son Joshua because I insisted all “J” names are just good strong names and he said he knows it’s because I had a crush on a guy with a good strong “J” name a long time ago and it’s just creepy to name our kid that! He might be right. That guy a long time ago formed my impression of that name. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a preconceived notion for every name but getting to know my classmates is fun because it’s a chance for me to change these pre-conceived notions of mine and even (I know I know) form some new ones. Learning that many of my group members enjoy the same television shows as me and some of the same hobbies as me makes them real people. They are regular people like me trying to wade through a somewhat terrifying college course. They are confused at times, overwhelmed at times and when all that is over they still have to be a parent, pet owner, spouse, and housekeeper. It’s easy when taking an online course to just decide that you’re the only one overwhelmed with juggling school and life and that it’s easy for everyone else to submit excellent work because they just go to school and hang out! It’s comforting and refreshing to be reminded that my classmates are just as busy as me and in many cases even more so. I learned that one person in my class is not just a student but a dad with a full-time job, pets, AND he’s thinking about home-schooling next year. This encourages me. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this blog and then go finish my laundry and then go ensure that I have everything ready for my son’s lunch tomorrow and then go to dinner at my husband’s colleague’s house and then get two whiny kids to bed and then start over tomorrow and then…. I can do this because my classmates are doing it and they inspire me. I hope I can inspire them too.

  While this has been an enjoyable process, the hardest part about getting to know my classmates is that it can be frustrating to read the tone intended sometimes. I feel like I ramble in my posts because I want to be really sure the readers understand what I am trying to say. If we were face to face it might not take so many words to convey my message. Likewise, I think I would better understand what my classmates are trying to say if it did not get lost in typos and misspelling. Some of us like to write and some of us hate to and, unfortunately, online work can be extremely tedious for those who do not like to write.

  One thing I read in the module for this week that is helpful to me in working on group projects is that it is not only ok but necessary for all group members to be clear about when they are confused. Sometimes I’m more likely to assume I can figure something out from context clues than to just come out and ask someone to explain something to me more thoroughly. I don’t want them to think I’m inept and I don’t want them to think I’m being offensive. This week I actually e-mailed a small group member to ask how to go about contacting her in the correct way for our group assignment! I realized though, that if I slowed down I was able to find the answer to my own question tucked in somewhere. Sometimes I don’t know that I’m looking at the answer because I’m not even sure what it is I’m trying to ask in the first place. The nice part was that this team member admitted she was kind of confused too so I was able to step back a bit and reread the module information.

My Personal Teaching Philosophy

  My role as a teacher is to be an ever evolving learner of my students’ hearts and minds. To be the teacher I know I should be I need to meet my students where they are. The classroom should be student-centered and the teacher’s role one of facilitator. In organizing lessons and groups of students I learn how the students learn, what they know, who they are, and what they need to know to be successful adults both on an academic level and a personal level. I believe it is critical to recognize that children come to me from a variety of different backgrounds including their culture, physical location, religion, SES, language, and family arrangements. That being a foundational fact for me, I know that every child deserves the same drive, motivation, and education from a tireless, dedicated, patient teacher. In fostering their personal growth I recognize that my students thrive when, in addition to a quality education, all basic needs are met and satisfied.  I believe that a basic need for a child is to have their questions answered in a manner that makes them feel that rather than being a hindrance to the class they are instead sparking a new level of insight and development. To create an atmosphere where this is possible much of the activity needs to be in clusters or groups of children where they can refer to one another as colleagues and integral components of their own education. Satiating my students’ burning curiosity for life and how they fit into it is best done when they have the space to pursue their own interests and strengthen the classroom material being taught by exploring it in a personal way that suits them through a constructivist approach.

  Every child has the basic human right to express themselves in the medium most natural to them. Children of all ages must have the opportunity to learn through leisure and communicate through play, language, art, and technology. An effective teacher understands that every child learns differently. I may teach because it fulfills a personal need of mine but the act of my teaching is NOT ABOUT ME. The books I choose, the technology I create or implement, and the activities I plan are NOT ABOUT ME. Once my teaching strategy shifts to one that suits me over my students it is time for me to reconsider my life’s work. My students learn best when what they are learning either affects, is affected by or is relatable to the real life world they live in. When I teach required content in a manner that suits their unique learning style I am ensuring that they know more than the linguistics of the subject but they can also implement it in their lives both for the present and the future. I am helping to grow people. I need to know that I am helping to grow people that will help to grow more people and be an asset to the world of today and tomorrow.

  To provide my students with an educational experience that will force them to dig deeper and drive them to know one more thing and one more thing about a project I feel it is necessary to place them in interchanging groups. In the adult, corporate world they will have to be able to work cooperatively with others to turn in polished results and I am doing them a disservice by not allowing them to build this skill early. Additionally, through socializing with their peers while manipulating subject content, current knowledge is made visible. I can learn how my students interact with others and what they know from their own life experiences and education that is going to impact how I present future lessons. If I am going to build an atmosphere of trust I need them to know that I care about their perceptions and responses to these perceptions they derive from both formal and informal learning.

  Technology will provide me with means to keep my students’ parents involved. Raising a child in this century is a collaborative effort and I want to learn from the families as much as I can and teach them what I know. Technology will assist me in breaking down language barriers to get to the heart of what really needs discussed and it will aid me in presenting lessons to my students using a variety of media so that each family and each student will have the opportunity to plug into a program that really spurs them to reach their potential.

Elements of Teaching Methods and How to Assess Their Success

   There are several ways for one to center instruction in the classroom to ensure the required material is reaching the optimal number of students and serving them in a variety of ways.  If all children are unique in personality and disposition we have to remember that they are unique in their methods of learning and retention as well. While the effective teaching strategies all overlap with one another they also have distinct variables that differentiate the appropriate methods.  One effective teaching strategy is to build a learner-centered classroom. In order to ensure the needs of the students are really being met the instructor must take into consideration what it is the children need to learn versus what they already know. They must evaluate which students have misconceptions about previously presented information and draw these misconceptions to light. Finally, the instructor must take into consideration that their students will learn information they actually care about more efficiently than information that does not appear to hold any relevant bearing in their life. How many of us have sat in a Calculus class and solemnly sworn that we would NEVER use Calculus EVER again no matter what? It might have taken that one special teacher to bring the concepts to life for us so we could see more than just numbers on a page.  Our students do not just exist in our classroom. They go home after school and become avid readers thanks to Star Wars magazines or fine-motor experts due to practice with video games. They go to church on Sunday morning or to any number of sites of worship and are the person their family is counting on them to be. I think our students will be better learners when we present information that applies to them and not just to who they are “supposed to be” because if that worked then we would just tell the students to sit quietly and learn everything on the first try and we would all be wildly successful teachers!  An activity that allows students to be led by their current knowledge and construct their education is one that I will use in my Sunday school class for three year olds. Before beginning the Story of Creation lesson I will start with a felt board activity that requires the students to place the felt scenes in order of how they were created. This tells me a lot about what they already know and how the children feel performing activities in front of their friends. Once the scenes are all in order we dive into the lesson using various media such as puppet shows, books, coloring activities, and songs and movement to find a way to impress the theme on every student in SOME way. To maintain a learner-centered classroom while also making it a knowledge-centered classroom the instructor must keep abreast of where the students are in knowledge and understanding of material. Goals for specific areas of study are set so it can be measured when the students grasp the content. No student should be left behind because the material is too complicated but rather every child has the ability to grasp on if the material is presented in relevant ways, at relevant times. Knowledge-based instruction means that we are teaching more than how to memorize a list of facts. For students to really appreciate subject content they must be able to adapt it to real life and use it in a variety of situations…not just in the unit quiz at the end of the chapter!

  The two forms of assessment that should be used in assessment-centered instruction are formative assessments and summative assessments.  Formative assessments can be considered a friend and desired companion of students! This form of assessment can also be known as professional feedback. Instead of marking a paper “right” or “wrong” and stopping there, a formative assessment returns the paper with feedback on where the student is excelling and where they may have some misconceptions. Students can review what they have been learning and use this feedback to pinpoint where they have gone astray. Summative assessments differ from formative assessments in that they are typically accompanied by a qualitative measurement of their grasp or knowledge of the information studied. The grade given is in response to the assessment and are considered the result of what has been learned.

  Community-centeredness is important to student learning because research has shown time and again that competition does not fuel knowledge in the way that collaboration does. In a community-centered classroom everyone’s expectations and expected outcomes are made plain. In classes with even the youngest of students it is important to dispel any illusions the students might have about what will be taking place in the classroom. One cannot really be upset with a two year old that is screaming for their snack if they have not heard that the class will be having snack as soon as the morning physical activity is finished. If the teacher makes this clear they will understand (whether they like it or not) that snack is only going to be longer in coming if they do not cooperate. Incorporating a community-centered attitude in my classroom means that I accept that not all of the students are going to learn the way I do or in the way that every student I have ever had before them learns. When my students are allowed to bring their frustrations to me and I have a mind open to accepting that some of these frustrations are MY PROBLEM I am fostering an environment where they can learn all material and draw necessary information out of me to do so. In addition, when the students collaborate they end up not just meeting a specified grade goal but retaining true knowledge because of the social interaction combined with the project. One community-centered activity I have used is the Class Carwash. We pull the riding toys out on the pavement and get our buckets, water and sponges. One child runs the cash register and collects the play money from the customers that are lined up on their riding toys. Our mechanics and car washers scrub the vehicles and then the children change places. The children have to sort out who starts with what job! Generally a couple of children take leadership roles but some of the kids need to have someone lead them. Everyone knows going into it that our goal is to help each other by providing a service and if there are questions we all pitch in to figure out how to best answer them. This is a community-centered project because the children all feed off each other and help each other and no one is disillusioned about the expectations of the activity. Through this the kids are learning not just the idea of service but the actual logistics of organizing themselves to help others. They will try to do this when they get home at the end of the day but they will likely not repeat my explanation of how a carwash works to their families because it did not hold much real-time relevance to them.

 An excellent way for an instructor to evaluate their own instruction is through the formative assessments they give to their students. I once had a math teacher say that since so many of us failed a test the problem had to be in her instruction of the material. She learned something from us about her teaching. This can really be done at any time during a learning unit but the instructor should not wait until the unit is over to realize there is a conflict between delivery and reception of material.  How our students use their gained knowledge to aid them in parallel situations is a determining measure of how well we presented the material because often if they have just memorized facts they are unlikely to adapt it to real-life. This is also a test of whether or not the students have become self-evaluative.  Many students are seriously hard on themselves but when they reach the point where they realize that while they may not be able to quip off a list of facts they’ve learned but instead use that information to be successful in other areas they are getting closer to a realistic view of their own achievements. On a preschool level, once their knowledge or capability has been assessed I can foster expansion by use of open ended questions and presenting them with the same material in a different context or through a different media source.

Danielle's Goals!

  It's hard to find a starting point in listing my goals.  Recently I attended a meeting at my son's school where the PTA president was saying that the PTA was able to purchase smartboards for every classroom. I had to pretend I knew what that was! Later that day, my son explained it to me and I googled it for more information. I would like to be knowledgeable in the appropriate uses of smartboards in the classroom. I want to be relevant in the way I teach. I also not only need but desperately want to be able to put together PowerPoint presentations. My husband says I'll think it's easy to do but I think he is greatly overestimating my ability to do anything on the computer. I think PowerPoint presentations come in handy in a variety of forums not to mention in classrooms. While part of me really wants to say that I never want to be able to blog or form a wiki I am strapping on some enthusiasm. After reading some of the links provided in the Blog module I can see how teachers can really use these formats to disperse all the information their students could possibly need. I can see myself using this as a way for my parents to stay connected and consistently updated on what their children are accomplishing while in my care. I feel that my son has made great strides this year because I can supplement what he is learning in kindergarten thanks to his teacher's weekly newsletters letting us know exactly which sight words they are working on and which math skills, etc. If there had been a format like this at his preschool I could have been a much more helpful resource to him. A PowerPoint presentation could be helpful in teaching those parents who are interested in learning how to access wiki links and blogs. I know just enough to know that the possiblities are endless. I am currently able to e-mail like a madwoman and facebook if that helps the reader in understanding just how long this list could be.  I make simple charts on Word and call them spreadsheets so I feel smart. I guess I should consider spreadsheets another goal. These could come in handy not just for professional purposes but for personal uses as well.
  I put this Blog excercise off for as long as I could. I am so intimidated and overwhelmed by this class already. I want to say this was easy enough but perhaps I should wait to see if I did it correctly!