Week 14: Some Reflections

My epiphany this morning is that I need to design my course to be more collaborative. I need to assume that teachers are working in a PLC (or at least encourage that aspect).

Blended learning just isn't fun or engaging if you're the only one doing it. You bear too much of the weight to design the activities or the course.

Additionally, blended learning is not any more engaging than book work, essentially. Kids will still be off task, still cheat, still take shortcuts. So what effectively lessens this reality is collaboration with your colleagues. you have a struggle -- be it a curriculum standard, piece of literature, class management, etc., - and as you work through the blended aspects of the lesson/class,  you make notes for what to discuss with your learning group (PLC, colleagues, etc). You're looking for improvement -- not a success, per se. Improvement in engagement, understanding, critical thinking -- but also improvement in how you as the teacher approach the meshing of 19th-century curriculum with 21st-century skills (Yes, 19th -- let's face it, NOTHING has changed!).

So, as I'm looking to bring some teachers from my school into the Brave New World, it's really not about using technology (in the form of computers, programs, apps, or gaming). It's instead, how can we work together to change our mindsets so we use the skills we want to teach our students?

How do we:

Engage: with each other, with the curriculum, and the technology?

Explore -- ways technology can enhance the curriculum?

Explain: why we use an app/program for this activity or that piece of literature?

Elaborate: to make the lesson interactive but also Modified and Redefined? Or flip Blooms and start with Create rather than Knowledge?

Evaluate: Our efforts at integrating technology/creating a new curriculum; our students' views of learning by using these tools (i.e., the platform doesn't matter, but the thinking does".

Week 13: We Just Need Shortcuts

Description 

This week, I was able to hand out my Tech Tuesday Bingo "game" to teachers who wanted more than 0.1 credit for tech PD. With new licensure updates, K-12 teachers need to have 2.0 CEUs for license renewals every five years. Even knowing this, my district does not advocate/pay for its teachers to go to the NCTIES conference, although the county leadership and some librarians get to go. #BaHumBug

So, I met with seven teachers who wanted to get an hour of credit and talked to them about the Bingo card I designed based on the types of technology we had been learning about this school year. In my original blog post (here), I talked about the reasons for some of my choices. 

Feelings

I actually felt pretty good about the work I had done to make sure the Bingo choices weren't too easy or hard -- like the teachers felt they could succeed at blending technology with their curriculum. As we brainstormed ways individual teachers could use implement a tech activity, I was struck by just how behind the times we are --and it was pretty sad.

Evaluation

I don't say "sad" in a bad way, like my colleagues and I are purposefully not using technology, I say that because we are set in our ways and see technology as more of a distraction (cell phones) rather than ways we might harness blended learning to meet our kids' educational needs. One of the Bingo choices is to have students email a summary of the lesson for the day, and one of my colleagues said something to the effect of "Our kids don't email." This is true, and so inappropriate for 2019. But the kids don't email us because we don't require it - not because they wouldn't. 

Conclusion 

So, in the end, the teachers were looking for shortcuts for the 1.0CEU. Things like "Can I tweet a gif and get credit for two choices" just make me angry. One teacher "finished" her whole project during one class period -- not the point of the game, but...

Action Plan

After my teacher survey and this Bingo fiasco, I'm making changes to my Canvas course for this practicum. I hoped to be able to use these small pieces as the Canvas modules, but that's not going to work. If I don't add in a collaboration piece, the teachers I work with won't see tech as tools to use to make the curriculum more engaging, but as just another hoop to jump through. 

Week 12: Some Data

Description - As I'm working through a Canvas class on blended learning, I kept thinking about conversations I've had with colleagues about using tech in our classes. We complain a lot when we're trying something new, but we haven't done anything formal about learning specifics of the issues we have integrating technology in our instruction. So, I found a survey: Quick Teacher Technology Survey.

Evaluation - As I looked at the results of the survey, I saw some general ideas recur. One, we don't feel that we have enough time to collaborate in ways to integrate technology smoothly in our curriculum. That's not to say that we don't use technology or that we don't find cute ways to use it to engage our students. But tech isn't a third appendage like a book is for an English teacher. Even when you think about all the important areas where tech can be an asset, we still see its use as an "extra" rather than a redefinition of the curriculum. I think that puts our students at a disadvantage with others who are competing for college spots or future careers. Two, we don't see the use of tech as transformative -- meaning, we know we should use tech for application, but in actuality, we use it only for the mundane things we don't like to grade -- like for word processing rather than handwriting a paper. Third, there's no sense of on-going professional development. We think of anything we get as a one-and-done. This most likely normal, but for blended learning, it seems that teachers need, IDK, a support group? :-)

Analysis - So, for my Canvas class, I think I'm going to redesign the intro pieces to include a "why" for blended learning, as well as be sure I set it up so teachers can collaborate with another person. If I'm designing a course where teachers can see the impact of blended learning, then it feels right that they experience it as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity (the 4Cs of 21st education). I just haven't worked out how to do that yet. What if no one is working at the same time?

Action Plan - My work this coming week is to change up my opening unit -- maybe based off a survey like this one that the teacher will rank their concerns for interest or improvement, then they begin their learning journey in different spots --like instead of going through the course linearly, it would be more like a Choose Your Own Adventure--if having kids create a webpage is your most important, then click that tab, but if learning to use smartphone apps is cool, click that tab. This would make my course more like a (learning) game than a stuffy PD. I also need to incorporate some space for teachers to write/reflect on their collaborations with colleagues and show how they are working together to create blended units/lessons.