Prompt: Discuss your understanding, connections, and ah-ha’s in light of Eddie Obeng’s Smart Failure for a Fast Changing World Ted Talk.
Response: I really enjoyed this video, and it really makes me feel like I am on the right track with regard to my driving question. Don't get me wrong, I am still a bit confused and more than bit stressed, but this video really highlights for me the major issue with our test based education system. I understand the need to assess. We have to find a way to understand where students are mentally and what they have learned. But I refuse to believe that bubbling in multiple choice tests is an effective way to gage learning. Not only to I believe it is ineffective, but it have driven education styles that suppress creativity, curiosity, and innovation. Being "correct" is taught as good. Doing something that doesn't lead to unwavering success is considered "wrong" and therefore bad. As I have dove into learning more about a blended learning environment, I have really focused on engagement and self efficacy. I think these aspects also tie into learning to collaborate and compromise. All skills that make life long learners. My big take awau from this video ties into my biggest hurtle when it comes to my paper. The big question that keeps popping up is "how do you measure success with this model". It has been looming over me like a dark cloud, and I really don't have an answer. In fact, I get a little frustrated at the thought and I think this video highlighted why. In a blended learning environment where students spend classroom time collaborating and engaging in material, I don't expect them to come to a "correct" and uniform decision. I want them to explore and try things that do not work. I want them to make claims, however absurd, and make them do the research to either defend their claim or change it. This all requires time. Even more specifically, this requires different amounts of time for different students. How do you gauge that???? At this point I am just rambling because I really dont have a solution to the "how to gauge success" question quite yet. I just know that the more I read/watch regarding this subject matter, the more I am sure of the direction I am headed. The destination just keeps getting fuzzier.
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Prompt: Reflect on the evolution of your study design (reference your journey through the ARP outline) and how unpacking your Driving Question has developed to this point in your innovative learning journey.
Response: Walking into this class I really did not have a clear direction with regard to what I wanted my capstone to be. I knew that engagement in the classroom was something that I slightly obsess over which leads to me doing some unconventional things and activities. When I was looking into getting a masters, this specific program stood out to me because of my background and my focus. The process of trying to figure out a driving question has been nothing short of excessively difficult. It felt like I walked into the program with so much choice. Then, we started research. The combination of already being overwhelmed with possibilities, and then being presented with a ton of info and theory was ALOT to juggle and make sense of. I eventually started drafting my question and the main subject became engagement (surprise). The issue I knew I would have was that "engagement" is such a broad word and can mean so many different things. So what I started to do was try to list out figure out what engagement looked like in a classroom in my eyes. That is where I started to really look into self-efficacy. I'm really happy with that portion of my focus because I believe that, in my practice, that is the goal. I really had to ask myself, "what is the goal of being engaged?". Sound silly, but it really got me to that term "self-efficacy". As I move forward, I haven't gotten all of the details of my question ironed out, but I am trying to create a driving question with a rather narrow lens so that I do not feel overwhelmed and scattered. I think my research and overall capstone will be more useful if my focus is whittled down to a specific topic. In the last week or so I have been playing with some research on blended learning and the specific model of a flipped classroom that falls within that, but nothing is set in stone quite yet. Prompt: You may consider the elements of ‘SITE’ and the needs of your learners or audience(s). How does SITE apply to you as a learner?
Response: Before I dive into my thoughts specifically on a portion of the SITE model, I wanted to articulate that I find that the more I read about SITE, Dervin, Clark, and Baggio, I am becoming less focused on what my driving question is. I felt as though I was on a certain path with regard to what I wanted to focus on but now that I read more into the texts, I am taking a step back and realizing that my question is rather broad and may not even be the focus that I actually want to pursue in this program. The texts are rather easy to understand (Dervin being a bit more on the complex side) yet I feel less and less able to conceptualize some driving question that is supported by the texts. That being said, when looking at the SITE model in particular I did find out something rather interesting about myself. I consider myself a rather "tech forward" teacher. I am young and therefore my undergrad greatly revolved around technology. That means that it is rather easy for me to pick up new tools and feel comfortable in a rather short period of time using them. Then we fast forward to this class and the instruction to start using Twitter. I have never used twitter before and when the instruction to create an account was given, I didn't think much of it. When navigating Twitter a few weeks back during class, I was so UNCOMFORTABLE. I was completely lost, and even though I hobbled along, I did not like how foreign and unmanageable it seemed to me at the time. I felt rather frustrated. Then it kind of hit me- I can not remember the last time I felt so confused and frustrated at a tech tool. I also felt silly because I know it is supposedly an extremely user-friendly platform, and here I was completely thrown off. It was then that I was able to catch a glimpse of what my students or other professionals feel like repeatedly when introduced to tech, especially when their lives hadn't already revolved around tech in the past. Though this does not connect directly to a piece of literature from class, I think it was a great learning moment and really made me think of the "Technical" and "Informational" part of the SITE model. I tend to have all of these grand plans for how to engage students, but if they arent able to use the tools in my classroom properly (and more importantly, confidently) then there isnt going to be much information processing going on. The students may be engaged, but it won't be because they are learning. Prompt: Take a moment to try and make sense of how you might use what you’ve explored in your next round of designing action research for your driving question.
Response: My driving question, though still in the works, focuses on how educators can go beyond maintaining attention in the classroom and instead create a vested interest. This is with the recognition that not every subject is going to be inherently "interesting" to every student, yet still I believe there are ways in which educators can capture curiosity and enthusiasm no matter the subject area. When going through my credentialing program there way a lot of focus on the "hook" of a lesson which I do believe is very important, but after that initial attention grabber, focus shifted to assessment. Formative assessment is vital, but as Baggio had mentioned in Chapter 6, transferring working knowledge into long term knowledge is something to focus on as well. That is why I am so interested in student buy in. The most useful aspect of this weeks readings I fount to be my assigned ID Model of ARCS. Though I have some personal issues with the set up, I like this strategy as a base for teachers to reference and think of when designing the classroom. The "A" in ARCS addresses that Hook that I had spoken on earlier, but the rest of the model addresses how motivation can be promoted throughout the lesson. I say this could work as a base because it does not directly address the structure of classroom instruction or lesson, rather it gives a more birds eye view of what all instruction should provide to students. Things such as clear goals, specific criteria, varied challenging instruction, and actionable feedback. With regard to referencing the SITE Model as it relates to my driving question- I think that is a bit out of my scope at this point. I will have to revisit this model at some point because the the combination of factors in this model (such as socioeconomic, informational, etc) are vital when trying to examine what motivates students and how a classroom should look in order to create student buy in. That being said I am still at such a shallow level of trying to piece together the basis of how I want to approve student motivation that those layered aspects must come later. Prompt: Relate the reading key concepts to your learning in the context of how your students make sense of your classroom. Apply what you’ve just read to your own learning and teaching experience. (Link to Reading notes)
Response: To begin, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first three chapters of "The Visual Connection" after the Dervin article. The Dervin article was a read that took me a while to digest, but gave broad and thought provoking theories about the human experience. I believe that the first three chapter of "The Visual Connection" took that deep theory and made it easily understandable and dove deeper into the technical portion of Dervin's "gap bridging". The concept that Dervin laid out was that "nothing we perceive is real", which is theoretically understandable, but hard to visualize. "The Visual Connections" breaks that concept down into perception, visualization, and imagination. These terms are comprehensible in a practical sense- while I believe Dervin was not so focused on applicability, rather a deep dive into the theory itself. With regard to my own teaching experience, something that was mentioned in both The Visual Connection and Clark Chapter 1-2 is that being an expert at something does not make you a good educator. I find this to be such a true statement and an idea that has changed over my first couple of years in the teaching world. This is also fascinating to me because I have always had an interest in academia, and yet my understanding of education was so warped and is still being transformed. This, I believe, is a testament to how we educate. As I go through different programs to improve my practice, I see the immense amount of research that has shown how the understanding of educating humans has changed over time, yet the way in which our education system is set up has not changed significantly in any respect. This does not only speak to how schools are structured, but also how classrooms are ran. My idea of how to educate is highly affected by the research I do. That is then aided by the courses I take that help show me how to implement my knew found ideas regarding academia. I then have opportunity to use my classroom as a "test kitchen" for that. For many teachers that do not take a deep dive into theoretical research, there is no way for them to know any differently. This is not to mention that even if teachers were to engage in that type research, there could be no change still. For one, understanding theory versus how to apply that theory are completely separate hurdles. Secondly, in a testing centered education system, even if applicability was a non-issue, teachers may not receive the support they need to implement this in classrooms on a mass scale. Prompt: Dervin Article Response
Response: This article was rather interesting with regard to its approach to researching. This article focuses on how humans "make sense" of things and uses that as a spring board into types of research that go beyond the quantitative and truly give you a look into the workings of a given human's mind and their rational (conscious or not) behind their things such as their view of reality or their view of self. This article started off broad as I believe that it was trying to set the precedent that factors that are defined by time-space are simply the medium in trying to understand how humans make sense of things rather than the defining factors. Before reading the entire article, I have to say that the first few pages does strip down every facet of human experience and label it blankets it with the characteristic of "discontinuity", leaving me to wonder how a person could go about researching and defining anything if nothing is can be relied upon as structural sound or universally "matter of fact". It wasn't until the introduction of "gap bridging" that I started to actually digest what I believe Dervin was trying to point out. I do enjoy that Dervin stripped my sense of rigid criterium for analysis down before introducing their proposed strategies of analysis. I found the idea of "gap bridging" to be a rather interesting one. I also found it rather interesting how Dervin continually re-emphasized that though people's realities' may be shaped by their race, socioeconomic status, situation in time-space, etc., humans responses and way in which they bridge gaps are not defined by those factors. Dervin proposes many strategies in order to conduct interviews and research in ways that have participants reconstruct scenarios that have already occurred. Depending on the purpose of research, different aspects can be emphasized but what was really striking to me was something that was mention towards the beginning of the article. Dervin mentions that many times when research is conducted, researches propose questions that unintentional shape their research. This is done when the institution (which could be whatever commonality brought the researcher and the interviewee into that discussion) is treated as the constant- As the essential or the "non-actor". Question then must be answered in relation to that essential. If the researcher is attempting to understand how a human or collective body "makes sense" of a certain situation, this will not produce a qualitative result. Overall, I rather enjoyed this article. I believed that I was going to read it in small sections, but ended up reading it in one sitting for both the reason that it was enjoyable but it was challenging enough that I felt the need to stay within the same line of thinking in order to properly make connections. In theory it was a rather "light bulb" moment in terms of my pursuit into understanding human nature, but once I got to the "Exemplars" it felt rather difficult to truly understand how to implement such a practice. That being said, I think that in my own realm, I can understand how understanding different human responses to gap-bridging could be useful when understanding how to educate youth. I think that a lot of the data that exists in terms of how to educate a population is highly based on surface level aspects that Dervin mentions in the beginning of the article and those factors do not tell you much about humans "make sense" of problems, situations, and reality. Prompt: What are you passionate about in your teaching practice? And, what has been a niggling question in the back of your mind, or a nagging one each time you try to address a challenge? Tell us more about it.
Response: In terms of teaching, I think my specific passion stems a lot from my childhood. I grew up with many siblings, all of which are creative and intelligent in their own way. I emphasize the term "in their own way" because as I grew up I realized that some of my siblings' intelligence was not recognized in the classroom. I would see them struggle, and it became very frustrating to watch my brothers lose their thirst for learning. Not only that but it made them question their ability to be successful after graduation. I know this story is far from uncommon, and as I began to take a deeper look at education and the structural flaws that serve certain types of learners while condemning others, I found my passion to create a different type of learning environment. I have always worked with youth and have felt that my place would be in that realm, but what truly drives me to pursue this avenue of education is the recognition that there is a rigid and narrow path to success within classrooms that is avoidable. My big "nagging" question is how do we create a classroom environment where learning is not solely gauged towards test taking, but rather, structured around exploring and collaborating. I believe that if classrooms were to change in that way, the different minds of young people, such as my brothers, would flourish. |
AuthorGrace Ingersoll Archives
May 2021
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