SHOWCASE
Introduction
Throughout the MAET program, I had one lingering question: “How do we ensure that each student is successful and that our time as educators is spent effectively?"
Although intricate, the answer to this question became apparent as I engaged deeply in the material presented by various MAET courses. Indeed, for meaningful learning to take place, educators must create student-centered classrooms that engage ALL students in active learning. With a student-centered approach, teachers who were viewed as mere dispensers of knowledge are viewed as guides for students to discover and experience content. Also, infusing learning with technology adds another aspect to the modern teacher’s role. Today, a teacher is expected to find ways to capitalize on students’ technology skills channeling them into learning experiences that engage learners in critical thinking and creativity. From here and inspired by the new changing educator’s role, I believe that a modern educator must believe in students, engage them and empower them to become successful 21st-century learners.
Here, I present a showcase of my MAET coursework categorized in three main themes that help educators;
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Believe in Them
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Engage Them
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Empower Them
This work displayed below also signifies experiences that shaped my thinking and perspective on what is necessary to prepare our students to face the challenges of tomorrow and urged me to reflect on my role as an educator and technology specialist in cultivating a safe, engaging and innovative classroom.
Believe in Them: Teachers should continuously express their confidence in students' ability to succeed regardless of their cultural differences, learning preferences, or special needs. With these examples, I exemplify how technology can enable ALL students to participate meaningfully in the learning process.
I have collaborated with my think tank of CEP 812 classmates to study and explore the wicked problem of failure as a learning mode. We suggest implementing project-based learning enhanced with gamification, integrating grit and growth mindset and using adaptive learning technologies to enhance motivation and limit students' fear of failure. In essence, this work suggests that teachers' belief in students' abilities and teachers' commitment and effort are what drive students' rigor. Also, digging deeper into the notion of failure in learning allowed me to self-reflect on my own failures and focus on the lesson learned and the opportunities and growth that resulted from them.
Embrace Failure
Teaching, as the word implies, is about teachers; learning, however, is about students. In this paper, I highlight that for transfer of knowledge to happen, learning processes should focus on active learning, the inclusion of all students through collaborative learning and allowing them to discover and do things themselves with technology. As an educator, I am now more aware and attentive of students' preferences and interests and enjoy crafting learning experiences infused with technology that cater to all students no matter their differences.
My Personal Learning Theory
After conducting a literature review on the impact of blogging on language learning in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context, I conclude that with the advancement of technology, Internet blog has gained its popularity in the educational realm due to its benefits in enhancing EFL students' basic language skills as well as in boosting their motivation. This synthesis of findings led me to devise a plan for encouraging teachers to consider and use the benefits of blogging in affording students the opportunity to realize that one's voice echoes in distant parts of the globe and motivates students to focus on language learning.
The Impact of Blogging on EFL Learners
Engage Them: As educators, we want to make learning joyful, challenging and engaging. Using authentic learning tasks and technology, teachers can provide strategies and means to re-engage those students who, through a lack of motivation, fail to meet their full learning potential.
For this lesson plan, I worked with a fifth-grade teacher on creating a project-based learning activity that involves virtual field trips. This cross-curricular activity guides students to reflect and research, discover and create a model community on Mars. Such activities provide students with authentic tasks that help foster a student-centered environment where students are engaged in constructing meaning while getting exposed to a real-world problem. Practicing designing an authentic activity with this lesson plan inspired my later work on collaborating with teachers in my school to re-design and edit current social science and science lesson plans to make them come to life with technology tools such as virtual field trips.
Living on Mars Lesson Plan
As this course aimed at deepening our thinking about "new media" text and tools, I was able to capitalize on affordances associated with these "new media" by designing and creating a course webpage featuring new media text-tools activities for the Grade 3 unit of study "Weather Versus Climate". For this unit's webpage, I integrated technology meaningfully by selecting text-tools to suit a variety of teaching and learning situations, and meet the needs of diverse learners in order to ensure that they are engaged in this unit's material and learning.
Weather Vs. Climate WebPage
In order to demonstrate how assessment can be made and delivered virtually through a content management system, I created a course on Schoology to deliver virtual professional development for teachers in my school on Schoology features and to assess them on the training material provided. The lessons in the course are designed to engage teachers by exposing them to hands-on opportunities where they explore tools and create useful and meaningful products that can be used in their own teaching. After creating this Professional Development Schoology course, I was inspired to use this idea for a New Teacher Technology Orientation Course that houses lessons for technology system basics at our school.
Professional Development Through Schoology
Empower Them: Modern society needs innovation more than compliance, but how do we ensure that technology empowers students to become creators, makers, and innovators? How about searching for tools that allow students to get creative in demonstrating their learning by designing and producing, rather than regurgitating information? Here, I present a few examples of how to use technology to empower learners.
In CEP 811, we focused on repurposing, playing, creating and making. Using a Makey Makey invention kit, video, audio, online resources, everyday objects, and programming tools I was able to create a game to assess students on Digital Citizenship concepts. With this creation tool, I definitely experienced the excitement of "making". I believe that such unconventional techniques that empower creativity are key to enhanced engagement and learning.
Digital Citizenship with Makey Makey
Minecraft is about building and placing blocks. In a Minecraft game that I created to assess students, students will face many challenges that they have to think creatively to overcome. As the game harnesses problem-solving skills, it also builds rigor and persistence in students. I think that Minecraft provides many ways for teachers to empower students to be creators across many subject areas. A math teacher can build an assessment activity around fractions and proportions, a language arts teacher can use it to assess students on creating and telling of stories, a science teacher can test students on the earth layers knowledge for example by asking them to make it in Minecraft. The possibilities are endless in this and I felt intrigued to take this tool to our librarian and principal and demonstrate its use for creating.