Today's presentations about the select online organization tools was surprisingly helpful. I say surprisingly because I already go out of my way to maintain a really organized life using online features, so I had somewhat discounted the idea of learning new things. Doing so would inevitably mean just moving all the work I've done into another program, I thought. While that may be true, it turns out the people who designed these things do actually know something about organization.
I have long been familiar with Google Drive and feel very comfortable using it. I create and share a lot of documents on there; and have found it especially helpful for academic purposes over the past few years. We also used it a lot at my job in City Year to share files with the other volunteers in our school. For that, Drive was extremely helpful. However, I don't see much of a practical use for it in the classroom other than making documents available to students to collaborate on, but this requires them to set up Google accounts and have access to collaborate either on school devices or at home.
Evernote is set up very similar to how I arrange my own bookmarks in my web browser. My girlfriend has been pushing it on me for a while, and I can honestly say that trying it was overdue. However, this is a case of where my own organization being SO similar might make integrating it unnecessary. That said, it does offer several features that a bookmark tab system cannot. These features include reminders, pictures, attachments, screenshots, text notes, and lists. It's really handy to organize a variety of things in one setting, and having it all automatically sync to a mobile device is especially nice. If I find myself wanting to tag more pages that I find with teaching resources or articles for students to read, Evernote is an extremely good option to organize those things. I am also toying with the idea of using it in my own studies to create notebooks for different days with the various CTools readings and document attachments all in one place. Unfortunately, use in the classroom may be impractical for this as well because of concerns over device availability.
Lastly, I was especially intrigued by the BlendSpace site. This was also the most confusing one to me because I have never seen anything like it. I will have to play around with it more to see how I could personally benefit from using it to organize my professional life. So far, I think i could see myself using it to merely generate ideas for lessons, even if I don't take advantage of the sharing options like making it available for a class to view and interact with. It seems to have a lot of resources and search mediums that are extremely unique and helpful. I hope to make use of this in the future.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Playing History
Gee's essay about educational video games (both of the formally educational variety and the casual, leisure variety) raised some interesting points about the cognitive processes used to complete tasks and levels in a given game. While I had not previously discounted video games as uneducational, let alone useless or mindless, I am also not traditionally of the opinion that gaming for pleasure and gaming with the purpose of learning can be united. What's more, I'd go so far as to say that I don't think video games are capable of teaching both subject-area knowledge AND entertain the masses. Gee demonstrates the procedural knowledge that can be developed, but how useful is that alone in one's real life (if the conversation becomes about using video games in the classroom)?
On the other hand, if we talk about the practicality of supplementing classroom instruction with explicitly educational video games like some of the ones we were able to test out before this class, the questions becomes: "is this game worth it?" Games take time; the seemingly positive interaction that is implicit in using an interface requires time to interact with, as does setting up characters and reading instructions. Is the added benefit of entertainment worth the possible distractions that could arise?
One thing Gee said that I really liked was that video games offer up low-risk scenarios in which students are able to fail with little consequence. This is definitely one thing that video games offer that cannot be rivaled in traditional classroom instruction. The closest thing is when teachers allow students to re-submit assignments or tests to improve their grades, but this requires more time and the student still received a quantifiable measurement of his or her failure. Video game failures result in simply losing one of many lives, or being asked to continue from a last-saved point. In this regard, video games have a lot to offer a classroom, even if just in encouraging a mindset.
I especially find the integration of video games into education impractical when considering how they would be used in my own subject area (history). While I am a firm believer that history is fully alive, relevant, and even changing, my existing knowledge of types of video games does not produce a meaningful use for them in a history classroom. I had the opportunity to try out a few of such games before class today, and I found them to be extremely boring and slow. The "interaction" that is supposed to be a strength of video games was mundane and limited; it really wasted more time than it added entertainment or procedural knowledge. The only tasks were to read a short bit of information and then answer a question, which is not much different from a traditional in-class assignment other than that students could do so by watching the animated character of their choice traverse across a room and back. History can be shown to be all of those things I believe it is when history teachers use things like narratives and pictures to make the past come to life. Perspectives must be shown. Simply asking students to memorize knowledge the've read in a video game does not utilize the gaming interface nor enhance a history lesson.
Hopefully someday a designer more intelligent than myself will find a way to blend leisure and learning, but for now I don't anticipate "playing history" being a part of my initial pedagogical repertoire.
On the other hand, if we talk about the practicality of supplementing classroom instruction with explicitly educational video games like some of the ones we were able to test out before this class, the questions becomes: "is this game worth it?" Games take time; the seemingly positive interaction that is implicit in using an interface requires time to interact with, as does setting up characters and reading instructions. Is the added benefit of entertainment worth the possible distractions that could arise?
One thing Gee said that I really liked was that video games offer up low-risk scenarios in which students are able to fail with little consequence. This is definitely one thing that video games offer that cannot be rivaled in traditional classroom instruction. The closest thing is when teachers allow students to re-submit assignments or tests to improve their grades, but this requires more time and the student still received a quantifiable measurement of his or her failure. Video game failures result in simply losing one of many lives, or being asked to continue from a last-saved point. In this regard, video games have a lot to offer a classroom, even if just in encouraging a mindset.
I especially find the integration of video games into education impractical when considering how they would be used in my own subject area (history). While I am a firm believer that history is fully alive, relevant, and even changing, my existing knowledge of types of video games does not produce a meaningful use for them in a history classroom. I had the opportunity to try out a few of such games before class today, and I found them to be extremely boring and slow. The "interaction" that is supposed to be a strength of video games was mundane and limited; it really wasted more time than it added entertainment or procedural knowledge. The only tasks were to read a short bit of information and then answer a question, which is not much different from a traditional in-class assignment other than that students could do so by watching the animated character of their choice traverse across a room and back. History can be shown to be all of those things I believe it is when history teachers use things like narratives and pictures to make the past come to life. Perspectives must be shown. Simply asking students to memorize knowledge the've read in a video game does not utilize the gaming interface nor enhance a history lesson.
Hopefully someday a designer more intelligent than myself will find a way to blend leisure and learning, but for now I don't anticipate "playing history" being a part of my initial pedagogical repertoire.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Self Assessment
Our time working with the Scarlett middle schoolers is now half over; our summer semester of classes more than half so. In just a few short weeks we will be placed in schools where into which we will integrate ourselves and, eventually, design our own lessons. And with lessons, assessments. That our students will take. For a grade.
As goes the popular sentiment that our students are the future, so too are we theirs (in a sense).
I'd like to take this space to reflect not only on today's and this week's discussions about assessments (specifically of the standardized variety) but also to address the fact that we are the future of the education system. We will be instrumental in designing in-class assessments and preparing our students for the bigger, state-mandated ones. We will be assessed, ourselves, in return. And we are already halfway done with our first term.
...
Ok, so we still do have nearly eleven months left, so there is hope. Besides, we will be getting more hands-on experience and personalized guidance once we actually begin working in the school, so there is also structure. The past two days' emphasis on testing and accountability have probably just shaken my confidence a bit. I can recall having new teachers at various times in my formal education, and many of them seemed fully functional and competent in spite of their [in]experience. Yet I can't help but think about how the assessments in our own futures as those inexperienced teachers are dictated in large part by those who are 1) not the people designing the assessments, 2) not the people implementing them, and 3) not the people who's careers are contingent upon their success. What are we supposed to do now to prepare to be assessed then? To what aspect of the profession should we devote the most attention and practice?
The obvious answer to me is on how to facilitate higher-level thinking. But then how does one balance that with SEL? How does one maintain his own content-specific knowledge? The state apparently doesn't care that we take the time to complete the PRE if our 16-year old selves scored high enough on yet another standardized test. It all just seems so arbitrary, and that the purpose of education--the purpose of school--gets lost. The students get lost.
What is getting in our way from being able to simplify the formal public education system and just have it be some Dewey-an utopia of student-centered social development and practical assessments? Why have schools become so politicized?
As I continue to go through this program, I will continue to assess myself and try to articulate some of these answers. But I know, as always, I'll have plenty more to learn.
As goes the popular sentiment that our students are the future, so too are we theirs (in a sense).
I'd like to take this space to reflect not only on today's and this week's discussions about assessments (specifically of the standardized variety) but also to address the fact that we are the future of the education system. We will be instrumental in designing in-class assessments and preparing our students for the bigger, state-mandated ones. We will be assessed, ourselves, in return. And we are already halfway done with our first term.
...
Ok, so we still do have nearly eleven months left, so there is hope. Besides, we will be getting more hands-on experience and personalized guidance once we actually begin working in the school, so there is also structure. The past two days' emphasis on testing and accountability have probably just shaken my confidence a bit. I can recall having new teachers at various times in my formal education, and many of them seemed fully functional and competent in spite of their [in]experience. Yet I can't help but think about how the assessments in our own futures as those inexperienced teachers are dictated in large part by those who are 1) not the people designing the assessments, 2) not the people implementing them, and 3) not the people who's careers are contingent upon their success. What are we supposed to do now to prepare to be assessed then? To what aspect of the profession should we devote the most attention and practice?
The obvious answer to me is on how to facilitate higher-level thinking. But then how does one balance that with SEL? How does one maintain his own content-specific knowledge? The state apparently doesn't care that we take the time to complete the PRE if our 16-year old selves scored high enough on yet another standardized test. It all just seems so arbitrary, and that the purpose of education--the purpose of school--gets lost. The students get lost.
What is getting in our way from being able to simplify the formal public education system and just have it be some Dewey-an utopia of student-centered social development and practical assessments? Why have schools become so politicized?
As I continue to go through this program, I will continue to assess myself and try to articulate some of these answers. But I know, as always, I'll have plenty more to learn.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
A Process of Living
I took an intro to Education class my sophomore year at U of M that was instrumental in confirming my desire to teach and igniting the beginnings of a passion for learning about the education process. The process, I used to think, was limited to formal schooling and a few meaningful experiences out of the classroom that helped one become the person they are. I also thought it was somewhat static, and that therefore the point of "school" was to race to the end and then get the reward of a job. How baby-boomer of me.
Dewey, as I first read him four years ago in that intro class, was too brilliant for me. Too out there. I didn't really understand how what he was saying was different from my existing schema of the education process except for that he talked a lot more about personal relationships, which I didn't see relating. With the benefit of hindsight after completing a year of service as a volunteer tutor and mentor in the Detroit Public Schools, I now understand just how much "education" I was encountering in school that I wouldn't have considered so at the time. I was learning to socialize and have productive academic and professional relationships, I was strengthening my understanding of people and how they interact. Dewey was both radical and normal at the same time to a younger me.
Reading his creed for the second time and considering how much my perspectives have changed in just a few short years, I am drawn to the concept that we never stop learning. I think Dewey made that abundantly clear, but never as poetically as in the line "I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." Therein lies the inspiration for this blog's URL. Education never stops, but society has dedicated twelve years at the beginning of our lives to formally partake in a politicized education process. Now, six years removed from that system, I am still trying to articulate my own creed. So far, Dewey's distinction is the only thing I am completely sure I would steal verbatim. Education is not a race, nor is it temporary. Everything after those twelve years is really just harder to observe unless you adopt a mindset like Dewey's.
As a history teacher, I am also struck by his profession, "I believe that the school must represent present life." The present life did not come from nothing. Soon, we will all be living what are now just "future lives" which will have in turn come from the present. Thus, as we learn for the present we should also learn from the past. We can represent the present in terms of the things we have already witnessed and with a mindset focused on preparing for the future. Again, it is all part of the process. I hope this blog helps contribute to my own process of living as a teaching intern these next eleven months. I'm sure I will fail plenty, and learn a lot, and I will try to reflect about it here as I strive to become a great teacher. After all, any great thing I do is really just a series of small things (Van Gogh, in case you're wondering).
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