Blog Post #4: Letting Go!!!

While reading the first resource for this week Great Teaching Means Letting Go I really thought it was interesting that the author compared teaching to coaching his soccer team. I cannot tell you how many times this has happened to me also. This was my first year as the tennis coach for SHS (it's actually my first year coaching anything!) so I can totally relate. You can run drills all day long, but sometimes, the kids will not use what they have learned in the real match that counts. 

With that being said, I found the following quote from the Great Teaching Means Letting Go post to be profound: "Our instincts as teachers cause us to over-help rather than under-help. But our kids deserve to become autonomous learners." He exactly right. Our kids deserve to be self-reliant learners. It's not fair to send them off to college not knowing how to learn and research on their own. I also agree with his statement on over-helping. I believe that it is truly in a teacher's personality to want to help kids. I feel like that's probably why we all got into teaching- to help kids. But we have to understand that in order to help them become more proficient learners and students we've got to back off a little bit. They need to have the opportunity to fail and learn a lesson from that failure. Speaking from personal experience, I have learned a great deal from all of my failures. I can truthfully say, that when I look back it's the failures that I learned the most from, not the success stories in my life.

While watching Chris Lehmann's video- Inquiry: The Very First Step In the Process of Learning I found the following quote to be very insightful: "It is not about control, it is about support." I really like that! This made me think back to my first year of teaching. My department chair was really good as "letting go" and she actually won teacher of the year for our school and the county. Looking back, I know now that she is a great teacher. But in the moment, when she would tell me some of the things she was doing in her classroom, I would think "Oh my god! That's out of control!" —-But, the kids were learning!!!  Her test scores were great. I know that it's not all about test scores, like Chris Lehmann says. But what she was doing was working, her students were learning history and enjoying it!

I also like that Chris Lehmann stressed that teachers are absolutely necessary. Even though he discussed that we need to let go and allow students to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, he stressed the importance of a teacher. He said that parents’ work schedules, fragmented families, etc. causes students to need someone there that they can trust at all times. I also really liked that he said the goal of teaching is for your students to create something that is their own. The goal of teaching is not to create a productive workforce or to get great scores on a test. The goal is to make sure your students leave you with a sense of empowerment over their own learning.

In closing, I do see a connection between inquiry learning, instructional technology, and great teaching. A great teacher makes learning fun and relevant. A great teacher is not the “holder of all knowledge." A great teacher makes students question the world around them and makes students want to learn more. I also believe that in order to relate to students today and make learning relevant technology needs to be present in the classroom. Technology is what connects them to the world. It’s like Chris Lehmann stated in the video, a student’s Iphone in his pocket contains more information than his teacher. We are teaching students wisdom, not random facts! We need to teach them how to harness that power and use it to their own benefit, not lecture for an hour. We need to let go and allow them to make their own mistakes!

Blog Post #3: Reflective Searching

 I see myself as a horizontal information seeker and a skimmer. I definitely go to Google first. I also feel as though I am part of the Google Generation. After reading and watching all of this week’s articles and resources I really started to realize that I am just like my students in some ways. I realized that I actually do some of the things that astound me about them. When I did the Google Challenge the first places I went were Google and Wikipedia (as much as I hate to admit it- but hey- I found one of the answers on Wikipedia!) I definitely realized I am a skimmer and a horizontal research seeker. I skim to find what I want to see or if the page even has what I’m look for and then I’m on to another page, probably never to return. 

I remember when I was in college working on my bachelor’s in history and having to write research papers I would love to go to the ASU library and find any book that had to do with my research paper and check it out. I would leave sometimes with at least 15 books! Of course I wouldn’t read them all!! I would find what I was looking for or what I needed for my paper and then I was done with that specific book, most times for good. Sometimes I would find articles on Galileo or EBSCO, but my favorite place to start was the library. I liked to be able to actually hold the book and bookmark a page. Since starting my Master’s in Instructional Technology I realize there has never been a time that I have gone to a library for anything related to my work on this degree. EVERYTHING has obviously been online. I feel as though I have adapted to this rather well. I started thinking that even though when I was working on my Bachelor’s degree I went to the library and now I go to the internet, my method of finding information has stayed the same- skimming! I feel as though my students, whose ages range from 15-18, research the same way. They skim for key words or something that “sounds right.” The main difference between my research methods and those of my students is the fact that most of them cannot differentiate between a  reliable source and a bogus one. I am a news junkie and some of my students know that. Sometimes they will come in with outlandish news they read on the internet. I ask them what website they found it on and ask them have they read it on more mainstream, credible news websites also. Usually we “Google” it and then they will realize their “news” is incorrect. 

This module has given me ideas for teaching my own students about filtering websites and refining searches. I had no idea you could upload an image to Google images and search for a match. I also had no idea you could choose colors in a Google image search. I also had never really used the advanced option search in Google. I definitely will be teaching my students how to search for things in Google using the different symbols that help refine a search. (That was too awesome for me- I knew you could do it, I just didn’t know how!)

After watching the ted.com video on filter bubbles I was really shocked. I knew that websites had memories and that even your email account knew what you searched for. I usually have ads that appear to the side of my gmail account for items that I have previously searched for. But, I did not know that I could research something and my friend could research the same thing and we could get different results. That was really shocking to me and kind of freaky honestly. To make sure we don’t stay inside our own little filter bubble we need to make sure we look at different viewpoints on things. If you google something don’t always go to the same news source. Also, you could use different search engines. The main thing to remember is to keep your mind open always try to learn something new everyday. If you are content staying inside your own little filter bubble, then that's where you'll stay. It takes a conscious effort to bust down the barriers of your filter bubble!

Blog Post #2

After reading and watching the resources for this blog post I really came away at first feeling a little bit overwhelmed myself. After reading resource 2, "My Daily Info-Wrangling Routine" I definitely felt overwhelmed. While reading his article, I found myself thinking "What is Pinboard, Diigo, etc.?" The resources really got me thinking about how students these days have unlimited access to all the information in the world, sometimes they just have no idea how to tap into it. After reflecting on this fact, I remembered a day in my own class that my students were allowed to use their phones in class for research. Our school has a BYOD policy. This was one of the first times this particular class had them out and I was astonished at how many of them had no idea where to go to look for information. The video Infowhelm and Information Fluency alluded to the same fact. At the end it asked if we were doing all we could as educators to teach our students how to use sources. That particular day in my classroom when my students were all over the place on the internet researching abolitionists I was totally taken aback!

After reading the articles I also felt as though I still have a long way to go before I am even digitally literate, as Karen Lienman likes to put it. I especially felt behind the times when I read "My Daily Info-Wrangling Routine." I found myself thinking, how on earth could anyone do all of that in one day!?

My favorite resource was "8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning." It might have been the fact that Diana Laufenberg teaches history and so do I. I found her comment on kids not wanting to come into class burning to learn about the War of 1812 totally relatable. I felt  as though I could relate to this article a little bit more because she discussed how kids won't take risks for you/themselves unless they know you have a vested interest in them. It reminded me of something my very first principal told us at a faculty meeting. He said "Kids don't care what you know until they know that you care." That statement stuck with me and I have found it to be entirely true throughout my first 3 years of teaching. I also liked her article because it gave me an idea I could use in my own classroom when we discuss immigration also!

I feel as though all of these resources are very similar in discussing how broad the world is now. We have information at our fingertips if we can just possess the skills to "weed" through the overwhelming amount of information that comes at us all day long through the different avenues of social media. I also feel like they all hinted to the fact that in order to truly give our students the skills they need, we (as teachers) will have to loosen the reigns of control and allow students to get there on their own. We will have to let them fail, as Diana Laufenberg said. Failure is good, as long as you learn from it.

These resources definitely are related to my learning goals. I have already had two great ideas I could use in my classroom by reading these 3 articles and watching the video. These articles also made me feel ok about not being digitally fluent. At first I felt overwhelmed, but after reflecting it made me realize that no one can 100% keep up with all of these educational and technological trends. As long as we are trying to utilize and learn more we are doing ok (in my opinion)! As Karen Lirenman stated, "Things are changing so quickly these days that it pretty much is impossible to keep up. That's not a bad thing, but it is what it is."

Blog Post #1

My name is Livia Morris and I am a high school US History teacher. This is my third year teaching and I love sharing my love for history with students!

My Learning Goals:
The first learning goal I am setting for myself involves my confidence in my "tech" skills. Right now, I would say my confidence level is at 20%. I literally feel nervous every time I have to use a new Web 2.0 tool and I know that's absolutely silly. I would like to become more comfortable with using the tools that I know I need in order to become an effective teacher/media specialist. Don't get me wrong, I love to learn new things, I just want the "worry" to go away, and confidence to replace it! During my first year teaching at Jefferson Co. High School, my department was given netbooks instead of textbooks. Looking back, I wish I had known more about utilizing technology in the classroom. I feel as though I definitely could have done more with the technology that was placed in my hands than I was able to at the time. Since starting this program I have learned a lot about utilizing technology, I just want to be more confident in using it!

The second learning goal I have set for myself is start developing my PLN to the best of my ability. I had to create a PLN for another class and I did everything I was supposed to for the assignment, I just wanted it to look cleaner. I hope to sharpen my skills and learn how to make things look "clean"!

My third learning goal is to share ideas with others and gain new ideas from my classmates and instructor that I can use in my own classroom.