After a very long (self-imposed) break from blogging, the start of Course 3 of our CoETaIL.asia group means I’m back in the saddle again!
Our first blog post requires to us to reflect on implementation of ideas learned during the past two courses. There’s are the essential questions:
- What have you tried/are trying in your classrooms?
- How has this / or how do you hope this impacts student learning?
- What do you hope to get out of of this next course?
For me personally, Course 1 and 2 didn’t really offer me anything new to try in the classroom. I don’t mean for that to come across as big-headed as that sounds either! Technology, global collaboration and connections were already staples in our classroom learning environment. What Course 1 and 2 did give me was the opportunity to share ideas and tools as well as offer support to teachers who were willing to have their thinking and their knowledge pushed. This aspect was immensely satisfying as it is always a good feeling to be able to “pay-it-forward” in terms of giving people help like people (in my PLN) have helped me in the past. My pedagogy was challenged as were my reasons for using technology in the classroom for learning. I found this extremely helpful to deepen my own understandings of how and when and why I use technology and it also gave me the opportunity to look at things from another person’s point of view – which I can often forget to do.
The impact on student learning has been more in the development of our Grade 5 Digital Literacy Overview. It is a great thrill to work with, support and guide a fabulous group of teachers in our Grade 5 team who are willing and enthusiastic about the value of using a blog as a “Window into Our Learning”. The impact on student learning will no doubt reveal itself slowly over the coming year and be evident in the content of our classroom blogs and individual student blogs. Every single Grade 5 student has their own blog. That’s an incredible step our team has taken onboard!
I’ve always considered myself to be a “life-long-learner” and I am nowhere near close to knowing everything there is to know about Information Technology and Digital Literacy. I hope to continue my own personal learning journey by finding more ways to inspire, guide and facilitate learning in the classroom through digital literacy as well as continue to support and help my fellow colleagues who have been led to the water, and are now drinking it by the bucket-full!
Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsurfdude/322217434/
Our final face to face session yesterday was a doozie! Kim and Jeff organised for the authors of 
rounded up the messages that all of our readings have been pointing us toward – the value, recognition and importance of social networking, messing around, collaboration, peer-based learning etc, I am just a bit wary about what Marc Prensky writes.
The thorny part, for me, is the sweeping generalisations about teachers. There’s a fair few of us out there in education land that aren’t like what you describe Mr Prensky and we are definitely living up to your last words which I really do agree with SO
and it’s direct impact upon my own teaching practise is the way learning can be scaffolded depending on the learning taking place. Bloom’s taxonomy encourages us to take students thinking steps further by beginning with lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and naturally progressing to higher order thinking skills (HOTS). When planning tasks, I try to include more HOTS than LOTS to encourage students to go beyond the recall and regurgitate phase and into the internalise and construct new meaning/knowledge phase. The simple suggestion of verbs in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy helps me to include learning tasks that will help develop a variety of levels of thinking from my students.
