Course Reflection
During this final week we were asked to reflect on our learning experiences throughout the course as they relate to the ISTE standards (there are 7). Standard 1 Educators continually improve their practice by learning from and with others and exploring proven and promising practices that leverage technology to improve student learning. Having to collaborate with a team to complete projects gave me ample opportunity to learn from others while we all figured out the best way to implement the technologies we were being exposed to. It also shed light on my own areas of weakness so that I could continue to develop them to create an overall better classroom experience for my students. Standard 2 Educators seek out opportunities for leadership to support student empowerment and success and to improve teaching and learning. Being tasked with so many group projects this summer meant we had to figure out each other’s strengths so we could delegate different sections of each project accordingly. This allowed for each of us to be solely responsible for one or two aspects of every project which helped us develop leadership skills like taking ownership, communicating effectively, and giving/receiving feedback to name a few. Standard 3 Educators inspire students to positively contribute to and responsibly participate in the digital world. Standard three is all this course was about. Our entire goal was to basically build out an online course in such a way that enticed students to become engaged with the material to produce extremely positive learning experiences. While we have yet to master this, or at least I haven’t, I do feel like we are all much more prepared to create active coursework that interests our students and inspire them to participate within a digital classroom. Standard 4 Educators dedicate time to collaborate with both colleagues and students to improve practice, discover and share resources and ideas, and solve problems. We collaborated all semester to improve our digital classroom design and share ideas and materials we had created. This allowed us to really make use of everyone’s strengths to build incredible classroom materials. Standard 5 Educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that recognize and accommodate learner variability. This standard was a little bit of a challenge as it always is with any subject at any grade level. Finding ways to accommodate all students can be very difficult, but as educators that’s what’s asked of us. And in doing so, we find our students tend to have more success. This course required us to deliver classroom instructions in a myriad of ways from audio to video, PowerPoints, online topic boards, the list goes on. With so many different materials, every student is bound to find something that works for them. Standard 6 Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement of the ISTE Standards for Students. In giving our students so many resources, creating so many different methods of instruction delivery, if this were a real course our students would be able to sift the all the resources to use the ones that are most helpful to each individual student. This allows them to take ownership of the education within the digital space of this online Mississippi Studies course. Standard 7 Educators understand and use data to drive their instruction and support students in achieving their learning goals. Seeing that the course we built this semester was not an actual course thereby we had no students, gathering data really didn’t happen. However, this standard really relates back to accommodating every student through the use of different assessments. By creating so many different resources in our group projects, we would have been able to offer students different formal and informal assessments or checks on knowledge to get a better understanding of where are students stood in their comprehension of the materials. Overall Reflection I found this class did a great job of exposing us to many different online resources we could use to help students become engaged with digital media to impact their learning positively. While I wish there had been a little more training on how to truly use some resources to their fullest potential, getting to explore each one at least opened my mind to the opportunities.
1 Comment
Chapter 9, Question 3
Imagine that you are a high school social science teacher. You have assigned students a ten-page research paper. How do you set-up the assignment to make it clear that plagiarism will not be tolerated and what tools would you use to check for plagiarism? What steps would you take if a student’s paper is found to have been copied in parts from the Internet? If I were to assign a research paper, plagiarism would be clearly addressed in the rubric, stating that any student caught plagiarizing would receive a zero for the assignment and would not have an opportunity to make it up. To check for plagiarism, I could use a number of different software programs, but I would probably use Turnitin.com. If I did, in fact, catch a student plagiarizing, I would take it on a case-by-case basis. I would determine how much of the student’s paper was actually copied and try to analyze the copied materials for intent: was it the student’s intent to copy this material as his/her own or is this simply a formatting issue. If I found that it was most likely a formatting issue, I would allow the student to fix the paper and submit it again. Otherwise, the student would receive a zero as stated in the rubric. Chapter 10, Question 3 Consider your level of educational technology literacy as you complete this course. How competent do you believe you are in order to teach in a technology-rich environment? What other opportunities would you search for to become even more proficient in the use of technology in the classroom? Having already been forced to create an online learning environment during the Covid pandemic, I feel fairly competent that I can implement different types of technology into a classroom environment. However, I do wish I had more training on certain programs and resources so that I could use them to their fullest potential. I definitely felt my online class from this past year was lacking in student engagement, so I’d like to figure out a way to get students more involved with the material. This week we were tasked with creating a website that displayed the culmination of our groups work over the course of the semester. Our website was centered around Mississippi Studies coursework, specifically covering Mississippi’s economy and its top five industries. As with every previous project, our group met over Zoom to devise a game plan to execute this project. Greg took the lead and created a shell using Weebly. Each of us other group members then uploaded all of the material we had created thus far. This project was interesting, trying to design a website without any web design experience. Weebly’s platform made it easier than having to code, but there’s still a learning curve to really get professional quality web pages. Overall, it was a good learning experience, one that I wish I had prior to having to create an online class during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's a link to our website:
itd645mississippistudies.weebly.com/ This week we were required to build an education board, much like a Pintrest board, using Padlet for project nine. Our group met early on in the week via Zoom to discuss how we should go about completing this project. We decided one person would create the Padlet board, and then we would all contribute creative images we made using Thinglink as well as other links to resources we used to cover Mississippi’s economy. I stuck with the topic of Mississippi’s agriculture. This remained the same for project ten as well which asked me to create a project rubric on the topic using Rubistar and a quiz using Quizziz. Both were extremely easy to use. Part of the project ten directions asked me to look at Kahoot as well. I have previous experience with Kahoot and noticed that Kahoot differs from Quizziz in that it is much more of a quiz game where Quizziz is simply a quiz creation tool. Kahoot allows you to create an interactive review game to check on learning in a much more engaging way. I found this week to a pretty resourceful week. Every tool used to complete these projects is definitely something I plan to use in the furture. Below you can find the links to our projects:
Project 9 - Padlet Project 9 - Thinglink Project 10 - Quiz Project 10 - Rubric Chapter 8, Question 3
Select the five distance-learning technologies that you would prefer to use if you were teaching a distance-education or blended course. Reflect on your teaching style and your students’ learning styles and how each of the selected technologies would be received, depending on the students’ learning styles. If I were to teach a distance-learning class, I would absolutely need to use technological advances in educational software to ensure both my success and, thereby, my students’ success. First and foremost, I would need to have a learning management system to deliver course materials to my students. Canvas would be my first choice for this because of its ease of use, having a very user-friendly interface and intuitive layout for both teacher and student. Canvas is a self-containing, self-sufficient platform, allowing all course material (PowerPoints, videos, quizzes, tests, projects) to be delivered, submitted, and graded in one central location. In my own experience, having the ability to collaborate with other students in breakout rooms with Zoom has been extremely helpful when learning new material. I would definitely like to have to access to Zoom for the same use. I also feel that it would be most beneficial to the students if they had access to some sort of digital simulation software, especially for math, science, and art classes. Having some way of applying their newly-gained knowledge in a “real (digital) world” situation could really help them better develop an understanding of the concepts, and it could also help me as an educator in determining whether or not to move on with instruction. I imagine I’d have a few students who needed some further assistance as well, so it would be of utmost importance to have some assistive technology to supplement their learning. Something like Google’s text-to-speech software could prove useful to those who have difficulty with reading comprehension or suffer from dyslexia. Notability could also provide the different types of learners within the class to take notes in any way they see fit to best suit their learning styles. Last, but certainly not least, I would need some type of program to help keep me on track and connected with my students and co-workers. I’ve found Microsoft Outlook does a pretty solid job at filling this gap. Projects 6-8 Learning Experiences This week’s projects were much more individually focused. However, my group still met early on in the week to discuss how we should attack each project, coming to the conclusion that we each take a specific industry of Mississippi’s economy to focus or recorded lessons on. I drew agriculture, Mississippi’s leading industry. Finding all of the information to talk about and putting into a presentation was the easy part. Once I started trying to record, I found myself having significant difficulties because of the security installed on my district-issued computer. For whatever reason, our district has made it extremely difficult to screenshare anything even though we were just forced to use that feature this past school year due to COVID. Anyway, I found a way to use Zoom and made it work. I’m still not completely comfortable being in front of a camera, so I don’t feel like it’s my best work. But I guess the more I do, the more comfortable I’ll be. The ole “be comfortable being uncomfortable” saying. I found it easiest to just speed up playback speed so my videos in projects 7 & 8 stayed within the time constraints. Edpuzzle was pretty cool. I definitely enjoyed learning how to incorporate multiple choice questions and notes in a video. That will definitely come in handy in the near future. My videos are linked below if you'd like to take a gander. Project 6 Project 7 Project 8 Chapter 7, Question 2: Many are concerned about the use of social media in school. Describe your views of the pros and cons of using social media. How will you use this tool in your classroom and what are your greatest concerns in doing so? Social media covers a wide gamut of online platforms from Facebook and Twitter to Tumblr and Reddit. Each of these platforms has its own niche market of users who value one platform’s user interface over another, though they all generally do the same thing. What it really comes down to is the bylaws put in place by each social media company. These bylaws essentially layout what is and is not okay to post within each platform, along with what data the social media companies are legally allowed to collect from the user. Within these bylaws is where I find difficulty allowing social media to be used in a classroom setting. Some of the social media platforms out there allow for some fairly explicit material to be published, material that is absolutely not school appropriate. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible for a school network to filter out such materials contained within a social media network without blocking the entire site altogether. I’m not sure that the ability to segment like that exists quite yet. So that automatically rules out a handful of social media networks. Even with the ones that don’t allow the publishing of explicit materials, there’s still the issue of the publication of student information and/or public student data collection which could violate numerous federal laws. Now, there are ways in which these social media platforms could be used safely, but I don’t find it worth the risk. I’d rather opt for a “social media” platform like Flipgrid that is slightly more educationally friendly, and for those I think classroom use is fine. A specific class can be contained within one private group and archived at the conclusion of the class term without fear of any of the aforementioned issues. If I were to use something like Flipgrid, it would most likely be used as a Q & A response system, most likely in place of written homework. This would hopefully get students more engaged with the class materials and bring some enthusiasm to the kids’ work. Projects 2-5 My Learning Experiences This week our group came together to complete three separate projects: a lesson plan, survey, and class materials for the lesson plan. We met early on in the week to delegate each task and I ended up helping with creating class materials for our lesson plan. Ashton created a Google Slides presentation, while I produced some guided notes to go along with the presentation. I learned a little more about the economics of Mississippi in the process, but more importantly I gained a little more insight to the necessity of communication within a team. I’ve known it’s importance from spending the vast majority of my life on different teams, be it a baseball team or infantry team, but working on these group projects just continues to reinforce how good communication can make for a smooth process. I had a communication mishap this week; I overlooked a document that was sent out to the group and started working on an assignment that was already completed. Luckily, I have great teammates who pointed out my mistake and got me back on track. Just goes to show 1. Good communication not only means speaking up, it also means reading everything, and 2. Good communication, again, makes for a smooth process. For those of you who are interested, here's a link to the sound bite recorded in concordance with our group's lesson plan: thompson_john_itd_645_project_5.m4a This week required the group to collaborate our efforts so we could produce a modern classroom design that provided students with a myriad of technological resources to accommodate all types of learners. To do so, we met using Zoom at the beginning of the week to delegate different sections of the project to each member of the group. We then reconvened later in the week to discuss progress made. My job required all other aspects of the project to be completed before I could get started, so after the second conference I began work on our executive summary and was able to complete the next day. The group reviewed it and we came to a group consensus to submit the finalized project this morning. Everyone worked really well together and took full ownership of assigned tasks which helped us get this project completed and turned in a day early. It was actually quite fantastic to be part of a group where everyone fully participated to produce a quality product. I love my group! If you would like to view our project, please click on the link below.
group_3_21st_century_classroom_grant_proposal_updated_6-25-21.pdf Chapter 4: Question 2
Multimedia encompasses multiple media combined into a single integrated whole. Considering that there are three basic learning styles: auditory, visual and kinesthetic, what do you think are the advantages of using multimedia in a classroom presentation or in a piece of software, rather than strictly audio or visual technologies? Using multimedia in the classroom has the potential to meet the needs of every type of learner, be they auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. Multimedia gives the educator the means to provide images and videos for those visual learners, sound bites for those who are auditory learners, and 3-D models for kinesthetic learners. This allows for an all-encompassing learning experience for all students, giving each one the chance to experience every learning style to enhance their overall comprehension of the subject matter. Using strictly audio or visual technologies leaves the student with an incomplete experience and thereby inadequate education as both methods fail to meet every style of learner. Chapter 5: Question 4 Teachers must often use whatever resources are available to them in order to enhance and support learning. How would you go about investigating the learning software that is available to you in your school? Who would you ask and how would you go about acquiring what you feel you need? Professional learning communities (PLCs) are probably the first place I would inquire about learning software. Typically, PLCs are comprised of same grade and subject matter teachers, so that would be my best bet. When I was teaching 8th grade English, I learned of websites like CommonLit and Edutopia in our PLCs to pull standards-based materials from for my lesson plans. Outside of PLCs, I could lean on my mentor, principal, and/or the school/county subject area specialist for a list of more resources. School librarians are also extremely resourceful. With the boom of the digital world, it seems as though librarians are actually mandated to be well-versed in multimedia and can typically point teachers in the right direction. Recommendations I received that required outside sourcing or device requests, I would definitely seek out my school’s librarian first. Chapter 6: Question 3 Gifted students have special needs just as other students with unique needs. Imagine yourself the teacher of a gifted class. Select a lesson you are familiar with teaching and reflect on how it would need to be changed to address the needs of gifted students. What technologies would you employ to support this change? If I were teaching a PE class full of gifted students, I would implement the use of analytics and implore my students to analyze the data points in pursuit of their individual goals. Say, for example, I had a class full of baseball players and wanted to design a unit with the intent of increasing their overall throwing velocity. To do so, I would measure their velocity and lower body strength at the start of the unit to give them a base and develop realistic goals to meet by the end of the unit. From there, I would implement a variety of explosive exercises that were specific to throwing. Weights and repetitions would be tracked using a software program I’ve mentioned before in Teambuildr. Every two weeks, we would measure the students’ velocity to track progress using a software program like Trackman which would track velocity, spin rate of the ball, and spin axis to name a few statistics. With all of that information, I and my students could devise individual plans for every kid to help them meet their goals. Chapter 1: Question 3
Ten years from now I’d imagine my curriculum and lesson plans would be fairly set in stone. I should have a good grasp on how to deliver my class materials in a manner that entices the most student engagement. But technological advances will have most likely completely changed educational methods. Specifically for my Physical Education curriculum, I’d imagine the use of technology would be mandated. It would be my hope that it was, anyway, because that would help track student progression. My goal by the year 2031 would be to have received formal training with a software program like TeamBuildr so I could implement fitness modules into my PE curriculum and have all of the data/analytics in one central location. A program like this would also allow students to track their own progress and could potentially yield greater intrinsic motivation among the students to meet and exceed fitness goals. This could potentially change the way many school districts look at PE and help produce healthier leaders of tomorrow. Chapter 2: Question 2 When thinking about Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, I would have to say that the three I am most proficient in are linguistic, intra-personal, and bodily-kinesthetic. Regarding my linguistic intelligence, I have always been able to write well. I was even the winner of a research paper writing contest and had two poems published during my undergraduate studies. I claim to be proficient in intra-personal intelligence because I generally am pretty self-aware. Most of the time I have a good understanding of my emotions and can rationally think through why I experience specific feelings. I am also very aware of personal goals, such as my desire to be a head baseball/softball coach deriving from a place of wanting to build up people in the same way I was built through the game of baseball. On that note, I feel I have pretty good bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. My ability to feel what my body is doing while swinging a bat or throwing a ball allows me to make fine adjustments to better my mechanics. This ability allowed me to play baseball at the college level. Chapter 3: Questions 3 Early in my coaching career, I failed to plan practice which resulted in little productivity. It was my first year as a head coach and I had an 11U travel baseball team. I went into the season having very little experience developing practice plans and didn’t quite understand the importance of having a completed plan. So, I ended up winging practice most of the time and failed my team as their leader. I have since learned from this mistake and now plan just about every aspect of practice, from daily goals to long-term goals. Another thing I have failed to plan is my nutrition. While I wouldn’t say I’m obese, I have put on a few unwanted pounds over the years and can say without a doubt that my weight gain is a direct reflection of neglectful nutrition planning. In the past, I have planned my nutrition and experienced great success, but have since let life and excuses get in the way of my overall health. As I mentioned on the home page, I have a wife and daughter and we are expecting a baby boy come August! Naturally, me being a baseball/softball coach, his name is Rawlings. A lot of B's and R's in the Thompson household. Outside of the baby and ball, we are pretty involved with our church. I volunteer with the security team and my wife helps with children's ministry. We've tried leading a small group, but Covid-19 unfortunately caused our group to fizzle out. Luckily, it seems like we're starting to move beyond this pandemic.
It doesn't feel like it since last school year got cut short because of Covid-19, but I just completed my second year of teaching which was an absolute breeze compared to my first year. I went from 8th grade English last year to high school theater this year which was really nice because I didn't have the added stress of state testing. I really got to teach what I wanted. Not to mention I had the opportunity to teach more mature students. In hindsight, I have no idea what persuaded me to teach middle school, but I'm glad I was able to get my foot in the door of education through Southaven Middle. Teaching middle school led me to believe I still have a lot to learn about best practices in the classroom which is how I ended up at the University of Southern Miss. Since entering into the MAT program, I've been able to think through what I believe my educational philosophy to be; a process that brought clarity to the way I coach on the field and teach in the classroom. I've come to find that I prescribe to eclecticism: “the practice of selecting doctrines from different systems of thought without adopting the whole parent system for each doctrine,” as described by Encyclopedia Britannica. I find that each of the five major educational philosophies has merit and my own is derivative of essentialism in that I believe there is a core of knowledge. But beyond that belief, I feel every philosophy needs exploration and implementation to guide students to mastery of given subject areas because each student is different and will, therefore, respond differently to each philosophy. |
AuthorRobbie is a husband, father, teacher, coach, and life-long learner. Blogroll
|