Alice Keeler - Level Up With Badges
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Badge your classroom How To Motivate Students in the Online Learning Environment What Digital Literacy Looks Like In A Classroom So-Called “Digital Natives” Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows
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To start off.....I apologize if this blog post is all over the place, but my thoughts and reflections are also all over the place! There is a definite connection between some of the readings we have been assigned. I am seeing the biggest connection between Dervin's writing and the SITE model reading we added this week. Both of these readings focused on learning about our end user or in our cases our "learners" or students. Both of these models focus on learning about our users motivations and current skills in order to help them bridge a knowledge gap and achieve a goal.
In reflecting on my own teaching practice, I know that I often dive right into a unit or lesson and for the sake of time, push aside a pretest where I can see where my students are at. In reading the texts from this class, I can now see how important that pretest is. Having spent 4 years at the junior high school level teaching a Career Exploration class, I have a pretty good idea about what motivates our students. So many of the students reported that they wanted careers that involved fame and recognition, or for others it was careers where they were seen as helping others or the world around them. I can see how this knowledge can be useful in creating products or lessons for my students. In the last year I have implemented many projects where students put their final product on display for not only their own class, but all of my class periods. I have used products like padlet where students can post their final work to a more authentic audience than just their teacher. Tools like flipgrid, where students have to record their voice and have it be viewable to their peers also pushes students into a zone where they are motivated to show what they know. I have found that students put a lot more effort into something that their peers will see and evaluate. This gives me the idea that maybe I want to develop a better peer feedback product for students to analyze each others work on sites like padlet or flipgrid. The site model reading also made it clear that students learn much better when it is in context or when they can apply their new knowledge to the real world. This makes me think that methods like project based learning in a blended classroom are highly effective when the topic relates to the learners in the class. I was very interested in the SITE reading that described learners as autodidacts. I found myself pondering if I thought that my students fit this description of someone who can learn on their own without a teacher. I do think that today's middle school students can find and learn almost anything online. They can find information with a few quick clicks on the computer or their smart phone and watch a youtube on the topic. I think our learners are more and more autodidacts but they are not aware of it. My dilemma is still trying to decide what my final project/capstone will be. My research was about digital literacy and I developed a week long lesson for students but I think that it needs some modification to fit the needs of my learners better. One thing I discovered during the unit was that students had learned some of those skills previously but were not implementing it in my class. One route I could take with my capstone would be to develop some kind of recognition tool like a digital badge that students could display on their profile, which would meet their motivations for peer recognition. Another choice would be to develop some procedures and systems for posting student work to websites like padlet and also developing tools for students to use to evaluate their peers and give strong comments. Who is the audience you want to address for the remaining two semesters?
What are your initial ideas for where you might go in addressing the challenge of creating a resource (the “resource” will evolve into your Capstone project/product) to influence others and share your knowledge & research based on early readings of Dervin, Baggio and your beginning readings in Clark?
CLARK
3 core ideas from Clark
DRIVING QUESTION
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May 2018
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