Blog: This week you have explored instructional design models, Clark’s principles regarding how to design for technology use, and the SITE model for putting new learning into a bigger context. Take a moment to try and make sense of how you might use what you’ve explored in your next round of designing action research for your driving question. Share your new questions and the methods you might use to research them
My main takeaway from this week and past weeks readings is the importance of creating user/learner centered lessons. This theme resonates in the readings, ISD’s and SITE model which individually give their own perspective and opinion on how to reach our learners effectively. As I move forward with designing action research for my essential question I will start with the student/s. Designing research that is measurable and applicable will be an important task as I refine my research question. It seems logical to start with the end user profile and SITE model as I create/refine my driving question and research. Building and understanding and profile of the population that I will be applying my research to will make sure that appropriate objectives and goals are created that can be assessed. This will help me better understand learner situations or context. “The Visual Connection” has really made me think about how important visuals can be. I believe it said that 85% of individuals are visual learners. She made the point to make sure that you are using the right visual and that it isn’t overwhelming to the user. This is important to remember in lesson design. Visuals can be a very effective tool in physical education while explaining a new skill or sport. She also emphasises the importance of prior knowledge. Build on what our students already know and are able to do. The Clark reading discussed how to teach concepts, facts and processes all of which are important to think about in lesson design. I thought it was a key point that concepts are more efficient than fasts because facts can only be memorized. Facts align more with a traditional style of learning, teach facts, memorize facts, show you memorized facts. This approach has been proven not to be effective. As I lesson design, thinking about incorporating concepts rather than facts can help my students ability to more efficiently group and understand content. One way to teach facts is to have students actively participate in them. So much of what I do in PE is active participation to learn new skills and concepts. The ARCS model of Motivational Instructional Design focuses on how we keep students motivated and engaged to learn. These are such important concepts. Learning takes place when our students are interested. This all starts with curiosity. I have found this to be very true this past year in my Adapted PE class. I introduced new training regimens and focus and the students really responded well. As I have stated previously, I would like to focus my research on Adapted Physical education. Teaching students with special needs has been a passion of mine and I would like to continue to develop new and innovative ideas, building on the foundation that I put in place this past year. I haven’t narrowed down my EQ, but have been brainstorming on the following topics: Possible questions: How do I create an impactful learning environment in APE? How do I effectively shift from traditional approaches in APE? Does “Heavy work” improve APE students' ability to achieve their goals and objectives? Is there a more effective way to teach APE?
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BLOG #1: Digital Literacy After exploring the resources from Common Sense, KQED, Stanford, and the ADL, write a blog about how you will teach digital literacy with a focus on equity. We know technology/digital literacy has to be taught (we can’t rely on the theory of the digital native) yet, given your already full curriculum, how will you begin to teach digital literacy with an equity focus? Reply to the posts of 2 of your colleagues. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/625404/equity-vs-equality-what-is-the-difference I constantly confuse equity and equality, but I love thinking about the above image to help me remember/understand and “make sense.” If we are to focus on equity in digital literacy, we must first understand what our students' needs are. We must understand our students' abilities, Socio-cultural backgrounds, access to technology, and prior knowledge of the subject content. As we have discussed in 791, accessing prior knowledge is paramount to learning no matter the subject. Having an understanding of our students prior knowledge and experience with digital literacy would make sure that each student is receiving the support they individually need. When the pandemic hit this past year, we scrambled as a district to ensure that each student had access to a computer at home. This resulted in the district ordering a device (chrome book/ipad) for every student in the district. Hotspots were also purchased for families that did not have wifi or adequate internet connection for zooming. This was the first step to making sure that digital literacy was equitable during the pandemic by making sure that each student had access to technology at their homes. I hope that the district extends the use of technology this following year allowing students to barrow devices as needed. I think that last year will redefine how we teach and teachers will be able to further incorporate the digital systems that they have been using. Many of the students that I teach come from low income families and the device sent home from the school was the first computer that they have had at their house. Equity starts with access. Being cognizant of this is important in teaching digital literacy knowing that some students have never been on a device outside of school. Teaching starting at the basics would be a good approach making sure that students are receiving the foundation that they need to be digitally competent and safe. As technology is making its way into households as well, creating a family guide or lesson could be important in making sure that what students are taught at school is being reinforced at home. With the amount of technology being used in the classroom, it offers a lot of opportunities to teach a lesson on digital literacy and practice what you have learned. Understanding that each student's needs are different and designing lessons that keep this in mind make sure that equity is being achieved. Common Sense, KQED, Stanford, and the ADL give us some awesome resources with lessons already designed for educators. This saves us time and allows us to easily implement them in our classrooms. Blog #2 Distance Learning Tools Review
All of us were thrust into the position of having to teach or coach remotely last school year and this school year due to COVID-19. As a result, we had to innovate in our practice and try out new tools and new lesson designs. Please share at least one tool (you can do more) (other than a GSuite App--but you CAN do Add-Ons and Chrome Extensions) that you tried out and found success with during this unprecedented time. Please try to share tools we have not yet discussed in class. Explain why you used the tool. Outline the tool’s capacity and explain how you used the tool. Please also share (based upon your experiences NOT the product’s website) the strengths and weaknesses of the tool. Be sure to also address the following questions in your post:
The only tool I really used other than my computer camera for videos was Clever and google classroom. For PE this year, We did live zoom workouts for each class and I created a weekly video of myself doing an activity and posted it to my google classroom and clever for my students to follow along with. Clever I used Clever, as well as my district for all Tk-2 students. These students do not have active Gmail accounts so they needed another platform for a digital classroom. Students were able to access teacher pages as well as the apps that they were using in their classroom. I specifically used it to post a weekly video of me that the students would follow along with for PE. Overall, the platform was useful and students were able to access the videos. I created two categories, video of the week, and video library. The video of the week was at the top and easy to access for students. The library allowed students to have access to prior weeks videos. For me, I didn’t need many categories, but I could see how this could be confusing if there were alot of categories. You would have to scroll through all the content to get to the bottom, opposed to having a cover page or quick access on the side. The district set up the account and created the page for me which made things very simple. They linked all the classes as well. I was able to upload a picture of myself to make it easier for students to find my app. With the age group that was using it, not all the students can read yet. It was easy to say “click on my picture.” It did not take long to get the hang of the App. Uploading my videos was very simple. I would upload them to google Drive first and then copy the link over to Clever. One big learning curve for some of the students was getting on the Clever App itself. Teachers were using QR codes to make it easier, but it definitely took some time for some of our students. I do think that it was the right tool for the job ultimately. For me, students were able to access the videos that I was posting which is all I really needed out of the App. I’m not sure how it was for other teachers who were running their classes through the program. It is a useful feature that all the apps that a student needs can be accessed on one page specifically designed for that class. Link: http://go.bubbl.us/bc1670/4cfa?/Developing-Technical-Training All three of these readings are very relatable to how we teach and how our students receive and use information. Dervin discusses Sense-making and our ability to approach information and communicate. This is important as an educator because it helps us understand how our students are approaching information. Baggio discusses the importance of visuals and the positive impacts that they can have. Our ability to receive and process information is much better with visuals. The Clark article is less about the learner and more about the process that the eduactor must go through. It is about designing lessons that are effective and contain all the components for successful instruction.
Prompt: Given your students’ grade level and the subject matter you teach, consider how you can teach digital citizenship and specifically digital citizenship as it relates to digital communication. Please provide 3 specific examples on how you might make learning digital citizenship personal for your students. Through your answer, make connections to the resources/information in the iCARE
It has never been more important than now to teach our students digital citizenship and literacy. We have spent more time on a computer in the last year, more than most people have in a lifetime. Having clear expectations, goals, and precautions is important for our students as they navigate a vastly unregulated world. I teach PE and grades Tk-6th. Obviously, digital citizenship would look very different at each grade level, but I believe it is equally important. With the rise in digital use in our everyday lives, communicating digitally happens naturally. There are numerous ways to stay connected virtually and each needs to be approached with caution and understanding of how to properly and safely use the platform. 3 ways to make it personal: Have students relate it to their personal lives.
The resources listed on ICARE all have great content that is broken down into age appropriate lessons. One way to examine digital communication and make it personal for our students is to have them examine the platforms that they are already using (tiktok, games, texting, IG. etc.). How are they using them to communicate, what is being communicated and with who? These are some of the platforms that our students are spending countless hours on. Having tools to remain safe is important. Having them examine each one and what they are using them for is beneficial to see the positives and negatives of each. There are a lot of positives that come with technology and digital communication. They simply make our lives easier at times. Being able to text someone and having an ongoing chat is very convenient. It is instant and the recipient can reply when it's convenient. This last year when we were on stay at home orders, students were still able to communicate via the video games they were playing. Tiktok allows students to express themselves in short videos. Making it personal, students could pick one digital communicating platform that they use and list a positive for it. The downfall of the digital world is that we don’t always know who we are communicating with. In video games, you can be playing with people from all over the world. Chat rooms and forums are accessed by all sorts of people, both good and bad. Online profiles can be fake and made to look real (ex. Catfish MTV). Some people are predators, some get satisfaction out of being someone they aren’t, some are out for financial gain. Using the tools and information from sites like commonsense and google can help protect ourselves and students in these situations. Students can examine their own use and where they might be vulnerable. Prompt:To prepare for Session 2, please draft a blog to describe your mental processes for figuring out what the Dervin article was about. What was your meta-cognitive process? The article is dense in content - so how did YOU make SENSE of it? What is she trying to teach? Facts? Processes? Concepts? Principles?
In my first attempt at the Derwin article I started reading it in the afternoon after a morning of teaching. About 5-6 pages in I realized that I hadn’t comprehended any of the content outside of the title referring to Qualitative research. I sat it down and left it until the following morning. This time with coffee and highlighter in hand I decided to give it another try. My second attempt was much more successful, but there are still many holes in my understanding of it. New vocabulary posed a challenge and I found myself doing quite a few google searches and rereading. I tried to relate what I was reading to my own experiences to help make sense of it. Some ideas were too abstract for me to do that though. As I pushed forward through the dense wordy beginning, I started to comprehend a bit more what I was reading. Strategies to comprehend
The graphics (fig 6.1, 6.2) definitely help me better visualize what the author was trying to portray. I know personally, I do better when there is a visual. I struggle with reading comprehension so visuals can be a powerful tool for me. Alot of the article was focused around sense-making. It was described as a triangle where you start at a situation, progress to the gap, and finish with the help or use. This process essentially is a sense-making moment. This process does not have to be linear. This is a strategy for us to conduct interviews in research. Formulating questions with the “gap” in mind is important. How did the actor get to that point? What did they do to get across/ solve the problem? What was the end result? A common interview technique is the micro-moment time-line. The respondent reconstructs a situation and is asked to give a detailed description of each step. This is all formulated around the sense-making triangle and how the respondent made sense of those exact moments and where they wanted to land (fig 6.3). Each moment in itself is unique and can be interpreted in many ways. The data that is yielded is in turn qualitative in nature. Gap-defining and gap-bridging are the essential qualitative aspects to be examined according to Dervin. I’m looking forward to discussing this in class. This was a very dense article and I still feel I have very little understanding of what exactly the article is about. Informative video on Sense-making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tACQQcSuG74 Ever since I can remember, I have been involved in sports. This passion of mine is passed down to me from my father who also loves sports and spent 30+ years of his life teaching (Math and PE) and coaching. I was told early on by many people that I would make a great teacher and coach. At the time, following in my dad's footstep wasn't the COOL thing to do. Anyway, I was wrapping up my undergrad in Anthropology, coaching high school football and baseball and ultimately decided that I was going to pursue teaching and it was the best decision I ever made. I naturally gravitated toward PE. It was always my favorite subject growing up. I struggled with writing, reading and comprehension growing up, but I was always good at sports. I couldn't wait to get outside and play each week. It didn't feel like school. It wasn't static, we were outside, we were moving, we were playing, we were interacting!
Sports have given me so many life lessons that I hope to pass along to my students and players. It has taught me perseverance, teamwork, accountability, comradery, hard work, passion, goal setting and so much more. I think these are all very important elements to be successful in life. These things can be found in multiple modalities, but for me it was sports. I love when students come up to me and say that was really hard. I always respond "good, it was suppose to be!" My struggle in PE will always be how to get my reluctant students who don't enjoy PE to buy in to what we are doing. Simply saying "come on, your getting graded," doesn't work. I've tried and tried again. Do they really hate physical activity? Is the concepts and skill level too hard? Would they rather work individually? These are question I ask a lot. As an educators, we know how important it is to access all students. I've deconstructed lessons or work from a UDL approach to help combat some of these issues that I face. I'm hoping this program will spark some new ideas that I can use to help improve my teaching and reach some reluctant students. Recently, I obtained my APE authorization. It has been a lot of fun diving into the world of special needs students. I've been lucky enough to meet with an APE teacher from Sonoma County Office of Education once a week who has mentored me through this process. He teaches at Sonoma State and passed on a lot of what he teaches to me and it has been eye opening and mind blowing. I find myself so intrigued and thinking about APE a lot. I am really hoping to focus my research in this area because I still have so much to learn. As we move along in this course, I'll have a better idea if I can move forward with that. |
AuthorMy name is Bailey Tucker. I teach Physical Education and Adapted Physical Education (APE) at Calistoga Elementary School. I have a strong passion for sports, athletics and fitness. I've been involved with sports my entire life and that is what ultimately led me to the path of teaching. I have recently obtained my APE Authorization to teach PE to students with special needs. This has been a growing passion of mine and I have immensely enjoyed working in this new field with my students. I'm looking forward to this next chapter and working towards obtaining my masters degree. Archives
February 2022
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