Thursday, July 26, 2012
I was able to do some reflection after today's on line instructor class. So much of this is new to me and I am truly enjoying all of the new learning that I am involved in. It made me think about my high school students who will be working on laptops and iPads this year. All will enter my classroom at different levels and I will need to differentiate all the instruction so that my students who are not familiar with technology do not become frustrated with that piece and then never get to my moodle course content. We are developing an introduction course instructing the students as to how to navigate around in moodle, which all students will be required to take prior to beginning their coursework, but again, differentiation will be the key.
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Hi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI am also excited about the technology. I love how eloquently you stated your concerns about differentiating with this new technology. I can see the need for that even with our current class.
Collaboration away from the classroom with the blogs, forum questions blackboard and googledocs will be much easier & more effective but and this is a big but…..the education of using it will be key.
I believe that most of our students & more importantly our teachers are concrete learners and for us to effectively use blackboard, googledocs, forums, etc… we must actually see more slowly & clearly the steps done for using them and then immediately be allowed to try them. If we can't try them in a different window immediately, we need to see more examples so the concepts really make sense. We need to be careful not to give to many new things at once without immediate practice and assistance.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to have taught an online class before but rather have 26 years of classroom instruction. It matters not what tool you are using to help your students learn but how successfully you can do that. I don't want to get myself in hot water & am not trying to be critical but in our class we are being asked to use technolgy without being shown how to do it. One such example was our meeting in the blackboard with our group for discussion. We didn't know how to do it. It was real trial and error. We did meet in the blackboard…but we didn't use the blackboard. The meeting was a glorified phone call only worse because we had to be at the computer.
I can totally relate to the frustration our students will experience if we are not carefull in our education about using what technology we decide to use.
I guess the good thing is that my frustrations are showing me what I need to be clear about with my students.
Lisa
Lisa Larson
ReplyDeleteI support you concerns about frustrations. However, I think we underestimate the patience of our students when faced with frustration over a technology event. I teach all At-Risk students and they have zero patience. They are very quick to find alternatives like simply writing an assignment on lined paper versus typing and entering it online. With the broad range of technology skills, many of our students enter the classroom with disadvantages. ELL students not only need to learn our language but now might also be faced with technology challenges. 5 years ago I taught a MS Office class in MPS and had Hmong students in my classroom who had never turned on a computer before! A few technology challenged students in a classroom can shut-down most of what you intended to accomplish in a day. We have never been comfortable "tracking" students based on learning abilities. Will we need to consider something like this for technology skills in students? Difficult topic to consider.