BLOG: share any thinking, new design steps, progress, challenges, and/or successes you have during this course. How have you evolved as an innovative thinker?
When considering all that we are learning in these courses, it seems obvious that there will be an evolution in the thinking, pedagogy, and overall focus of the audience. The audience in this case is the Cohort, but I can only speak for myself when I say that I would like to consider moving from my earlier research topic to a topic that better incorporates the learning from this program. I initially chose a topic of research that interested me; the student's mind and how to prepare the student for the process of learning. I would like to continue to use mindfulness practices in my classroom in order to create an empathetic social and emotional learning environment, one that prepares the mind for work and relieves stress. That said, I am ready to develop lessons and a learning environment that support the TPACK model in order to bring more meaningful technology into the kindergarten classroom. My challenge may be that I am not allowed to change my focus in the middle of the program. However, I would like to present the argument that we seem to be attempting to create a learning model that is open ended and revolutionary. How could one possibly decide a topic at the onset of our learning, be given an incredible amount of new information, and then be expected to not change perspectives? While I may have to adhere to these limitation and continue in my mindfulness as a driving question, it seems a shame. I still see great value in the mindfulness practices and my students do too, but I now see this as an addition to my teaching practice and not an innovative approach to teaching and learning. My desire to bring innovation into the kinder classroom using various tech tools seemed near impossible, given the students' limited literacy levels. How would I get them to the various online tools that we have explored, or better, how could they get there themselves? I believe that I have found a solution to this that must be created and shared. I would like to create a QR Code classroom that allows students to get to various sites in order to audio record, video record, make presentations, share information, and read books by posting QR Codes in the room. I have done this in the past in a very limited way, but through my studies in the Touro Program, my vision has a much broader scope. My thinking evolved after watching the gaming videos shared in the 702 course. I was inspired to get my students gaming. The very next day the Math Specialist from the district came to our kinder meeting and shared the online math games that are a part of our adopted Bridges math program. She had to go to the NVUSD website and then to various places on the Bridges site to get to the different games. I knew that I would never be able to implement these games without a quick and easy way to get students to the sites. Creating QR Codes seemed to be the answer. I then began to think of other ways in which to use the QR Codes and wanted to begin immediately! The QR Coding seems like a great way to apply the Sense Making aspects developed in this course as a way to quickly make meaning and informational bridge making for my young learners. I was able to see that our new iPads had the QR reader app and that our older ones did too. My Tech Guy at school is willing to make sure that they are on all of them so that I can share the QRs that I create with my staff. In closing, I would like to create a Capstone project that will help teachers to use the QR's that I create and to create some for themselves. Perhaps I can present TPACK lesson plans for the kindergarten classroom that strongly adhere to the adopted technology standards and the 4 C's, thereby, bringing the kinder classroom into the 21st Century. I only hope that I will be allowed to make this shift in the focus of my studies.
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AuthorJennifer Wade ArchivesCategories |