Dynamic Learning Communities

Compared to some of the other article we read during class, I think this article does a good job of opening up the idea of dynamic learning communities on both positive and negative aspects of this topic. The real world examples also help the connection to what is defined as a DLC. We all want our students to take more control over there learning and dynamic learning communities many be a good place to start. However, the lack of control that the teacher has may discourage teachers at the elementary and middle school levels. As I was reading the article many questions did come to mind and I kept my classroom in the back of my mind. Currently there are so many restrictions with teachers and meeting test scores, so where does the time come in to explore these options. Because you are taking control of your own learning, where is the teachers’ role come into play? Does a facilitator constitute having too much control? So many students are learning in controlled environments were the teachers designed the lessons and what they want the students to learn. I wonder how the student would react to having equal control as the teacher. I don’t know if some of these students would know where to start and some would show there natural leadership. As an adult learner, you are motivated and willing to try new things, but the question comes to mind as to why then would we pay money to earn credit on something that you may not learn from a designed instruction from a teacher but a DLC. If DLCs were to be implemented in schools, I think they would need to discover how to solve problems that may arise with the limited control and the best way to assess the learning.

Media and Attention

There are many myths and truths about media and technology and its influences on academics. The most obvious point of this article that everyone should understand is no matter what media or technology you use the “What matters are the ways in which teachers choose to use, present, and teach with the technology” . In educational situation, the students use of technology in the school or home setting is only “good as the instruction they receive in how to use it”. How the teachers or parents choose to use technology will determine how it will “enhance student learning”.

As Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." I really don’t think that the number of hours you watch TV, or play on the computer or watch movies correlates to the how successful you are in school, but what they should be concentrating on is the content and skills they are using or gaining from watching or playing these programs. There are many things on TV that children should not be watching, especially with the rise of reality TV. However there are some interesting TV programs that have educational value, it just depends on how you incorporate and use it in your lessons. There are some issue with parents, administration and even teachers about watching movies and TV at school, because they want to know how it’s being used in the curriculum. I know some people feel that it’s just a “movie day”, and yes sometimes teachers do use movies as free time, but when movies or TV are used for educational value thing go in a uproar. I know that the Social Studies curriculum was questioned for watching the movie Glory in 8th after learning about the Civil War. Personally when, I found out about that I was shocked because that was a movie I remember watching and discussing when I was in 8th grade. Some parents are arguing that the movie is too violent, but I have to take a look at what kind of movies the students are watching now. Even though this “violent act” is what happened during the war, the movie was edited and these “violent” parts were taken out. These parents still think there is no educational value of watching this movie and the teachers need to prove why this movie has an educational value in their curriculum.

With the rise in new technologies and media some adults are scared because in the “traditional” sense, by using these technologies in school the students are not learning. Playing, being interactive, engaged, and having fun, can’t be considered learning, can it? It just depends how these are being used to “enhance student learning.”

UDL to unlock the potential

UDL is what we as teachers should be strive for in and outside of our classrooms. It always should be about the students and how we can reach them in the designs of the curriculum and supplemental materials given to the students. Implementing something such as universal designs on the materials we create for our students will help us as teacher manage our time we spend on trying to recreate these materials we may want to use again at a later time. This article provided several charts and examples to try to implement the universal designs on teacher created supplemental materials, such as study guides and test.

The example provided in the article about study guides, was a good example of how easily supplemental materials can be universally design to meet the needs of all students. Sometimes I find that teachers try to squeeze as much information onto a study guide or use the one provide by the book. These materials may include too much information for the student to know what to study for and therefore the student may become frustrated with trying to study because they don’t know what to concentrate on. Once you have created some kind of template for study guides, you can then apply these rules and applications to other material you create. It’s so much easier to spend your time making things that are valuable to your students rather than making something that the students would get frustrated with in addition to the frustration that will continue because of the assessment results. These design principles, such as properly using the size of font, placement, spacing, color, bullets, etc. may help the student focus their attention to the content that is most important for the lesson or unit.

Considering a graphic designer was brought in to aid with the universal design workshop at the middle school mentioned in the article, I think it would be important for teachers to take design workshops. Being an art teacher and already have basic knowledge of design principles it is important to all teachers to use in their classroom on any material used for the students. Many teachers don’t think about these design elements as part of “art” but they really are. With the advances in technology there are many avenues teachers can take to make universal designs for learning easily and assessable to other teachers.

Learning Anytime, Anywhere

Learning Anytime, Anywhere
By: Fletcher, Tobias, and Wisher

Of course as teachers, we hope that our students learning to occur anytime, anywhere. The ultimate goal of the ADL initiative to make learning accessible to everyone is a great idea, but will it truly reach all types of learners. With the increase of technology, it does make it possible, but this type of learning anytime, anywhere requires more of the self motivated and guided students. The idea of making instructional materials accessible through digital, sharable and downloadable files is something in the near future that will help helpful to those students who cannot meet in a face to face setting for a period of time.

Let’s take for example, many of our students are out with the flu and some students are missing up to a week of school. If these material where available online and accessible to download, these students and parents will be able to access and see what their students are missing and what they can do to help. Teachers are always worrying how and if some of these students are able to catch up, but if these material were available to access, the question comes back to the students by wondering if they have the self motivation to access these material to catch up with the rest of class? Another part of the article that caught my attention is that learning may take place on handheld devices. What I found interesting about these handheld device, such as the I-Touch, when the students in our school found out we have I-touches in school, they wondered why we would have them in school. They didn’t know why we would buy them for school, because you can’t access anything on it. If students were able to complete their journal writing on their blog from their I-touches at the beginning of class, instead of writing it on a piece of loose leaf, how many more students would be interested on completing this task. However it comes back to where they would use these devices at and if they were able to access websites, not blocked by the school. If these ADL environments are used an important issue that should be addressed is internet safety and proper researching skills, because I find so many students not knowing how to researching using the internet, and plagiarizing they information they find.

I know that ADL is based more on the constructivist classroom, but what they need to work on is how it can be used successfully in the classroom before it is used outside the classroom. These ADL learning environments should not be set up for learners to fail, but to succeed. Personally I had a bad experience with distance learning class especially with the teacher facilitator role and extraordinary amount of work that went the class. Yes, giving the responsibility back to the students and putting the learning back into their hands in a goal of the 21st century learner, but how much is too much?

Politics of Curriculum: Origins, Controversies, and Significance of Critical Perspective
William F. Pinar and C.A. Bowers

After reading this article I think I had more questions rather than understanding of the politics of curriculum. What I do understand is curriculum is political. What I do find interesting in the link between curriculum and society. It seems that the academically and intellectually rich get richer and the poor get poorer. No matter what era you read about, what is consistent with schools is that society influences what type of curriculum is being taught. When you don’t follow the majority or what society tells you to do, it makes you resistance or disrupting the norm. Are you as a teacher really in control of your teaching or is the curriculum controlling your teaching and what students are going to learn. To some teachers they resist change because it seem that it is more work to change what they are doing, even if it is not working for the students. One solution to this problem is to give students more control over their own learning, but when will there be acceptance of this problem. The teacher is the key to student learning and they have the power to break through the politics and reflect upon what will work for your teaching and your students learning. Curriculum is affected by the society and majority, so how can we as teachers control these influences in order prepare our students for the future. We are not producing students that are going into trades and labor fields, but students who will become problems solver who can to think on their feet.

Assistive Technology

Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Rose, Hasselbring, Stahl, Zabala

From my understanding assistive technologies are created to help students overcome barrier specific to that student’s disability and environment. The universal design for learning creates products to reduce barriers to accommodate to a wide range of students. Both assistive technologies and universal designs for learning work hand in hand with each other in the way that when thinking about peoples specific needs the general or universal design will be effective and useful to a variety of disabilities.

After reading this article it really got me thinking about the students with disabilities in my school and how the school provides them with assistive technologies and universal design for learning. There are several students who come to school with their electric wheelchairs and recently one of our teachers is now in an electric wheelchair that specifically fits her needs. Architecturally, we do have wide hallways and elevators, but one design flaw they could have worked on is the lockers. All of the lockers are close together and for a student in a wheel chair they should probably include more space around the locker as well as more shelf spaces at a level where their books can be stored and reached. Our school should also think about installing the electric doors, so when they enter and exit the building that can do it on their own. Independence is very important to people with limited mobility.

In the classroom there are many things that we try to adapt in our curriculum to fit the students’ needs. With the recent growth in technology in relation to the textbook, it’s good to see the electronic version of the textbook, so it can be adapted in such ways to enlarge the text or even convert to Braille. This brings me back to a couple years ago when I had a student who was blind in my art class. I have never experienced this before, so I thought it was a good learning experience. In the back of my head whatever I was doing with the other students in my classroom, I had to think about what I would do with the student who was blind. Any reading materials and worksheets had to been given to his aid to be transferred into Braille. When talking about color, I used scented markers to help him identify colors and tried to use raised textures to help him identify spaces on a drawing surface. Creating 3D pieces of work came easier that 2D due to the fact that it is more tactile for him to manipulate with.

Teacher Learning

Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning
Elizabeth A. Davis & Joseph S. Krajcik

Students learn from their teachers and teachers learn from their students. In the article, they discuss ways to promote teacher learning and it got me thinking about professional development experiences. The article talked about ways to promoting teacher learning through a combination of face to face experiences, on line discussion groups for support and support with the educative curriculum materials. Going to just a workshop, is not enough to have ongoing learning. Workshops do entice teachers with new learning experiences for their classroom, but do teachers they have the continuing support and willingness to change and implement these new learning experiences into their curriculum.

One sentence in the article spoke to me about teaching learning and when it comes into play. “Teachers learning experiences are haphazard after their initial preparation.” It takes several times after teaching a specific concept to understand and collect some data to see how you are using your knowledge, the student’s knowledge, and pedagogy to see what students are actually learning from the lesson. Reflection is the one of most important parts of teaching and it is where teacher learning comes from. As a teacher you are contemplating different ideas when preparing lesson, learning to adapt to diverse styles, as well as considering the unknown or questions that may arise while you teach the lesson. In my classroom, I like that I am able to teach a lesson 4 different times in the school year, because I am able to adjust my teaching based on what my students are letting me know.

I agree with the point that teacher learning is more complex than student learning because teachers are sometimes critical about “new things” that may throw off their routine. Teachers would not be in the field of education if they didn’t think they were going continue to grow and learn, just like there students do. Teachers do have the drive and acceptance for learning, but it is important to have a supportive environment, time and patience to improve their teaching and knowledge in content area.