Digital Age Learning Culture

 

As an educational leader I model quality educational experiences for my students and for the staff in our district.  I volunteer to have district administration in to practice evaluations, teachers to view my classroom in a building lab classroom group, and by volunteering to meet with staff in the district to help them implement service-learning projects and project based learning.  I empower my students and help them to develop and implement problem solving strategies that can be used beyond my classroom.

After learning about Universal Design for Learning and understanding the importance of creating engaging learning environments with supports for all students, reflect on how you intend to change the way you teach using these new found ideas, or how you have already been using them.

I teach two elective classes that are very student focused.  I have already written the UDL plan for my service-learning class.  Students select a topic of interest as their service-learning project. Students research to develop understanding of their selected topic, brainstorm options and develop a plan, implement their plan, and reflect throughout and after their project are complete.  Our access to technology has varied each semester I have taught this class.  Ideally, all students have a device and access to the internet to research about their topic, research possible plans to impact the problem, make contacts with topic experts through email or phone calls.  Additionally, in an ideal world all students would have a fully key boarded device to type their understanding and plans then share them with me in Google docs so I can provide prompt feedback in this project.  Students would also have access to a device that would take photos and videos to document their project in action.  Students would also have various technological reflection options throughout their project and after their project. 

The second class I teach is Innovative Solutions.  It has been through a lot of changes since its creation.  It is a hands on problem solving class. 

Students participate in various challenges that allow them the opportunity to implement the four goals of the class: 

1.     develop perseverance to become increasingly innovative

2.     develop risk taking to become increasingly innovative

3.     develop use of process (engineering design process or problem solving process)

4.     develop self assessment and reflection to become increasingly innovative.

The challenges vary to provide experiences and capture a variety of interests.  Ideally, students would have access to a device to research inquiry questions the students develop, research designs that other people have tried to build onto, devices that could be used to create videos of their tests that could be used for evaluation, or to post the videos so other students could provide feedback on the designs and tests or shared with families to provide as communication of class work.  Currently, students self evaluate and provide evidence to support their self assessment.  I would like to explore an online survey that would collect students self assessment for each project, then could be used for the student to see their progress through time.

Both of my classes require deep thinking and creating.  Students have choice and voice in each project.  I set aside class time after each project to get feedback from my students to improve the format of the class and the projects.  Students self evaluate their work and I conference with students about their evaluation using cognitive coaching techniques.

My goals for this summer are to increase my understanding of and use of technology in the classroom  and to develop multiple representations to make the class goals make more sense and to feature more examples of innovation .  Lastly, I want to help students with transferring the knowledge they develop in my classes to other classes and life situations.