After looking at websites through the lens of “what were the end-user needs” how has your thinking changed about designing your own site? What influence have the SITE model analysis, Baggio’s Visual thinking, Clark and the design thinking process had on your work. Share significant design steps, progress, challenges, and/or success in creating your research plan for round 2
I am in survival mode. Right now my focus is entirely on getting my virtual classroom set up and regaining my mental well being in preparation for the weeks to come.
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Continue building a bridge between your practice, your action research and what you are learning. Share what inspires you, observations, reflections, experiences, connections, dilemmas....
I have completely changed the focus of my action research based on new information I learned through various workshops about different ways to engage students in math. While I never was able to complete setting the class up in a way I could focus on working on deeper level thinking tasks with small groups of students, I was setting my classroom up for a shift in how I work with students. I have always wanted to be more of a coach when it comes to teaching as opposed to the director. I recently implemented a method Alice Keeler used and was beginning to find great success with students being able to be successful with some of the lower depth of knowledge skills. Requiring students to retake an online quiz until they were 100% successful gave the students the ability to focus on a redo any problems they got incorrect. They received feedback right away and then would often do the work to fix the mistake made in order to get to that 100%. I was not able to keep it going so I could see if it could hold their attention long enough to distract them from their video game obsession, but up until the school closures, it seemed to be working. My next step was to identify who needed extra support and who was ready to work on more DOK 2 and 3 level tasks. Blog Assignment: 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.
In all honesty, there has been very little additional methodology I have taken from the readings and included in my teaching. I already do a bit of a mixture teaching a combination of the SITES and ARCS model. These are already incorporated into my teaching practice. Most of my exploration into how to teach and engage students in mathematics has been based on more recent theories of mathematical education. They utilize some of the concepts from Clark and the SITE model as well as ARCS. I am constantly researching the most recent methods of presenting information and tasks to students. My inspiration has been mostly from people like Dan Meyer, Jo Boaler, and Alice Keeler. I am a person who needs more concrete examples as opposed to vague application of theories. I need to see how specifically those theories are implemented. No theory or model is ever going to be perfect either. Different methods need to be used depending on your audience and adjustments need to be made to accommodate those different needs. I plan to continue to look in to different ways of engaging students through technology to help keep things fresh for students to keep up engagement as no method works all the time, especially with middle schoolers. Understanding and interpretation is based on individual experiences
Clark:
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?
If you had to teach this same reading content to a high schooler, what other media would you use to break it into mind-sized chunks or to make it easier to process according to how you think? What I was able to gather about the article was basically about how each individual experience shapes how we make sense of information that is presented to us. We can intend something to be experienced or made sense of in a specific way, but there is not real way to account for each individual experience with the information that presents itself whether in life or in a classroom. We need to be cognizant of those individual experiences. These experiences then shape how information is processed and used. It seems to me the paper is mostly focused on the study of how people make sense of information presented to them and different ways they attempt to fill in gaps in understanding. For me it was pretty straightforward in what it was saying (however I could be wrong in my overview). I made sense of it as I have a background in human development and behavioral studies. I would never give this article to a high school student. It is filled with language and processes that are beyond what most high school aged students are able to accomplish. It is not written for that age. I would find an article written at a much more appropriate reading level and try and find other videos that did a good job of summarizing the content in a way that is easier for a high school aged student to access. I might provide the article to students who had a better chance of being able to process what was being conveyed. If there is one word to describe how I am feeling and what has been on my mind, it overwhelmed. This entire semester has been one thing after another. Student suicide; Massive change to our master schedule at school and sudden schedule meetings; getting laid off; Distance learning switch with closure of schools; notice that it is highly unlikely the layoff will be rescinded; Being told I need to keep away from everyone I love because of high risks with chronic bronchitis; needing to suddenly apply for and interview for a new job; Meetings, meetings, and more meetings; Exponential increase in migraines due to more screen time required.
I am doing my best to just barely keep up with my regular every day requirements when I am not hiding from light and sound under a blanket. I do not feel like I am doing a good job though. I have a lot of empathy for those with children dealing with all of this. I don't know what I would do if I had children. I cannot seem to be able to keep up with much outside of the work. I have everything in my head because I am constantly thinking about all of it, but finding the time or the mental and emotional bandwidth to sit down and spend yet more time on a computer has been an incredible challenge. I feel like I am never able to unplug. I don't know how to catch up. The one thing that has worked out well has been the actual transition to learning online. Aside from the glitches here and there with getting all students online, it has been relatively smooth. I had already been transitioning to more online independent work before the closures began which ended up being what I needed in order to help set up my class for this. I could not have predicted it better. Students already knew what my expectations were for the online work which made it that much smoother and has allowed me to focus on structuring the lessons provided by the district in a way that gives students the support they need in order access the material they have not learned. This program helped to direct my focus towards figuring out how I can make technology work for me. Without it I may not have known about Alice Keeler and how she structured her class. I would not have attended her workshop and found one of the missing pieces in how I can structure my class so I am not drowning in paperwork that needs grading. I also would not have set up my class the way I did which ended up helping to ease the transition into distance learning. |
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