Throughout this course I personally feel as if I have grown tremendously as an innovative learner. Baggio explains in detail auditory, kinisetic, and visual learners and how we need to address each of the learning styles. The SITE model helps me better understand the needs of my audience. And lastly, even though Dervin, Clark and some of the other sense-making models were very dense, which was probably the greatest challenge of this course, I learned so much from each text as we broke them down in presentations, videos, and discussions. I understand that in order to make sense of new information we use not only our prior knowledge, but also our prior experiences and our cultural backgrounds. Each individual learns differently because we all experience the world differently and if we want to bridge the gap we need to meet each of our students needs. A daunting task, to say the least, but manageable with the assistance of technology.
I have also enjoyed learning how to make better and more innovative presentations. Presentations that catch my audience's eye and engages them in innovative ways. I know that we didn't learn about a lot of tech tools in this class but I really think those have been useful when making sense of all the information that was thrown at us throughout this class. I cannot wait to try them in the classroom. And finally, I am thankful for the evolution of my driving question. I am not more passionate about it and once again cannot wait to apply it to my students curriculum.
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Looking back upon all of the readings on Sensemaking I am inspired to look at teaching differently. The readings have helped me make sense of sensemaking, which I admittedly didn't realize I knew little about. I will now design my lessons so that my students can easily make connections to the materials using past knowledge and experiences. I want to design lessons to get my students emotionally invested in their health and fitness. I also plan on utilizing technology and bring physical education into the 21st century.
PE just like every other subject needs to grow with the rapidly changing technology and I think following the sensemaking readings and using the TPACK concepts can help. The analogy of students receiving information like a blast from a fire hose was spot on and I am once again humbled at the idea of how much information our students have access to. I especially liked when Mirshra, the speaker in the video, said technology helps us access information for all learners - visual, auditory and kinestetic. Using the TPACK concepts will allow all students to access and make sense of the information we are delivering to them. Watching Eddie Obeng's TED talk was, for lack of a better word exciting - he was so hyped up and talking so fast that you couldn't help but to nod along. At one point he was describing how most people sit under a stair case at a small desk, yet they are connected to a global office. I cannot help to think that this concept is is the same for our students. They sit in a small classroom in small town Napa yet, they are more connected to a global classroom just by using the internet on their cell phone. My wonder is how can I utilize that global classroom in relation to my driving question, which has evolved into "Can the implementation of [certain tech/digital tools] which help students self-reflect increase positive self-perception?"
I face two dilemmas: the first being which of the many tech/digital tools to utilize. I want to use a tool that promotes healthy choices and positive self-reflection. The driving force behind my new DQ is the desire to help students raise their self-esteem. One suggestion was to use avatars and journals. The second dilemma is how to teach my students how to shift through all the information in their global classroom. There is a LOT of information our there regarding the fitness world and sadly most of it is useless, but catch our attention easily. Considering the the elements of SITE and what the needs are of my audience I have begun to ask myself "how is my driving question helping my students?". As I reflect upon my action research I have come to realize that I am once again am analyzing their behavior and trying to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it. Is that really helping my students? Students who have been continuously told they are at-risk youth and their behavior needs to improve. So like I said is having my students track their nutrition digitally and assessing their behavior really helping them in any way? In what I have learned throughout this course is no it's not there is no relevance to is, there is not emotional connection, and it doesn't relate to the real world.
As Baggio says "...emotions and natural instincts play a very important role in learning." I want my students to feel invested in themselves and I want them to change their negative perceptions of themselves. So my driving question, with the help of my 1:1 meeting, has once again evolved: Can the implementation of [certain tech/digital tools] which help students self-reflect increase positive self perception? The audience I wish and would prefer to address for the remaining two semester are my students, even though my colleagues will see my capstone not my students. I didn't start this program to influence other teachers to change their practice, but if it helps them to improve their practices and benefits our student population then I am happy to create a capstone directed at a dual audience.
My initial ideas for addressing the challenge of creating a resource to influence others and share my knowlege/research would be too use visual aides to draw on people's emotions. Baggio says that emotions and natural instinct, along with previous knowledge, play a huge role in learning. As a physical education and health teacher I want to inspire both students and teachers to live active and healthy life styles. I love the idea of creating a resource that has access to tools/material that is beneficial to learning and is easy to navigate. Session 3: Baggio, Clark and DervinHere is a link to my notes I drew from Baggio, Clark, and Dervin. To access click HERE
Key ideas from Baggio Key ideas I took from Baggio was the idea of utilizing strong visual representation when presenting information to your students. Along with the fact that 85% of people are visual learners, our students grew up constantly being stimulated with visual aides utilizing visual makes the content more relate-able for them. Another key idea I took away after reading Baggio was that prior knowledge is what helps us see and inturpret what we see - this ties in with what Dervin is saying about sense making. The last key idea was "design instruction so that the mind can take it in as both art and science". Having students who are mostly visual learners and were not successful in the traditional school setting this idea of how to design instruction was profound. Moving forward I hope I can address my students learning needs, prior knowledge and better represent the new information I am presenting to them. Key ideas from Clark Clark discussed best way to design and conduct a training. The key ideas I took from the reading were the following; first it is necessary to create a user profile which defines your learner's prior knowledge and skills. Second it is important to assess what the need of your learner really is, so that the training is not wasted. This is significant to me because I realize that both of these key ideas are necessary when I am designing my classroom lesson plan. Moving forward I think it might be a good idea to create a learner profile for each of my classes. Key ideas from Dervin A key idea I took away from Dervin was that information is taken in differently from every person and how they make sense of that new information is based on their previous knowledge, experiences and community/culture. This is significant because I see this as a way to better reach our students and ensure understanding of new material. My big driving question is I wonder what effect might tracking one's nutrition and physical activity/fitness digitally have on a student's behavior and academic achievement? I need to know how can I utilize technology better in order to reach my students with these important life-long skills and enhance their overall learning. Reflecting upon my time in the Innovative Learning program I have found myself trying new methods of teaching physical education and realizing I need to do a better job of making my curriculum relevant to my students. Throughout the last couple months I have become frustrated, stress, and at times overwhelmed. I have wondered if it's worth the work and stress to continue with the program. Then I thought about my students, the at-risk youth, and it made me realize that a lot of those students are probably feeling the same way. I have heard them say "how will I use this later in life this is boring" - in conclusion I as the teacher need to figure out innovative ways to bridge the game, so that students can make sense of the content.
Incorporating technology and 21st century learning into physical education is not easy. Through my research in the first semester I found new creative and innovative ways to implement technology like using a heart rate monitor instead of a traditional stop watch or using an app on each of the students cell phones to monitor eating habits and learn about nutrition. I used the app throughout my action research and found there to be no significant influence on student learning, but my research was completed over a weeks time and a lot of my students found the app difficult to use. Which of course put the thought in my head is there an easier, inexpensive way to utilize an app on a phone to assist me in facilitating student learning. Sifting through the Dervin article was, I will admit, difficult to do. In order to make sense of the dense text I found myself attempting to relate the content to my own experiences and attempting to find meaning. Which is what I believe she was trying to describe that we build bridges between the new information that doesn’t make sense to the old knowledge we already possess. As teacher we try to do this for not only ourselves, but our students too. We create relationships with each of them and learn about their cultural back ground (which Dervin states has a deep effect on the sense-making process) in order to bridge the gap.
If I were to teach this to my current high school students I would have them all watch the video and take notes. I would then have them do a project about their backgrounds and relate it to sense making. This could be an amazing self-awareness project to do in a health class. |