Reading Response for October 18, 2014

In the reading How Teachers Learn and Develop, the authors state that “The problem of knowing something but failing to have it guide one’s actions is ubiquitous. Many years ago, Alfred Whitehead (1929) warned about the dangers of inert knowledge. This involves knowledge that is available to people in the sense that they can talk about it when explicitly asked to do so…However, the knowledge is inert in the sense that it does not guide one’s thinking and actions in new settings” (Hammerness et. al, p. 372).   

This has been completely true in my experience. I understood the concepts in all of my theory and literature classes. I could write great papers, and ace exams, but getting into the classroom was a completely different experience. I acted on impulse and did not stop to think about the theory that supported my action or the state standard that was included in each seemingly off-topic talk (where students actually learn more than I could hope). 

As Whitehead is mentioned in the article again, he suggests that most pre-teacher knowledge “remains inert”. This is very true of some of my knowledge. My content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge I do very much use over and over again. However, knowledge about the developmental stages of children, and learning school law has remained inert. Is there a better way to prepare pre-service teachers for their own classroom? Of that, I am not sure, but I do know that it took several years’ experience to feel like I knew as much as a teacher should know and had forgotten all of the unnecessary information I didn’t require. 

Shifting gears…to Twitter

In Twitter is a Snark Valve, Mark Sample states that one of the most common uses of Twitter among his students is criticizing and snark. Instead of being angry, he is interested and sounds mostly pleased: “It’s involved, it’s witty, and most importantly, it takes an oppositional stance — a welcome reprieve from the majority of student writing, which avoids taking any stance at all.”

Sample states that although students use this as a way to voice negative opinions about material, at the very least it is working “to demonstrate that the student is in fact earnestly engaged with the material.”

Sample also finds this useful for getting things done in class. “By having a systematic, constrained outlet for the snipe and snark and sarcasm that smart twenty-year-olds might otherwise direct towards more civil discourse, or unleash outside of the classroom, or worse, bottle up, the Twitter snark valve frees up both class and the class blog for more “serious” dialog. And I’m putting “serious” in scare quotes because I believe even sardonic comments provide insight — insight into the topic under discussion, but also insight into how it’s being received by students.”

I feel a little torn about this. I see what Sample is getting after. He is seeing this as successful because his students are not robots – they are demonstrating that they have a voice and an opinion. However, students should know that there are real-world consequences for posting snarky remarks about professors, institutions, bosses, work environments, etc. Not everyone will be impressed that they have an opinion about their surroundings.

It’s wonderful to speak out about situations that are displeasing and deserve attention and it’s amazing to have a tool to allow a global conversation, but for situations like class, job, etc. there doesn’t seem to be a reason to allow the snarky tweeting to continue. Furthermore, Sample states that his students were completely aware that he was part of the Twitter followers and would be participating in the conversation. For his students to not care who read their “snarky” remarks shows a way more interesting phenomenon in my opinion. For the majority, students would most likely not directly share their gripes with their professor to his face, but they are completely fine posting it to a site where he will read their comments. They are only brave and opinionated when they are not directly facing the object of their contention. Those people are not agents of change – they are whining. Am I interpreting this correctly or have I completely gone on the defensive? Would you allow students to write snarky remarks about your classroom/teaching/educational material? If I’m way off the mark here, someone please bring me back to reality.

I do admit that this would give the teacher/professor a time to reflect on their teaching and material. In the article Reflections on Teaching with Social Media, the section about using Zotero interested me partly because I would be very interested in playing with this technological tool myself to see if this would be useful in my classroom. I was also intrigued by this section because the author admits that many students did not utilize the tool to complete their assignments. He has an honest evaluation of the technology used in his classroom. Self-reflection is a gigantic part of being a good teacher. Reflection of your own practices is great, but then also giving students a chance to reflect on your practices. Completely terrifying to make yourself vulnerable but totally useful to creating a better lesson, unit, and classroom.

Mark Sample’s Framework for Teaching with Twitter, his overview of Twitter-use in this later blog post seems to be more in line with what I would like to use Twitter for in my own classroom. “Or try Twitter as a platform for reflective thinking, asking students at the end of class to sum up the most valuable lesson of the day.” I have used Twitter sheets in the past where they are summing up their opinions or reflections to the lesson modeling a Twitter post without actually posting it to the Web. They simply turn in their sheets to me as an exit slip. I like this activity for the very reason that Sample includes: “In my experience, having only 140 characters to do so will actually make it much more likely the students give a concise and focused reflection, rather than some canned response they think you want to hear.” I like using the paper method for “Twitter Posts” because then I’m not forcing my students to use their Twitter for school and I’m not in danger of seeing things on their feed that I really don’t want to see. I also don’t have to deal with families that do not want their student on Twitter. Would you use the real-deal Twitter in your classroom? Would that create a more authentic experience and would it be worth the potential road blocks?

September Article Review - Technology, Fair Use, and Plagiarism

This month’s reading about Fair Use, plagiarism, and technology had me pondering one point – teacher responsibility and flexibility. As teachers, we are not only expected to stay current with our knowledge of all things in our subject area, but we are also expected to stay on top of current trends in pedagogy and technology. I am grateful for the Koehler and Mishra article that tied all three of those areas together. Somewhere deep down, I think I knew that all of the areas (pedagogy, technology, and content knowledge) all went hand-in-hand, but the article made it click. It just makes sense that all three of those ideas would have to work together – teachers are constantly taking ideas and asking ourselves: how would it best serve our children? How would that life lesson look in the classroom? And how can I incorporate some parallel learning that would get students involved in the process, since that’s how students think and learn now? According to the article “NCTE Definition of 21^st Century Literacies” students of the 21^st century need to know how to work with multiple media and think laterally and process multiple media. Students also need to be aware of the extreme ethical responsibilities that accompany an expanding amount of power to influence through the Web.  

There is also the underlying agreement that we are to keep up with our students and not only be able to relate to them, but also to be in tune with how they think, process, and ultimately learn. That’s a lot to keep track of, and this may seem like martyrizing the profession – but really, this is what we signed up for. We assumed this great responsibility when we decided to stand in front of young folks and attempt to teach them how to function in our ever-changing world. Students, parents, and communities trust us to be at the top of our game at all times. We promised to never stop learning and growing so that our students would always receive the best training in becoming a citizen and a life-long learner. 

It comes down to this – with new technology emerging fast than we can incorporate it in our classrooms, we have to be adaptable. Prensky’s article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” was incredibly interesting. His article discusses interactions that I see every day at our school: teachers who have become anywhere between indifferent or angry that students have seemingly no desire to sit and read a book or listen to lectures. Prensky discusses how students need fast-paced, interactive lesson-designs, but an older generation of teachers are attempting to make them focus on what they view as strengths. I hear this conversation replayed over and over again during staff meetings and during lunch breaks – teachers lamenting over the lost art of reading, writing, socializing in the good ol’ slow-paced days. I’ve often thought of this as problematic thinking, of going backwards – why force our students to learn in the past when they will not be using those skills in their future? 

Prensky’s article has pushed my troubled thoughts to the forefront of my mind now. He claims, “…the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (Prensky, 2001, p. 2). I can see two roads to this statement – one is that maybe this exchange from tech-savvy kids and socially-savvy adults could work as a great learning relationship for both parties. If each can see the value in the other, this could be a great environment. However, if either party is stringent and stubborn in their ways, this could be a very toxic learning relationship – especially if the stubborn party is the teacher. We should be the ones modeling the wonder and the want to learn about the digital environment – if teachers are out-right refusing because it’s new and strange and they’re uncomfortable, we are not only telling our students that they’re communication and world of social constructions are not valuable, but also that being stubborn and set in one’s ways is valuable. Isn’t part of our job to demonstrate the value of education, change, and being a life-long learner? 

This article has caused me to look at how I’m teaching my students. I immediately think of teaching grammar – the drill and kill of grammar will not work. It hasn’t worked for some time. One solution was to teach grammar solely through writing, but I was finding my students unable to grasp everything – the rules, the exceptions, the reason behind it all – so I went back to directly teaching grammar skills. This time however, I use games and interactive, quick lessons to drive information home that should have been memorized years ago. Competition, quick bits of information, use of cell phones, and real-world application has aided in making these fundamental rules stick. They are going to be judged by their writing and communication skills in their future careers – our students need to be able to learn in such a way that works for them to be successful. 

I’m walking away with this lesson from the article: teachers need to stop being critical of the way that our students’ brains have been hard-wired. It’s done – there’s no changing it – so we may as well get on board and start teaching in a way that our students will grasp and in which our students will flourish.Students and their futures are our responsibility. We are not shaping them to function in a world that no longer exists. We are shaping them for a world that may not yet exist. Teachers have to show students what an adaptable, responsible, life-long learner looks like.

 Koehler, M.J. & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1) 60-70. Retrieved from https://tldeunomaha.files.wordpress.com/
NCTE. (2014). NCTE definition 21st century literacies. NCTE Position Statement. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition
Prensky, Marc. (2001). Digital immigrants, digital natives. On The Horizon, 9(5). Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing

**Can't get my works cited entries to have a hanging indent to work on the blog!