#edim508

Video blog on developing the five minds from Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future. Enjoy

Glogster allows for student discovery of many concepts. The visual nature appeals to our students and creates an environment for easy learning. Students spend a majority of their free time in online environments. A site such as Glogster merges learning with a visual online experience. The online poster invites users to interact and click on the links, images and videos to dig into a particular topic. The posters can be linked to your site, sent as a link or embedded in your class blog. Glogster is easy to use and can be created by students or teachers to present information. Readers will be more engaged when they can see and experience a topic instead of simply reading about it. This is true with all ages and learning styles.

During the Digital Media course this week we have been learning about the respectful and ethical minds. Gardner (2009), describes the respectful mind as seeking to understand and work with those who are different and the ethical mind as abstracting one’s role as a citizen and striving toward good citizenship. When students have an opportunity to explore my glog they will be exposed to a very serious world crisis: access to water. This is a problem that affects many people across the world including the Dominican Republic. Students will see and hear from people affected by this crisis and learn about an easy to use construct that uses water conservatively but to great effects. Students will then be challenged to identify their water usage and reflect on how they might limit their own water consumption. The goal is for students to reflect on the crisis including how they have been personally impacted or are impacting the water crisis. This will develop their respectful and ethical minds. They will then be further challenged to build their own tippy tap. Many of our students live in poor areas where this tool could actually be used. If they will not use it we will take their constructs and donate them to the local community. I am hoping that this simple poster may create a small impact to the water crisis as it affects our students and families.

Have you been using Glogster? What are your successes? 

Julie Lindsay (2014) says, “Learning is customized to their needs.” This is when teachers can begin integrating the respectful mind. When we understand and respect students backgrounds, knowledge and individual identity. This can happen in many ways but in the flattened classroom our classroom is expanded and students learn these aspects for themselves.

Julie Lindsay (2014) also says, “All of these are just different ways to merge our classrooms in a common experience, to learn about one another.  Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other.  But we as teachers must open the book.  We must help students get to know each other in ways that are, of course, safe ways that fit with our curriculum.  Our local standards that we have.  But you know it is very exciting. “ This made me want to learn more about the flattened classroom. How can I get started and how can we be involved?

I found some answers on the Flat Connections website, “flat classrooms” are:

Personal, collaborative and challenge-based classrooms

Working together and co-create outcomes

Making positive changes

Global competence, intercultural awareness and digital fluency

Co-creation of learning and actionable outcomes

Build bridges between students

The website shows some very interesting projects that bring classrooms together. It gives great information on how teachers may collaborate with each other. What I don’t like about the website is that it requires a paid subscription. I understand that it builds a framework and provides resources but I feel that the prices are exorbitant for what you get.

When I think about global connections I think about the after school club I run. It’s called Santiago Outreach Program (SOP) and meets every Monday to work on a community project. The group started as a Global Issues Network group. The GIN conference is about bringing groups together that are impacted their world in small sustainable ways. The projects are free to do and the only charge is for the conference itself. My students learned so much the first year and now we are working on impacting education access for all by going into a community and doing activities that promote reading. My students have seen real progress and joy when it comes to reading that is a huge improvement from when we started. Next year the group is thinking about doing a feeding center for the same community.

I can think of no better way to impact and practice the respectful and ethical mind. My students are the ones who create the project based on the needs of the community. Then students must make a commitment to the project and follow through with the activities. It is interesting for students to begin with what THEY want to do or accomplish. Then after meeting with various representatives students discover what the community actually NEEDS. Then SOP meets to discuss what resources we have and we create a plan. This makes students the leaders in the project and I can be support for additional resources, knowledge and empowerment.

What sort of global projects do you do with your classroom?

What is your biggest challenge?

What has been your biggest success?

Future of Education. (2014, January 16). Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on "Flattening Classrooms". Retrieved February 23, 2017, from https://youtu.be/RVZuwIhjQvA

Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future.

Global Issues Network. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2017, from http://globalissuesnetwork.org/

https://www.smore.com/96j2x

Sir Ken Robinson (2007) says, “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” This is an important statement for educators. Where is our focus in the classroom, is it on skill or expression? Are we recognizing the students as individuals or simply devices that need to download data? If our teachers are given scripted lessons and standardized testing of students then we become severely limited in our own creativity in the education process. I am extremely blessed to work at a school that does not provide limits to teaching, learning and assessing. As long as we are working towards the standards and we use proven/ effective teaching methods.

Sir Ken Robinson (2007) concludes, “So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image.” When we are limited by the educational system currently in place we retain the ability to be masters of our classroom. We need to be willing to adjust our teaching process to bring out the abilities of our students in our content areas. One of my goals for my classroom is to take the students science skills to the next level, whatever that may be.

About half way into his presentation Sir Ken Robinson (2007) made the statement, “now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other.” I love that of all the things kids with degrees could be doing it’s playing video games. That’s because video games provide so many opportunities for our students. You can work together with friends to complete a task, play against friends, play by yourself or play with friends you’ve just made. By practicing a game you increase your skills through critical thinking and processing while being unaware of doing so. Your brain creates pathways between your visual and motor processing which get better over time. You also work on communication and teamwork skills.

We can tap into these skills in the classroom by bringing in many types of technology. Students can share resources and information socially using diigo. Students can ask questions, comments and share content in our Learning Management System, Moodle.  When it comes to creating presentations students have many options in the technological world including powtoon, prezi, powerpoint, keynote and many others! I enjoy when students make discoveries and bring new applications and sites to use to the classroom.  It is our responsibility to keep creativity in our classrooms if students are not given the opportunity to be creative than it is the teacher who is not showing creativity in the classroom.

What have you done this week to encourage your students to be creative?

I just eduClipped "Protista Assessment". Check it out...

This project was completed for EDIM 508. I will be using the presentation in my Middle School Science classroom this week. This will be a great interactive introduction to simple and compound machines. Students will have a note taking form to make sure they have accessed all important information. Then students will head into the lab to experience the various machines. This will include making their own Rube Goldberg machine. 

Gardner (2009) describes the disciplined mind as, “being capable of applying oneself diligently, improving steadily and continuing beyond formal dedication. The synthesizing mind selects crucial information from the copious amounts available, arraying that information in ways that make sense to self and to others.” This Prezi about simple machines is great for students because it is similar to a power point which is familiar but “Fancier”.  In my experience students are more likely to learn through visuals and graphics before simple text. A Prezi like the one here incorporates audio, video and graphics to facilitate learning of content. My Middle School students would be able to incorporate choice by deciding where to start their learning. However, upon completion of the Prezi students will have been exposed to all the content for the lesson. According to Gardner (2009) there are four essential steps to disciplining a mind: Identify the important topics/concepts, spend significant amounts of time, provide a variety of learning options and set up a performance of understanding. This Prezi will be an introduction of the topic. Students will then complete a virtual lab showing how the equations for mechanical advantage are related to the machine. After assessing that learning has happened we will move into learning about Rube Goldberg Machines. With my entire 7th and 8th grade students we will turn the Science Lab into one big Rube Goldberg machine. This will allow students to activate their discipline and synthesizing mind. For my higher achieving students I would like to have them add more content to the Prezi. I am not sure of the best way to have several workers about to input data onto a Prezi so a different format might be easier. When students are able to provide information for their peers there is a sense of leadership and accomplishment. This sort of facilitation is my goal for my courses. There are so many resources out there but our students are the ones who are able to say, “Here, this infographic I really learned from, or check out this video it had a great experiment, etc.” For me this is the ultimate goal of a digitally infused classroom.