ImagineIT Phase Six - Final Report
Reading What Should I Do?: Confronting the Dilemmas of Teaching in Urban Schools led me to differentiate between a problem and a dilemma. A problem is something that has a clear solution, whereas a dilemma does not, but rather is something to be negotiated to the best of one’s ability. Teachers face these dilemmas every day, on serious issues as well as petty, and are often required to make decisions immediately. This requires an understanding that every decision made will not always be the best, and that there may not even be a “best” response. The situation must be handled using wisdom and professional experience to make informed decisions, and one must accept that dilemmas are not to be solved. For example, there is the on-going curricular conflict between breadth and depth. This does not have an easy solution, one way is not necessarily better than the other, and (as most things) is highly dependent on the school and student context, but must be decided on by the instructor.
Through conferencing with my colleagues and conducting a student focus group, I realized two things: one, that students need to be scaffolded into new ways of learning, and two, that there must be flexibility in the course structure to accommodate varying student needs. My ImagineIT project requires students to work in ways they are not necessarily familiar with - organizing tasks and group responsibilities, working independently and self-advocating, and presenting products to audiences. Many students need these practices to be modeled, and providing example products and templates has done a lot to improve student work and reduce anxiety between the first and second projects in my Environmental Science class.
After the initial implementation of my ImagineIT project, I feel as if I am still somewhat missing one of the most significant components to drive student learning: wonder. “Wisdom begins in wonder,” said Socrates, and I want to create a curriculum that highlights students’ curiosities about the world, and provides options to incorporate these interests into class work. The main structural components of my project are in place - project-based learning, authentic audiences, and a new digital course platform - and now is the time to add additional elements that will mirror the playful and interest-driven experiences our cohort experienced beginning in the summer. For round 2 of my ImagineIT project, I will focus on these elements, bringing in world of wonder activities, quickfire challenges, and social media integration, as well as continuing to work on designing projects that allow for student interests to be integrated into the course assignments.
Through conferencing with my colleagues and conducting a student focus group, I realized two things: one, that students need to be scaffolded into new ways of learning, and two, that there must be flexibility in the course structure to accommodate varying student needs. My ImagineIT project requires students to work in ways they are not necessarily familiar with - organizing tasks and group responsibilities, working independently and self-advocating, and presenting products to audiences. Many students need these practices to be modeled, and providing example products and templates has done a lot to improve student work and reduce anxiety between the first and second projects in my Environmental Science class.
After the initial implementation of my ImagineIT project, I feel as if I am still somewhat missing one of the most significant components to drive student learning: wonder. “Wisdom begins in wonder,” said Socrates, and I want to create a curriculum that highlights students’ curiosities about the world, and provides options to incorporate these interests into class work. The main structural components of my project are in place - project-based learning, authentic audiences, and a new digital course platform - and now is the time to add additional elements that will mirror the playful and interest-driven experiences our cohort experienced beginning in the summer. For round 2 of my ImagineIT project, I will focus on these elements, bringing in world of wonder activities, quickfire challenges, and social media integration, as well as continuing to work on designing projects that allow for student interests to be integrated into the course assignments.
ImagineIT Phase Six - Update
My ImagineIT project has rolled out in stages throughout this year, and is continuously improving. With news of my assignment to build a new Environmental Science course at the end of the summer, my project shifted its focus from Physics to this course to take advantage of the opportunity in designing a new course. With this change, some of the digital tools I originally planned to use in the classroom have been set aside, such as Classcraft and Penzu. This has allowed me to focus on learning environmental science content and developing lessons, rather than learning these new digital tools. I have, however, learned to use other tools through building the course - primarily the Summit Personalized Learning Platform, and Google Classroom. These tools have allowed the environmental science course to be almost entirely paperless, while also providing an intuitive platform for students to access course resources, request feedback on drafts of projects, and submit work. Students have completed two projects so far this year, and shared their final products beyond the walls of the classroom. The first project ended with students creating digital portfolios and posting their work to the site. In the second project, students presented the findings of experiments they designed to younger science students in the building in Disney II’s first annual Conference on Personal Impact and Sustainability - a low-stakes poster-style presentation to small groups (see examples below). Going forward I will be working to incorporate social media into the classroom and to develop ways for students to routinely share personal connections to class content.
|
|