Blog: On your 792 Blog page in weebly write a paragraph answering the following questions: Choose a website that you liked from above. Who was their audience? Were they effective in presenting to them on every page? Why or why not? I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing Nai Saelee’s Innovative Learning website on Personalized Learning. It’s clear that her intended audience is other teachers. She begins her opening page with this question to fellow teachers, “How many math teachers have personally observed student frustration or disengagement in their classroom because the lesson is either too challenging or not challenging enough? “ She goes on to explain a common experience all teachers have- the challenge of differentiating instruction when we have so many different students at so many different ability levels. How in the world can we customize learning to meet the needs? It would take 36 different lesson plans to make the learning exactly differentiated for each child. Nai has an action charge to teachers, “It is time for educators to harness the power of digital tools to prepare students for the 21st century and help close the achievement gap.” In the section titled, “Your Journey. Your Pace,” which could also be directed to students, Nai clearly is pitching to teachers with an opening sentence that sounds like an infomercial in a familiar voice that made me laugh. “Teachers, are you tired of falling behind the cursed pacing guide? “ Okay if you’re old enough you will recognize that familiar pitch is similar to a well known episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy is advertising for Vitameatvegamin (this episode is on YouTube and if you never saw it you should take a break and go watch it). Nai stresses to teachers that our goal should be to help out students become independent learners, “autonomous, creative, critical thinkers”. Nai’s points about the power of personalized learning are all directed to the educator and finally asks, “Are you teaching for the future or teaching for the past?” I found her style to be very motivating and because I did feel like she was speaking to me as an educator I wanted to know more about how to get my students on track with personalized learning. Part 2: Having explored several capstone websites, write a blog about who you think the audience of your capstone is going to be and why. The audience for my capstone will be classroom teachers and student leaders. The key to my capstone project is helping students join affinity groups as they do collabortive work in classes. Originally I really thought I would be writing my capstone project with teachers as my only audience but as I reviewed student comments about affinity groups I realized that students could initiate their own affinity groups as a type of study group for any class. It makes sense to help teachers set-up affinity groups in their classes, but actually it would be even better if students took responsibility for organizing themselves into these nurturing, creative, collaborative groups. Also, I noticed that certain students in my class that found affinity groups to be very helpful are students that I would catagorize as leaders. They were able to pull other students into their affinity group and create a connection that one student described as “our little school family”. If I could help students organize themselves into their own affinity groups it would be even more beneficial. Students would not need to rely on a teacher to create the circumstances for connecting, but could instead be that catalyst themselves. Reading all about helping students to be autonomous learners from Nai’s capstone obviously got my brain thinking about my audience in a new way.
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BLOG #2 703 Transliteracy- everybody on board! 1) How does transliteracy change your current thoughts on the content you deliver? 2) How do you see the incorporation of transliteracy teaching methods increasing student inclusion and engagement? 3) How does sketchnoting fall into the transliteracy category and how was it for you to process information in this way? How might you use this in the classroom?
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AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
March 2021
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