Imagine having unlimited resources and money to design the classroom of your dreams. You could pick anything you wanted that would fit into that perfect vision of a classroom. When you snap back to reality, you know that there are desks or tables that have been there for years already waiting for you to make a configuration that you have made in years past. But you can always dream right? This is where my dream classroom comes to life, on Roomstyler, a digital design tool that lets you create your perfect classroom. First, let's take a look at my current second grade classroom: The current state of my second grade classroom is far from what I wish it to be. There are dull colors on the wall, there is only one best place for a class meeting, and the worst of all, there is no invitation for student collaboration. When looking back at the teaching philosophy that I made a few years back, this design goes against a lot of what I believe in as a teacher. But when you are given limited resources, you make the best out of the situation. Now to my dream classroom: Now this layout is a much better representation of what my teaching philosophy and my schools vision encompasses. The space is inviting and acknowledges that collaboration is welcomed in this room for learning. Let's break down the decisions I made for this space to be a success! Collaboration: Project Based Learning (PBL) and Constructionism values sense-making and collaborating. In this classroom there are several open spaces and tables instead of desks that spark this collaboration that is needed. Students learn from each other, we need to give them the opportunities to do so. I also have several individual desks because of the Personalized Learning Model. Students have preferences on how they learn and that might be by themselves, so there should be options for that choice. Furniture: Throughout this dream classroom, I also presented the students with seating choices. The Third Teacher developed 79 ideas that showcase that the design of the classroom matters. One of her ideas showcase that students need dynamic chairs to absorb student movement and not restrict them! Therefore the pink dots in the picture are wobbly chairs, regular chairs, pillows, beanbags, and a futon. This gives the students a freedom to move but also give student choice from the Personalized Learning Model. Technology: Instead of having the SmartBoard mounted on a wall like my previous classroom, I chose to make the board/TV moveable. This allows for many other spaces in the classroom to become a learning area. It can be moved to the table for a small group lesson, to student tables to help with collaboration on the PBL projects, and many other places even outside of the classroom. Calm Space: There is growing research about how we can support students that come to school with trauma and there needs to be a space for them to breathe and calm down. Therefore I have a "Calm Down Corner" by the door for these very instances. Giving these students a space where they can think and regulate away from everyone else is crucial for not only that student but the classroom community. There were many other decisions when designing my classroom including a cool blue paint color instead of the off-white, positioning my teacher table to see more of my classroom, and multiple others. I would also love my classroom to have makerspace area but my classroom now is way too small. This learning space enables powerful learning experiences for students to collaborate with one another, make choices, and start to be in control of their learning. I can't wait until I get the opportunity to bring this design activity to life in my classroom!
0 Comments
Personalized learning is an educational approach that is growing and spreading throughout the schools, my elementary school included. As this approach is growing, there are many questions that are being asked, many of them happen to be from me. Some of the questions have a right answer, other questions don't have answers yet, and then there are questions where there are exact right answers. My wicked question falls into the latter. I want to know how can we incorporate technology into personalized learning.
My question has become an ongoing challenge of mine, as I look to implement various aspects of personalized learning in my classroom. It feels like everything that I have tried so far doesn't seem to work for my students and my teaching style. It has become very frustrating to figure out the way that works best for us. This is entirely why the topic of personalized learning and technology has become the focal point of my Wicked Problem Project! I want answers and solutions! During my Wicked Problem Project I did the following:
In my Prezi below I explore what a wicked problem is and I take you through my wicked problem about personalized learning and technology. Check it out! ​ The LessonDeveloping a lesson plan for my second graders has become second nature to me. But designing a lesson plan with new technology, thinking about students through a intersectionality lens, and using the UDL framework was not second nature at all. It took time, feedback, creativity and research. I decided to explore an innovative technology tool called Makey Makey where you can make your own controller out of every day items instead of using your keyboard. I played with this for awhile and learned how to play a piano game by pushing on keys on a piano I drew on paper. This playing was super fun, but I struggled to find a connection to Makey Makey to a lesson for my second graders. They don't learn circuits in this grade, so what could I do with it? It took some time and thought and it was decided that I wouldn't use the Makey Makey as the focal point of a lesson but rather a resource for a different concept entirely: Money! Click on the link below to explore my Money Makey Makey Lesson! Money Makey Makey Lesson The Designing of the LessonThe first draft of my lesson was not a home run, but it got me to first base. There were missing details, there were questions that I still had about the technology, and at points, I was not meeting the needs of all the learners that could be in a classroom. It took time and feedback from my peers and professor to help me think more critically about the UDL framework and the intersectionality lens. I took their feedback and polished my lesson to become what it is now. One of my peers gave feedback from a UDL perspective and the other was an intersectionality perspective specifically a male EL (English Learner) students with a learning disability.
I took a lot of what they were suggesting and incorporated them into my lesson plan. For example, instead of using the Makey Makey as an assessment, I used it as a practice tool and the assessment came later on Seesaw. There were also suggestions that I did not change in my lesson plan. There were suggestions about pairing students up with partners while using the Makey Makey and while that was a great idea, it does not comply what we are trying to accomplish at our elementary school. We are implementing personalized learning into our classrooms where choice is a big component. Students get to choose if they work with a partner, alone, etc. and if I took away that choice and learner preference with given partners, I would not be following the model put in place. It was a grand idea, just wouldn't fit in my classroom! I took a lot of what they said to heart and I believe that my lesson plan helps meet the needs of more learners that I will come across in my classroom for many, many years. Giving Feedback to OthersNot only was I getting feedback from other students in my Graduate course, but I was able to give them feedback from another perspective as well! I believe challenging my own thoughts and thinking through a different perspective like UDL and intersectionality and leaving feedback was more rewarding then reading what others put in my own lesson. When you are giving someone feedback you have to really know that perspective which requires research. I learned so much during that research period and had fun doing it!
Where did the idea come from?I have been toying with the idea of Personalized Learning in the classroom for almost nine months now and I am still unsure of how I can implement technology with this concept that best fits the needs of my students. This idea stemmed a beautiful wicked question: How can we incorporate technology into Personalized Learning? There is not right or wrong answer to this question, but the intent of the question is to bring about some solutions that could help me in the long run. A survey is one perfect way to help see through the eyes of other educators on how they tackle this problem. Survey MakingThe actual designing of the survey was not hard at all, the developing of the questions was the tough part to tackle. The hardest part of making the questions was zeroing in on what exactly do I want to know from my survey takers. This took some time, brain power, lots of revisions, and help from colleagues. I started with 12 questions in my first draft and by the time I made the final survey, I used three of my original questions and the rest were all new!
The designing of the survey took no time at all. I developed many questions that resulted in branching (example - if you answered yes, you will get prompted with another one to explain why you chose yes) throughout my survey. I did not want my survey takers to be burdened with figuring out what questions that actually needed to answer so I programmed the survey for the ease of the volunteers. Developing a survey was not the most challenging task that I have encountered so far, but it still was a challenge to get it just right for my wicked problem .
As educators, we think of our lesson plans almost every day but we think about our individual students even more. We think about their learning in the classroom, their friendships, and even their life at home. We learn so much about our students and spend so much time with them that we end up learning a lot of pieces of their true identity! Knowing our students to the best of our abilities is the most essential puzzle piece when planning a lesson for them.
Universal Design for Learning framework or UDL provides teachers guidance to really think about each student in the classroom and how can we meet their needs. We think about our individual students with Autism, our Emergent Bilinguals, our students with Emotional Disturbances and many more identity pieces. We also have to think of student's that have more than one of these identity pieces in their repertoire and concoct a lesson to meet ALL of their unique needs. People that have these overlapping pieces in their identities that could result in discrimination or oppression have Intersectionality. As teachers we want to make sure these students are not oppressed in their learning because of who they are and give them tools/resources to succeed in the classroom and we can use UDL to do that! In the Prezi presentation below I explore the connections between UDL and Intersectionality in the classroom! References: National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) (2018, June 22). Kimberlé Crenshaw: What is Intersectionality? [video file] retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDtnfQ9FHc While scrolling through social media on a daily basis, it never occurred to me that I typically see the same old information and rarely posts that challenge my thinking. Let's be honest, while going through facebook I usually see cooking and sports videos. That's because of the filter bubble. Eli Praiser (2011) describes the filter bubble as media outlets showing you posts that reinforce ideas that you already had or posts that follow your interests. I definitely had a filter bubble on my social media outlets, but this past week I have changed that. My "old" twitter consisted of personal friends, famous people, elementary school colleagues, and authors that tend to give away free books. I tried to think outside of my comfort zone to add people that I don't necessarily share views with and Betsy Devos was the first to pop up. Another thought occurred in my head as I clicked on that follow button. I'm just going to aggravated when I see her posts, but the beneficial part of following her is seeing how other people comment and challenge those thoughts. Those are the conversations I want to see! I also followed the United States Department of Education to stay more informed and Arne Duncan who was the Secretary of Education before Devos. I was able to find through a google search so many different people or organizations that expanded my interests and also presented new ideas. This included Dena Simmons who talks about making schools more equitable and safe and The Edvocate who also talks about diversity and has great classroom ideas. There are so many other advocates, authors, teachers, and leaders that popped up on my google search that I still need to explore and I'm genuinely excited to continue to grow my personal learning network throughout my career! References:
Pariser, E. (2011, February). Beware online “filter bubbles.” [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles/transcript Watching educational and instructional videos has always been beneficial for my learning but making them has never been a point of interest. I always have thought that making a video always seemed messy, challenging and overwhelming. I wasn't wrong. It has been extremely challenging the past couple of weeks to make different types of videos to display my learning and thoughts. Out of the videos that I have made so far, a Sketchnote video (or a video that closely resembles a Sketchnote video) wasn't as overwhelming as I assumed. I have always loved to write down my thoughts and doodles. When I was younger and there was any paper in sight, I would guarantee that I probably wrote on it, most likely my name in fancy letters. So writing words on a piece of paper while recording didn't bother me much. When I had to start pairing my voice up with the writing is when I came across some problems. I am not a big speaker, so I ran out of information to say when I still was writing or sorting out my questions. It is definitely not a perfect Sketchnote video but it's definitely a start and I wouldn't mind doing another one! I'm curious to see if I could incorporate this into the remote learning that is happening during this time of need. As I get more comfortable with using my voice in video, I can definitely see myself making Sketchnote videos for my students on topics if there isn't one already out there. (Why make another video if there is a great resource already made?) I would also find it extremely engaging to give this as a choice for presentations in their personalized learning units. Making a Sketchnote video is just another way for students to express their ideas and thoughts so why not give them the choice! References:
Wiersma, C. (2020, April 1). CEP 812 Question Quickfire. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmmyuCecdgc&feature=youtu.be I have always known that we should give authors the credit they deserve, but little did I know about all the laws, the terminology, or in general how complicated the process is! After taking time this week and learning about copyright laws, creative commons, and the remix culture, I have realized how beneficial it is to have this knowledge when we are in a society where exploring and making things are applauded! I now know how to go through the process and do it correctly. I was able to take all the information that I learned about legal media use and create a remix video while abiding by all the laws. At a young age, I learned about plagiarizing and eventually copyright but I didn't learn a lot about actually giving artists or authors the acknowledgement they deserve in our papers or our remixed work. That is why I chose the concept of attribution to highlight in my remix video. Other educators could easily use this when teaching students about remix culture and copyright. Makers could even utilize my video to make their own remix because of the creative commons license that I decided to use! Check out my video below to learn how to give credit where credit is due. References:
Wiersma, C. (2020, March 28). Attribution Remix. Retrieved From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ehCD0mhtM Think about the last time that you just sat down and your mind would not stop. You're probably thinking that happened just a couple of minutes ago. Now think about the last time when you brainstormed as many questions as you could in a couple of minutes.That is a lot more challenging to recall. Questioning has always been difficult for me because it requires me to be more analytical which is something I have not been required to do for such a long time. I decided to sit down for five minutes and let my stream of consciousness unleash all the questions that it could think of about personalized learning in the classroom. It was not as challenging as I thought it would be. Take a look of what I came up with: It took a little bit of time to ask that first question but after that, I was off to the races! It also did not help that I doubted myself when I started the timer, thinking "I have never been good at this" but once I realized it's not that hard to do, I did a lot better. Once I was finished, I was astonished by how many questions that I came up with and read them all over again. It came to me that I have asked all of these questions before as the second grade team was learning and developing plans for personalized learning but I never verbalized my questions because I believed they were unimportant. I wonder if my colleagues have the same questions or concerns about how we are achieving personalized learning in the classroom... oh look another question! Now that I have wrote down all of these lingering questions, I would love to act upon them and learn how to solve these wicked problems (or try to nonetheless). After reading Warren Berger's (2014) book A More Beautiful Question, it was clear that during this activity I had to "...rediscover the tool that kids use so well in those early years: the question" (p. 24) and it was so much fun and eye opening! It has finally clicked as to why my students have so much fun making questions in the classroom. Part of prepping my second grade students to be successful with project based learning, we took a lot of time practicing how to develop worthy questions in the beginning of the school year. An exercise that we would partake in as a class was looking at a picture of three different animals morphed into one. Students brainstormed so many questions to learn about this obscure animal. In the beginning, they were typical questions that could be answered with a "yes" or "no" which we learned that we can't learn a lot from those type of questions. We had to change what our questions were asking to get more information. We needed to ask questions that would give us a lot of answers, we have to use phrases like "Why", "What" "How" and so on. No these questions are not actionable or could bring about change like Berger (2014) would like, but it got students brains jumpstarted for our personalized learning and project based learning units where later their beautiful questions could bring change to their community. My students and I had a reflection conversation after one of those activities on why asking questions is so important and they all seemed to grasp the answer of it helps us learn. As I was reading Berger's book, I realized asking questions is more than just learning, Berger (2014) explains that when children "...raise and explore their own questions, through various forms of experimentation, and without being burdened with instructions - they exhibit signs of more creativity and curiosity" (p. 43). Giving the students a chance to ask questions in an open environment gives back so much more to their brain than I could have imagined. References:
Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question; The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas . New York, NY: Bloomsbury. There are many different kinds of students that will come into your classroom, each one of them with different learning needs. Having 25 different needs in the classroom, it is very hard to ensure that every one of them gets exactly what they need. This includes students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Students with ASD have "...social communication deficits and repetitive and unusual sensory–motor behaviors..." (Lord, Elsabbagh, Baird, Veenstra-Vanderweele, 2018, p. 508) which may require a lot of additional support. There are a plethora of different approaches, tips, and tricks that help support ASD students in the classroom and we can add technology applications to that long list of resources. Such as the application ChoiceWorks. ChoiceWorks meets the needs of ASD students by helping them regulate their emotions and having a visual schedule on their iPads for reference. According to Lindsay, Proulx, Scott, and Thomson (2014), "Having a visual display of the schedule and a structured routine was helpful for teachers to minimize distress among all children in the classroom, especially with children with ASD." (p. 110). Many classrooms already have visual schedules on the board, but giving ASD students that extra visual that comes with specific times helps them regulate even more. Another strategy that teachers and specialists utilize is a feelings chart to help students regulate their emotions. Where I teach, I have only seen this done with paper and it is not the most beneficial. Boser, Goodwin, and Wayland (2014) give an alternative idea of using paper stating that "One student may use mobile electronics to quickly pull up a feelings chart with appropriate coping strategies to foster an environment of self-recognition of feelings." (p. 50). ChoiceWorks gives those students the tools to regulate right from the iPad which could lead to less disruption. I do not believe that any one tactic, tip, or trick will help us solve this ill-structured problem, but technology with different approaches will help teachers draw closer to meeting all students needs. References:
Boser, K. I., Goodwin, M. S., & Wayland, S. C. (2014). Technology Tools for Students with Autism: Innovations that Enhance Independence and Learning (pp. 47-55). Baltimore, MD: Paul H Brookes Publishing Co. Lindsay, S., Proulx, M., Scott, H., & Thomson, N. (2013). Exploring teachers strategies for including children with autism spectrum disorder in mainstream classrooms. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 18(2), 101–122. doi: 10.1080/13603116.2012.758320 Lord, C., Elsabbagh, M., Baird, G., & Veenstra-Vanderweele, J. (2018). Autism spectrum disorder. The Lancet. 392, 508- 520. doi: 10.1016/ S0140-6736(18)31129-2 |
Archives
June 2021
Categories |