The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
By: Beth Berube
Shortly after finishing my masters in administration, I was talking to a colleague about a program she had begun through Michigan State in educational technology. She had mentioned that within the MAET program she was learning technologies that were beneficial to her teaching at that very moment, which were actually useful, and that it was a program where you actually learned about uses of technologies and information intended to help improve teaching. The fact that I could possibly learn information that would be immediately relevant and helpful to increase my educational technology uses intrigued me to inquire about the program. After a quick inquiry into the program, I was very easily swayed when it came to having the opportunity to again be part of my Spartan community and learn from the best university around, I signed up to start my program just a few weeks later!
When thinking back over the past year, there are many things within each class that I have found rewarding and informative to help improve my teaching abilities and the knowledge I need to know about the usefulness of education technology within the classroom. However, when looking back, I think the most beneficial part of the program would have to be when I took the summer hybrid in East Lansing to complete my courses in CEP 800, CEP 815, and CEP 822. The fact that I had that physical interaction with my classmates, not to mention being back on campus, was most rewarding. This allowed me to create connections and relationships with the people that I would spend two intense weeks with in person, and four more continuous weeks online helping each other push our boundaries and discover more outside of the realms of our comfort zones.
Within these few weeks we were introduced to a lot of different web 2.0 tools to use within our classroom. When we first started talking about all of these different tools, we started off by talking about explore, create and share. These three words can be used to remind us that even if a technology tool is not specifically designed for education, there is some way you can incorporate it into your classroom and teaching. The idea of repurposing a specific tool, for something other than what it is designed to be used for, is a way to explore new things and incorporate new ideas within the classroom. Sharing these ideas is much more accessible on the web now and people can see, comment, critique, make better, and even use because of your willingness to share them! It really opens your eyes to be looking out for the ‘unfamiliar’ and making it ‘familiar’ for the openness to try new things and find out how you can incorporate them to be useful to your students.
One of the great ways that I thought this was incorporated to show us different ideas was having us take pictures of other things in the world that may create letters and use these letters to create words. This was just an idea of repurposing and a reminder to us to keep our eyes open to things you may not normally see and that we need to open our eyes to the world around us! This idea made me think of tools that I could use within the classroom, that I may not normally think of to be used, such as something as easy as going out into the world and taking pictures of geometrical figures to discuss geometry in the world. “It is through this creative repurposing of tools to meed the fundamental impulses of the learners that we can truly achieve the potential of these new media” (Dewey & Bruce, 2011).
Throughout all of the information, resources, context etc., and looking back through my reflections, I think something that really resonated with me was the idea that I need to be focusing on the content and then the technology to help me incorporate the content. That being said, I think with so much new technology always being introduced, and the expectation to use the latest technology, I sometimes forget the purpose of the technology is to enhance our teaching, not change everything. As stated by Cuban “integrating technology is not about technology, it is about learning” (Cuban, 2010). I need to focus on the problems with the content, and struggles that the students are having, and then the usefulness of the technology will come later. When faced with technology, I will now think ‘how am I going to use this to allow my students to fully understand the material?’
Within the integration of technology to help my students learn the material, the fact of actually facing the meaning of what is ‘understanding’ has been brought out throughout many readings, discussions, and thoughts throughout the classes. The idea that “to understand a topic or subject is to be able to use (or “apply,” in Bloom’s sense) knowledge and skill wisely and effectively” (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998), is a real eye-opener when thinking if my students actually ‘understand’ the material. When thinking about teaching, and the focus on standardized testing, it made me think ‘am I really giving the students the opportunity to understand the material or am I just focusing on giving them the knowledge to recall the information when it comes to testing?’ It made me realize that within my classes, we try to cover so much material but don’t allow the time to “elaborate and deepen them pedagogically” (Shulman, 1999). Then when reading I was faced with the realization that “many students do not get to explore this rich conceptualization of mathematical thinking“ and that we are “denying them access to some of mankind’s greatest achievements” (Mishra, Koehler, & Henriksen, 2011). I realized that within my class, there needed to be more time for elaboration, discovery, and discussion for a way to have students explore mathematics both in the class and real world context, and be able to have the opportunity to check for their ‘understanding’ of the concepts.
Something that was another big realization, and reminded me I need to focus more on this in the future is the importance of background knowledge. Background knowledge can both be something that is helpful in the development of furthering skills and understandings, but it can also be the main problem for students having misconceptions of ideas! If something is a misconception to begin with, they tend to build off of those misconceptions and it is hard to change the student’s ideas from these earlier misconceptions. However, it would be really important for me to understand these misconceptions and help discover where they are coming from and see if there is a way to work with the students to try to change these ideas. It is said that “children who are asked to predict the results of their experiments are more willing to change their thinking than are children who function as passive observers” (Watson & Kopnicek, 1990). That being said, what I do in the classroom needs to be more focused on having students express their ideas of what will happen, and use a variety of strategies to help them understand and discover what the solution is and why on their own, in order to overcome such barriers.
The focus of these classes pushed my thinking to have a further understanding of ‘why’ things worked and ‘how’ to think about student understanding in a deeper context. Within these classes the focus was to think about technology not as how can we incorporate technology, but how can technology help us further education. Not all tools that were exposed to us were meant to be used within education, but we had found uses for them to help increase understanding within our classroom. Our instructors Punya, Laura, and David encouraged us to take the risks of failing in order to allow us to expand our ‘tools’ that we could take and use with us in the classroom.
Another class that I am completing and finding to have a great impact on my career is CEP 820. Within this class I am creating an online hybrid class that I am hoping to use within my class in the near future. Not only am I able to experiment with the limitless possibilities of creating a class, but also the feedback and information I have gotten from my instructors of how to improve my class, or ideas to enhance student learning, has been most beneficial. Within our school the push to create hybrid and virtual classes is at the forefront of our district and this was an opportunity for me to get my feet wet without jumping full in with my students being the experiment.
The ideas that are shared through prior students, and the varieties within peoples ideas, has really showed me that there is not one ‘right’ way to design a hybrid class, but more that it is important to focus how students are receiving information and what they are being expected to take away from this information. This hybrid class has pushed me out of the standard lecture, practice, test model (well I’m trying at least), and to think about how could I get students constructing, collaborating, and building their understanding of my content in this hybrid experience.
Throughout this program, the wealth of knowledge and information that I have been exposed to is enough to make up for the stress I had put on myself to start another master’s just weeks after officially getting my first masters degree in the mail! I am thankful for all the experiences I have had within the MAET program at Michigan State University, and I look forward to continuing my journey with the knowledge I have acquired and information to apply to the future of my educational career.
When thinking back over the past year, there are many things within each class that I have found rewarding and informative to help improve my teaching abilities and the knowledge I need to know about the usefulness of education technology within the classroom. However, when looking back, I think the most beneficial part of the program would have to be when I took the summer hybrid in East Lansing to complete my courses in CEP 800, CEP 815, and CEP 822. The fact that I had that physical interaction with my classmates, not to mention being back on campus, was most rewarding. This allowed me to create connections and relationships with the people that I would spend two intense weeks with in person, and four more continuous weeks online helping each other push our boundaries and discover more outside of the realms of our comfort zones.
Within these few weeks we were introduced to a lot of different web 2.0 tools to use within our classroom. When we first started talking about all of these different tools, we started off by talking about explore, create and share. These three words can be used to remind us that even if a technology tool is not specifically designed for education, there is some way you can incorporate it into your classroom and teaching. The idea of repurposing a specific tool, for something other than what it is designed to be used for, is a way to explore new things and incorporate new ideas within the classroom. Sharing these ideas is much more accessible on the web now and people can see, comment, critique, make better, and even use because of your willingness to share them! It really opens your eyes to be looking out for the ‘unfamiliar’ and making it ‘familiar’ for the openness to try new things and find out how you can incorporate them to be useful to your students.
One of the great ways that I thought this was incorporated to show us different ideas was having us take pictures of other things in the world that may create letters and use these letters to create words. This was just an idea of repurposing and a reminder to us to keep our eyes open to things you may not normally see and that we need to open our eyes to the world around us! This idea made me think of tools that I could use within the classroom, that I may not normally think of to be used, such as something as easy as going out into the world and taking pictures of geometrical figures to discuss geometry in the world. “It is through this creative repurposing of tools to meed the fundamental impulses of the learners that we can truly achieve the potential of these new media” (Dewey & Bruce, 2011).
Throughout all of the information, resources, context etc., and looking back through my reflections, I think something that really resonated with me was the idea that I need to be focusing on the content and then the technology to help me incorporate the content. That being said, I think with so much new technology always being introduced, and the expectation to use the latest technology, I sometimes forget the purpose of the technology is to enhance our teaching, not change everything. As stated by Cuban “integrating technology is not about technology, it is about learning” (Cuban, 2010). I need to focus on the problems with the content, and struggles that the students are having, and then the usefulness of the technology will come later. When faced with technology, I will now think ‘how am I going to use this to allow my students to fully understand the material?’
Within the integration of technology to help my students learn the material, the fact of actually facing the meaning of what is ‘understanding’ has been brought out throughout many readings, discussions, and thoughts throughout the classes. The idea that “to understand a topic or subject is to be able to use (or “apply,” in Bloom’s sense) knowledge and skill wisely and effectively” (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998), is a real eye-opener when thinking if my students actually ‘understand’ the material. When thinking about teaching, and the focus on standardized testing, it made me think ‘am I really giving the students the opportunity to understand the material or am I just focusing on giving them the knowledge to recall the information when it comes to testing?’ It made me realize that within my classes, we try to cover so much material but don’t allow the time to “elaborate and deepen them pedagogically” (Shulman, 1999). Then when reading I was faced with the realization that “many students do not get to explore this rich conceptualization of mathematical thinking“ and that we are “denying them access to some of mankind’s greatest achievements” (Mishra, Koehler, & Henriksen, 2011). I realized that within my class, there needed to be more time for elaboration, discovery, and discussion for a way to have students explore mathematics both in the class and real world context, and be able to have the opportunity to check for their ‘understanding’ of the concepts.
Something that was another big realization, and reminded me I need to focus more on this in the future is the importance of background knowledge. Background knowledge can both be something that is helpful in the development of furthering skills and understandings, but it can also be the main problem for students having misconceptions of ideas! If something is a misconception to begin with, they tend to build off of those misconceptions and it is hard to change the student’s ideas from these earlier misconceptions. However, it would be really important for me to understand these misconceptions and help discover where they are coming from and see if there is a way to work with the students to try to change these ideas. It is said that “children who are asked to predict the results of their experiments are more willing to change their thinking than are children who function as passive observers” (Watson & Kopnicek, 1990). That being said, what I do in the classroom needs to be more focused on having students express their ideas of what will happen, and use a variety of strategies to help them understand and discover what the solution is and why on their own, in order to overcome such barriers.
The focus of these classes pushed my thinking to have a further understanding of ‘why’ things worked and ‘how’ to think about student understanding in a deeper context. Within these classes the focus was to think about technology not as how can we incorporate technology, but how can technology help us further education. Not all tools that were exposed to us were meant to be used within education, but we had found uses for them to help increase understanding within our classroom. Our instructors Punya, Laura, and David encouraged us to take the risks of failing in order to allow us to expand our ‘tools’ that we could take and use with us in the classroom.
Another class that I am completing and finding to have a great impact on my career is CEP 820. Within this class I am creating an online hybrid class that I am hoping to use within my class in the near future. Not only am I able to experiment with the limitless possibilities of creating a class, but also the feedback and information I have gotten from my instructors of how to improve my class, or ideas to enhance student learning, has been most beneficial. Within our school the push to create hybrid and virtual classes is at the forefront of our district and this was an opportunity for me to get my feet wet without jumping full in with my students being the experiment.
The ideas that are shared through prior students, and the varieties within peoples ideas, has really showed me that there is not one ‘right’ way to design a hybrid class, but more that it is important to focus how students are receiving information and what they are being expected to take away from this information. This hybrid class has pushed me out of the standard lecture, practice, test model (well I’m trying at least), and to think about how could I get students constructing, collaborating, and building their understanding of my content in this hybrid experience.
Throughout this program, the wealth of knowledge and information that I have been exposed to is enough to make up for the stress I had put on myself to start another master’s just weeks after officially getting my first masters degree in the mail! I am thankful for all the experiences I have had within the MAET program at Michigan State University, and I look forward to continuing my journey with the knowledge I have acquired and information to apply to the future of my educational career.
Works Cited:
Cuban, L. (2010). Confusing technology integration with instructional reform.
Dewey, J. / Bruce, B.C. & Levin, J.A. (2011). Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction, and Expression.
Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The Seven Trans-Disciplinary Habits of Mind: Extending the TPACK Framework Towards 21 st Century learning . Educational Technology, 51 (2) 22-28.
Shulman, L. (1999). What is learning and what does it look like when it doesn’t go well. Change, 31(4), 10-17.
Watson, B., & Kopnicek, R. (1990). Teaching for Conceptual Change.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Alexandria , VA : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chapter 2: Understanding understanding.
Cuban, L. (2010). Confusing technology integration with instructional reform.
Dewey, J. / Bruce, B.C. & Levin, J.A. (2011). Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction, and Expression.
Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The Seven Trans-Disciplinary Habits of Mind: Extending the TPACK Framework Towards 21 st Century learning . Educational Technology, 51 (2) 22-28.
Shulman, L. (1999). What is learning and what does it look like when it doesn’t go well. Change, 31(4), 10-17.
Watson, B., & Kopnicek, R. (1990). Teaching for Conceptual Change.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Alexandria , VA : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chapter 2: Understanding understanding.