Maybe it’s the sunshine, or the rumble of others chatting
at the coffee house but I am feeling the energy of summer just around the
corner and think it is a perfect time for retrospection.
Today is the last day of May, I am looking into the final
week of school after having a wonderful year and thinking what is it I learned
this year. How can my experiences or
learning help others? I figure the first
step is to establish what it is I have in fact learned this year.
·
Trial and error is a must
·
Kids can and will impress you with their
knowledge
·
It's okay to start slow and build
I realize all of those are generic and could apply to any
topic, but here is how I think they apply to blended learning/personalized
learning for me this past year.
You don’t know what you don’t know until you do it. Going into blended learning this year, I knew
it was about introducing my students to technology as an opportunity to give
them more personalized attention, but what I didn’t know was how… What I learned was that blended learning is
so much bigger than technology that using technology is one approach to
personalization and that students can do and show incredible learning with the
tool, but in the end it is just a tool. I
had enough practice with various tech devices I knew that for the age of my
students iPads were going to be a great introduction. But how was I going to take it beyond playing
games and “expensive worksheets”. This
is where it’s okay to start slow comes in.
I started with filling my iPads with to many apps, to many games and to
little direction. Honestly, it was that
expensive worksheet I mentioned before, and I am at the point where that was
okay. The students were able to enjoy
the devices. They were engaged in the
practice or skills that each app asked of them.
They were able to get to know how to use them if they didn’t have prior
experience and they were able to get feedback that a traditional worksheet
doesn’t provide when they got an answer right or wrong. Yet the personalization was minimal
So my next step was using the iPads in group lessons. I used the app nearpod which is a
presentation app that allows for information to be presented as well as
questions and responses so that you as the teacher get instant feedback. There are many other apps that function in
similar ways this is just one I found to work for me. It allowed me to build a lesson for my
students and provide them visuals as well as use the feedback in my
teaching. I knew instantly who
understood and who needed some additional time with the material. It was through these lessons that my
thinking shifted and it allowed me to see iPads as a much greater tool than I
had previously been using them. The
icing on the cake was my students loved the interactive quality of the lesson
rather than just sitting and getting and then going back to complete the task I
had asked of them.
Yet I tried then to take my personalization one step
further. This is where I am currently
working and where I will start of next year in trying to become even more
effective. Again I used a presentation
app called educreation but this time my students were creating the lessons
themselves to show their leaning. After
teaching a mini lesson on needs and wants I sent the students back to make
educreations. They filled them with
pictures and were able to use speech to show me they understood the
material. I feel the work I got from my
students was something I could not have gotten without the use of the
technology and it was truly authentic.
Where I fall on the SAMR model is often in question in my
mind, but I think I was able to make some good strides this year in my use of
technology and hopefully in providing my students a more personalized
education.