Watching the Obeng video and thinking about transliteracy this week actually reminded me of the importance of not entirely replacing everything in the classroom with technology. My project was going to have students use only websites to conduct their research, but after thinking about students exercising multiple forms of literacy I decided to align the project with a story from their anthology, provide books from the library, and bring realia into the classroom to supplement their learning experience. I think that with the push towards technology that education is currently (and rightly) experiencing, it is important to remember the value in providing students with different types of materials to learn from.
I also had a great realization about my research project this week through talking with a friend of mine who is also a teacher. I asked her to help me think of the assumptions I was making in creating my project, as it is hard to think about your own assumptions. She pointed out that I was assuming that students would be willing and eager to look in multiple places for information, and that they might just click on one link, and probably the the first link they see. I realized she was right so I decided to add a perusing time to my project. Students will need to look at each of the information sources and review them before they are told what information they should be trying to find. I believe that at least knowing what each website, or other source of information contains will make them more likely to use more than one source of information, and therefore make a meaningful decision. I think that transliteracy is an important skill that students today have had to master to a much further extent than other generations given the multitude of "literacies" they need to master. It is important for teachers to remember that students are not moving from one literacy to another, but rather adding a new way of receiving and interpreting information which enables them to create a well-rounded understanding of the material they are expected to learn.
3 Comments
As I have been beginning to figure out exactly what my end product is going to look like, and how I am going to get there, I realize I keep frantically returning to this idea of balance. I don't want to set my students free upon the internet without any real researching skills, but I don't want to overly limit their options so that they feel disconnected from their end products. The instructional product I have created gives students opportunities to make authentic decisions within some confines designed to focus their work. These confines act as a support system, or training wheels for the students.
Each day students will be presented with a goal, or assignment, related to a research topic and will be presented with a variety of sources in which they can find the information they need to reach their goal. A variety of digital and non-digital, literary and non-literary resources should be provided each day. This will ensure that students are self-directing, becoming active participants in their own learning experience, but are still slightly confined by the materials that the teacher has provided. These confines can and should be loosened as students gain confidence and experience in decision making and as they get older. It is important to remember that any confines placed on students’ decision making, (i.e. their end product, resources they may use, time they may spend working on the assignment) should be designed specifically with the purpose of supporting the student through the decision making process. Students may struggle with time management or understanding expectations of their end products, so ample amounts of successful examples should be shown. Teachers should be cognitive, however, that examples are confines to student decision making. What is most important to remember when designing lessons implementing decision making is that there is a fine balance between giving students enough freedom to make authentic decisions and enough support to ensure that they are able to be successful, and a meaningful learning experience can be found in that balance. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2018
Categories |
Photo used under Creative Commons from Wajahat Mahmood