Communities of Practice: World Language Fair April 29th 2017

As many people would think, every time I think about the learning process images of  books, lectures, classrooms, and structured environments come to my mind. I am a teacher and have been a teacher most of my life. The word learning evokes everything related to my profession. I have never stopped to reflect upon the actual process of learning and how people learn. However, recently my time has been occupied with several readings for my ET-715 Foundations of Learning Theory materials. It has been challenging but intellectually stimulating reading.

One of the books I am currently reading is called Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives by Etienne Wenger (1998). There are many theories for learning including the social learning theory. According to Wenger (1998) we are social beings that acquire knowledge through active engagement in the world  as well as our ability to experience the world in meaningful ways. We learn while interacting with others, learning about their practices, values, and beliefs, and by having an open mind and attitude towards existing differences.

One component of social learning theory is the sense of community: "Community as a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing, and our participation is recognizable as competence (Wenger, 1998, p.4)". It is in the realm of learning through community experiences that the World Language Fair 2017 at Central High School on April 29th will allow for fun and engaging learning opportunities.

Attendees at he World Language Fair 2017 will have the opportunity to learn by direct observation, by engaging in language and culture experiences from different regions in the world, and by direct participation pursuing personal interests through games, sampling of multicultural foods, as well as performances from different regions in the world.

Learning does only happen within the walls of a classroom. Join us April 29th 2017 at Central High School East Campus for the World Language Fair!

Learning the Untaught

About a week ago I was ready to go to bed. It was a late night and I was exhausted. I wanted to go to bed as soon as possible but my 13 year old refused to go to his room and get ready for school the next day. I kept uttering all sorts of motherly arguments: It's too late, you have school tomorrow, we are going to be late, you are going to be tired, don't you realize what time it is? I could not get my son to go to bed, just like tonight. It is past midnight and he is still there.... There he is, in this messy, chaotic, and dusty room, there, in a room where I dare not to go into, afraid I will have a panic attack. I need to control the environment in order to feel safe. Not him, not my 13 year old son in that room.... the Lego room. 

On some late evenings, when I can barely keep myself awake, my son comes in rushing into my room with excitement: Mom, look at what I just built! Out of his hand comes a tiny Lego white car. It looks amazing. My immediate question when he shows me a Lego product is: Did you build this from scratch or is this a model? His frequent answer: Mom, I built this from scratch....

As a mother I am amazed and excited. It is obvious that my son has a talent. But how did he get there? My son received a set of Legos when he was young. Throughout the years his collection grew. He wanted more, he wanted bigger and more complex models to build. He read the directions and put those models together by himself. No one ever taught him how to create with Legos. It was truly a self taught skill. Out of his love and passion for building blocks, he learned about spatial relations, shape and form. He learned to create structures that worked well together with a sense of functionality and purpose. By using existing models, he learned to transfer those skills to new contexts to create new products and fascinating models using Legos. With technology, he has self taught how to build castles, couches, microwaves, pantries, ships, cars, planes, and any other product he is interested in to complete a project. That fascination with building structures has transferred to the virtual world through Minecraft. 

As I reflect upon how children learn and read about theories of learning, my son's ability to build with Legos reminds me of what Papert (1993) states about learning from a Piagetian perspective: "Children are builders of their own intellectual structures. Children seem to be innately gifted learners, acquiring long before they go to school, a vast quantity of knowledge by I process I call learning without being taught (Papert, 1993, p. 7)". 

For teachers, this could apply to encouraging learners to express their passions and interests, to find ways to relate knowledge and create learning tasks in meaningful, relevant, and practical ways. 

Papert, S. A. (1993). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas. Basic Books.

Assess & Engage: Tools to Liven Up The Classroom

Since last year I have been interested in using online tools to conduct formative and summative assessments in the classroom. I also want to use more tools that promote collaborative learning without necessarily becoming a multiple day group project assignment. While Google Drive offers excellent platforms for collaboration, I was more interested in using something that was quick. In the past few months I have been using two tools I highly recommend to teachers as they can be adapted with any content.

The first tool I started using was a paid component of the traditional flashcards game Quizlet. Quizlet is a online learning platform that uses descriptions and meanings to create several activities that allow students to memorize content. The new added component, Quizlet Live, is a paid feature that allows students to learn while working together as a team to score the correct answer. Quizlet Live uses any flashcard learning game from the Quizlet platform and creates random or customized teams and forces students to rotate in different teams to score points for the games. The platform randomly assigns different answers to a question and only one of the members of the group has the correct answer. Students are forced to interact and talk to their classmates to get the correct answer. If the answer is incorrect, the whole point value of points resets to zero and the team has to start all over again.

The second platform that I am using often for assessment is Quizziz.  Quzziz is a multiple choice question creator. Quizziz has the option to use questions from other public quizzes and recycle your own questions. It takes just minutes to create a desired quiz by putting together existing questions. Users also contribute to the open access question bank by creating new material. Images can be added to the questions to make it more visually appealing and meaningful for each content area. This platform can be used as assessment or checking for understanding for material that needs to be memorized in order to execute higher thinking application tasks in a subject area. The most valuable aspect of the Quizziz platform is the reports section. In the reports section the teacher can analyze problems regarding the content that students are having a very difficult time learning to allow for a reteach. It also provides a detailed report of each students' score.

Disruptive Technologies

I recently read about the concept of disruptive technologies. I was curious about the term after reading it in a research journal article. I have always thought of the term disruptive with negative connotation and meaning, something we don't like. I am a non-native English speaker and most of the time I understand the meaning of words from a different cultural perspective or I take words literally.
 Disruptions in our life, our environment, our plans, and the way we plan to do things are always perceived as negative events that come our way. Disruption defined as "the disturbance or problems that interrupt an event, activity, or process" (Google, 2016) follow within this category. When I saw the term disruptive technologies, I thought the researcher was going to talk about the way technology negatively impacts the learning process. However, as I kept reading it became clear that disruptive technologies are those that transform the way we have become accustomed to do things in an industry. Dictionary.com  offers a third definition of disruption: Business. A radical change in industry, business strategy, etc. especially involving the introduction of a new product or service that creates a new market: Globalization and the rapid advance of technology are major causes of business disruption (Dictionary. com, 2016). Even though the concept of disruptive technologies emerged mainly in the area of business, the field of education has been fertile ground for changes in the way we do things. Teaching and learning are no longer the same after the arrival of disruptive technologies. Te integration of iPads, phones, tablets, online learning, blended learning, distance education, and other assistive technologies have disrupted and changed the way we do things in education. 

As an educator of 20 plus year, I have seen first hand the way technology has changed my pedagogy and my teaching skills. The following digital story introduces the basic concept of disruptive technologies. 

Grit: A Personal Story

Recently I have heard the word GRIT as something that education professionals should be teaching to students. It seems to be a buzzword that people are writing about, talking about, and marketing as one magic pill to make students succeed in the classroom. As part of one of my projects for the Masters in Educational Technology, we were asked to create a digital story using a digital media platform of choice as well as a topic we could use for educational purposes.

I thought about it several times. I really did not know what to do. I did some research in digital storytelling and I came across Adobe Express. I had used Adobe Express briefly on my Ipad just to try it out. I really liked it back then. I explored it again and I realized that Adobe Express can be used on any device. I tried it on my Chromebook at work and I like how user friendly it is. I can use this tool when we get a Chromebook cart in the classroom. Students can use digital stories to create content in all subject areas through fiction, historical narratives, personal stories, the teaching of a new concept, comic strips, or to explain processes in  Math and Science. Story Center. Listen Deeply. Tell Stories is a free online platform that offers access to many stories created around the world. It is worth checking if you are embarking on a digital storytelling project. 

This is an example of a personal story I created using Adobe Express. This is my personal opinion on GRIT. The transcript for the presentation can be found at Google Docs Grit: Personal Story Transcript. 

Disclaimer: This video contains a couple of religious references. Please watch from beginning to end. Showing religious content in a public school setting might not be acceptable under school district policies. Please reference your school policies if using this video in public school settings.  

Cellphones Out Instruction In

Before we started the school year, I made sure that I would not forget all the changes that I wanted to implement for the new school year. I love being a teacher, it hardly ever gets repetitive. New students, new challenges, and new ways to make the learning relevant. One of the changes I could not wait to implement was my cellphone use policy.

For the past two years, I was so excited about technology integration that I wanted to use whichever kind of technology was available. The school tablets that we were using were slow and would block a lot of helpful websites for classroom activities. In my desire to utilize technology in meaningful ways I had a very relaxed policy on cellphone use. Students were instructed to use their phones with instructional purposes only….

That did not work well in the classroom. I spent an entire school year competing for my students’ attention. Their interest was always divided between trying to do their work and having a peek at their phones to conduct personal business. I felt lost. My “put away the phone” routine soon became old. Students would justify their use by pretending they were looking for class information. It was an uphill battle, one that I did not win.

Even though my cell phone policy has not changed, my monitoring of it has. Here are the incredible benefits that I see now:

Engagement

In the past, when there were a few minutes of down time, students would pull out their phone and engage with their phone. Now, students even bring book to read while they are waiting on others to finish an activity or they engage in conversation with others.

Collaboration

In the past, Google was the to go place to have questions answered. Now, students are actually forced to work together, ask questions, help each other, and use their knowledge to solve problems.

Effort

Allowing phones in the classroom provided a tool for students to engage in cheating and plagiarism as they would copy the work of others through pictures. Even if I was monitoring the classroom, having a phone on the table at all times created too many distractions and negative behaviors.

My policy now allows for cellphone use only for a structured learning activity. Students pull out their phones during the activity and have to put them away once we finished. I know it seems like a “no brainer”, but it took me a whole year to refine my cellphone policy. I see too many teachers nowadays taking the lay back approach. Their thinking is that students should know what to do and not to do even if their phones are out. I disagree. As I explained to parents during Back to School Night: “My cellphone policy might be strict now, but rest assure that when your students are in my class, they will not be taken care of personal business on their phones”. As a parent, I want the confidence that if my child is in school, there are learning opportunities taking place.

Kahooting a Syllabus

The new school year is now well into three weeks of instruction already. As a high school teacher,  the first few weeks of the school year are an interesting parade of new names and new faces. Students come and go as they decide if they are in the right classes. I have decided that handing out a syllabus on the first few days of the school year is futile. I end up using up half my paper allocated for the semester which in turn results on full garbage cans at the end of the day as students move to other better suited classes for the school year.



Nevertheless, it is imperative that students understand and abide by classroom expectations since day one. Otherwise, the school year will become a senseless battle ground to abide by expectations while maintaining sanity and a conducive learning environment.

I am on the student side on this one, going over a syllabus is extremely boring...... That is why I needed to do something new. After a few days in class, I handed out the students a copy of my 3 page syllabus. I asked students to read it silently. We went over a few questions and I clarified any concerns. After that. I told them we were going to play Kahoot to review if they understood expectations. Kahoot is a gamified platform to assess knowledge and understanding in a fun and engaging way.

I created my Syllabus Kahoot in a situation like scenario. My question prompt was imaginary scenarios like this one: "Maria was too tired to do her homework last night..... ". For the answers, I created four possible options with only one or two being correct. Example: a) That's ok, Maria can turn in her homework any time (incorrect answer), b) Maria won't be able to turn in her homework because she doesn't have an excused absence (correct answer). I hope you get the idea. Students had to to try to match a situation and possible answer depending on the expectations they had read on the syllabus. I threw a few funny statements in my answers that made students laugh. We had a lot of fun. Students were able to take home a printed copy of the syllabus after a few weeks into the semester and once we knew which students were staying. If you would like to see a sample of my syllabus Kahoot please go to https://getkahoot.com/ . After creating an account or signing in, search on public Kahoots by author and type educatortalk .