Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha

Here is the link to my self assessment

Presentation link

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSHmrGUTehpH2IHPoQrjdTUKHjQueMVUOnHeK4soGhqA6vVI173jY_-PN8Z2PTekFLN_hNSt8yZZ2Sb/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=20000

Collaboration and Questions are Key

Sherry Turkle and Michael Wesch seem to be allies to me.  Sherry sends  the  majority, if not all, of her article speaking about the detrimental effects of our technology obsessed culture.  She highlights how we are consumed by a world of perfection, control, connected-ness (but not really) and loneliness.  She states "we cannot get enough of each other if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control".  We are expecting less and less of each other as technology fills in the gaps.   The article left me wondering, where does collaboration fit in?  Are we really in touch?  Where do we end up at the end of all of this?  She clearly values the power of conversation and worries we are headed in a direction that does away with it entirely.

Michael Wesch claims today's students are struggling to find significance in their education and are becoming less and less invested in school.  He charges teachers to do less teaching!  He wants students asking good, no GREAT questions.  He wants students to be invested, he wants them to care, and he wants them equipped to take this world in a positive direction for the next generation.  He claims the environment is more important that the content, which I feel places him and Turkle as allies, fighting for the same cause.

Wesch thinks an inspiring environment, where there is choice and investment on the part of the students, will inspire dialogue and therefore collaboration (link here for more on collaborative classrooms).  This reminds me of Turkle's challenge for parents to demonstrate the value of conversation by creating device free zones  around the house.  If you build it, they will come.  Both authors challenge those of us with the platform for our young generations to build something meaningful for the kids, so they not only see, but experience its value.   While Turkle wants a low tech life, Wesch seems to have found a way to marry technology, conversations and relationships in a healthy way for today's students.

Text Overviews

 Text Overview

Maker Challenge

Welcome to BullsEye... where gender is BULL 

Typical toy stores, or stores with toy aisles, separate their toys based on gender stereotypes.  While most stores no longer label the  aisle "Boy" or Girl" they do still separate the stereotypical "girls" toys and stereotypical "boys" toys.  

As an example, there may be a heading of Characters.  But that heading will exist in two places, with male characters in one aisle and then female characters in a separate aisle.  Bullseye's would have just ONE aisle titled Characters and ALL characters would be housed there, from Hello Kitty to Optimus Prime.  Hula Hoops and nerf guns would be in the Activities aisle, together.  

We tried to think of a way to organize the toys that did not feed into any stereotypes, not just gender.  At first, we were thinking of organizing them by age.  However, the more we thought of it, that has potential for sending the message that an older child shouldn't be playing with a toy he or she enjoys just because he or she is out of the "designated age range".  We thought just characterizing it by what its purpose is was they most objective way to organize the toys.  

Kahoot

Kahoot is a learning platform that is game based.

Teachers and students can create games and chose the number of questions. You can also add images and videos to build student engagement.

There are also a ton of kahoots that are already created that you can just search for and use in your classroom!

Players answer the questions on their own devices, while games are displayed on a shared screen to unite the lesson.

Teachers can use it as an exit slip, as a pre / post assessment task, as a way to check in with your students to ensure they understood the big idea from a lesson, homework assignment or rotation during your workshop.  

Students can also use it...  

"Social learning promotes discussion and pedagogical impact, whether players are in the same room or on the other side of the globe. After a game, encourage players to create and share their own kahoots to deepen understanding, mastery and purpose, as well as engage in peer-led discussions. When a learner becomes a leader, that’s a true magic moment!" (Kahoot.com).  

Pricing

Kahoot is free for educators but some of the features are only included in the paid memberships.  

Why We Banned Legos

Why We Banned Legos, by Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin, explains the process an after school center went through in order to encourage its students to be critical thinkers about society; specifically the social power of ownership.  A group of students were building a Lego community at this after school program and the teachers noticed it was becoming an unintended way the children were playing the part of a capitalist society with "special" features and rules regarding who could use certain blocks in the set.  The pieces that were more highly sought after were  going to the houses in Legotown with the big ticket features, such as the airplane landing strip.  The teachers were concerned and one day, tragedy struck for the children when Legotown was unintentionally destroyed by a church group one weekend.  The teachers decided they would bring Lego town back in a more democratic way, where resources were  shared, and students worked collectively and collaboratively on structures within the town, rather than building their own structure and trying to build the biggest and the best in the town. Their hope was to help students develop a contrasting  set of values to the ones that previously existed in  Legotown so that all children in the class, even those on "the fringe" had access to the legos in the same way as those who were on the inside track.

The planning was inspired by schools in Italy where teachers "offer a provocation and listen carefully to the children's responses" described here.  Teachers then use responses to develop the next provocation or to challenge or expand the current beliefs.  They viewed children as political beings who shape their views based upon what they see and experience in their daily lives, so they took the legos out of the classroom and  posed the question..

"How  might  we create a community of fairness about Legos?"

Through discussions that dissected the power and communication that existed in the previous Legotown.  They talked with the children about equity and equality, explored power and discussed what power looks like.  They posed questions such as:

• Does fairness mean that everyone has the same number of pieces?
• What about special rights: Who might deserve extra resources, and how are those extra resources allotted?
• What do you think power means?
• What does power look like?

Through the work of exploring power, what it looks like, and the effects  it can have, the students developed a set of rules for the new Legotown.  This new set of rules took into account what they had learned about peoples' perspectives and experiences and how those things shape the rules they make.  The children also learned that rules should and can be questioned when they do not work for everyone, but that this needs to be done in a respectful and productive way.  

"Children absorb political, social and economic worldviews from an early age.  Those worldviews show up in their play, which  is the terrain that young children use to make meaning about their world and to test and solidify their understandings" (Pelo & Pelojoaquin, 62).  

 

Dissecting my childhood dreams, one Disney movie at a time..

We had EVERY SINGLE Disney movie when I was growing up.  We traveled to Disney to see the characters and I had the dolls, dress up costumes and books.  I remember aspiring to be numerous Disney princesses growing up... unfortunately.  I watch my daughter now and although she has better options than I did, the underlying problems still exist. I have to admit that when I saw Frozen for the first time, I was so happy to see a message about unconditional love between sisters.  I felt that was a step in the right direction, but the problems that have plagued Disney movies for generations still exist.  The Prince is still pompous and the princess (Anna) is still swooning over a guy.  Both princesses are tall, thin and always wearing dresses.    Everyone is white.  And yes, while you can find positive messages (here)  in every single movie, there is still so far to go in my opinion.

The problem is, if you do not experience the inequities and situations that are most problematic with the typical Disney narrative, it is very difficult to even recognize they exist.  I didn't know domestic violence, or violence at all.   I did not have any friends with two moms.  I had no experience with anything other than what was very similar to my life with my mom, dad and sister in our house that we owned. For this reason, I was blind to the underlying issues that were right in front of my face.

Like Linda Christensen states on page 176, I sat on my parents' laps and read the books and watched the movies  over and over  again and they are very happy, loved filled memories for me.  I never questioned the messages, but I also did not really have to  tools to critique the portrayals or the inequality. This chapter has a similar message to the other scholars we have seen throughout this course; having a critical eye.  Not taking things at face value.  Ask why a student is disengaged, and figure out how to engage him or her.  Dive deep into what students know about  technology and what they still need to learn; and also what you can learn from them and what you can both learn together!  We are naturally different and diverse.  If that  is not being represented, we need to question that and ask why.  We need to teach our children to do the same, otherwise we are stuck right where we are, with no opportunity to improve.

Still I Rise

Still I Rise Presentation

Native vs. Immigrant... who is learning from whom?

I find the idea of Digital Native vs Digital Immigrant interesting.  It makes sense to me that children growing up in a world filled with technology would certainly be more “fluent” in  technology, and that it would cause our brains to evolve in order to adapt to the difference between the different speeds and processing skills required for living in the digital age.  However, the article by Boyd made me think more deeply about what it means to have fluency with something. Children growing up today have access to far more technology than those before them, that cannot be disputed.  However, although they are deeply engaged, most are only engaged at a surface level. There is a huge variation in the knowledge, skills and experiences children have, but we tend to think of them all as fluent because they can quickly navigate through an interface on a computer or ipad.  Instead of seeing this surface level of understanding as fluency, we need to do a better job of building tech competencies to insure they are able to be contributors and producers rather than just consumers. I think we often assume children know the tech competencies appropriate for their age because they have so much experience with technology on a daily basis.  However, this can be dangerous because they are so tech savvy but so naive to the bigger picture which Boyd defines as: 

How to look for and interpret information found online

Control personal information

Engage productively in networked situations

The article continues to describe why this is the case, the technologies are designed for ease of use, this way they reach a wide audience. Because of their ease, many do not know much about how they actually work, leaving us with a population that uses something they do not really understand.

Our district worked in grade level teams with the STEM coordinator to develop a list of Tech Competencies for each grade level as a way to start to combat this issue of limited meaning and understanding in order to hopefully build a cohort of students who are informed and educated around the technology powerhouse - good, bad and indifferent. We used the following resource as a framework for our work.

We want knowledgeable, smart consumers who grow into knowledgeable smart producers.  This process helped us to better understand what we wanted each grade level to know and be able to do while also providing us with a scope and sequence to ensure the children were building knowledge on what they had learned in previous years.  It also provided us with an opportunity to have conversations about technology, something we don’t often do. Having these conversations allowed people to share ideas in a comfortable setting, making it a little less intimidating for those “immigrants” who tend to shy away from the topic in their classrooms. Oftentimes, it is less teaching as there is a lot more  value in the doing.  Getting your hands dirty and trying it out is oftentimes the  best way to learn and is such a powerful message to send to children, when they see their teacher as a learner.

Both the native and the immigrant have things to offer and things to learn.  Together, I think they have it all! 

Native, or not?

I do not consider myself a digital native, however I do think I have become pretty fluent in this second language of technology.  At the same time, I recognize I have a lot more to learn.  My family had a typewriter when I was in elementary school, then a word processor when I was in middle school and a desktop computer when I was in high school.  I got my first lap top when I went to college.  I have always felt like I am playing the catch up game with technology because the district I grew up in did not do a lot with technology.  When I went to college I felt very far behind.  In hindsight, having to learn each of these new tools helped me to build my confidence with learning new types of technology tools and is a reason I tend not to shy away from it now. 


Five links

I live in South Kingstown

I work in South Kingstown

I teach at PeaceDale Elementary

We love the Red Sox 

and the Pats.... !

Who Am I?

I am a third grade teacher in South Kingstown who cannot wait to start summer!  We just got out of school on Friday so it doesn't really feel like summer has started yet because I set an alarm to get up this morning!!  Once it does start, I love to spend the days at the beach.  I could stay at the beach ALL DAY... but my kids probably won't allow that to happen!  I have three kids, 11,8 and 5 and cannot wait to spend the summer with them without the hustle and bustle of the school year.  In the summer we like to stay up late, sleep in and see where the day takes us; a reward for a busy year of school, sports and schedules :)