The podcast: HybridPod, Ep. 10
To encourage learning in the classroom, teachers must realize that there is seldom a clear answer for how a lesson should be taught. Each student that enters the classroom has a different way of learning. During my years as a student in elementary and secondary school, I found that I learned best when shown visuals and given handouts; I was fortunate enough to have most of my classes providing me with this method of visual incentive. Unfortunately, some of the other students in my class indicated that they learned better by being taught one-on-one. The teachers were grateful that I stepped up to assist these students with this learning aspect as I had a good grasp of the concepts being taught. But, not every teacher will have this kind of help available in their classroom; as such, other methods to teach will have to be experimented in order to try to allow every student to learn. The notion that every student that happened to be born the same year must take the same path to achieve a good grade is unrealistic. There are students that cannot learn at the same pace and need more time to absorb new knowledge. This problem is complex and doesn’t necessarily have a single solution; but, it does follow a pattern which is what the teacher should be following. When the teacher works with students they should look for a pattern with their learning to work through the problems – this will help the students to individually learn in the classroom. The education boards must see the importance of allowing teachers to take risks and not allow technology to replace teachers. The concept of risk is important in the classroom because the students will enter a world outside of school that isn’t a safe haven of learning. In order to learn in society, one needs to take risks and make mistakes which takes the individual to that next step in their knowledge. The idea of complex problem comes into this as well as the teacher is taking risks to find the solution – this is an emergent practice. When a teacher is willing to take risks for their students and allow them to participate in it; this allows them to already have a risk-taking experience. The integration of technology is useful in the classroom; but, it cannot replace the teacher. In one of my placements, my associate teacher explained to me how she encouraged her French class to speak to a former exchange student that came from France to learn a new perspective. The students were prepared to ask questions in French and were able to learn about French in a new aspect and from a different voice. There are advantages of having technology, but the teacher figure should always remain to always have a connection to the knowledge and encourage discussion. The students are able to learn from the teacher and the teacher, in turn, learns from the students. As a teacher candidate I use augmentation from the SAMR model, I add audio and videos to my presentations to teach my students as I find it is a good way to allow the students to absorb the knowledge being taught. Integrating technology, taking risks and learning from each other are a few of the important aspects to consider in the classroom to ensure an effective learning environment.
The Friend/Collier podcast is a discussion about the education system between two people, Chris Friend and Amy Collier. The interviewer is challenging the thoughts of the guest to get their true thoughts about the topic. The guest begins to rant about their opinion, which shows their true passion for the topic. I chose to do a rant due to their passion of the topic and my passion on the topic. I find that a rant allows a person to get their point across with emotion and it can be done visually, which is why I selected to do it as a video. The guest explains how the system needs to evolve in order for students to learn from the teacher; move away from standardized education to an individualized education (to an extent). I believe that students should be given different paths due to their differences in learning and this is strongly believed from the guest as well. The rant represents how individuals feel about a topic, emotionally and visually, you can see it in the face and the sound of their voice; and explains their opinion clearly for the audience to understand. This is why I chose to represent my opinion and connect to the podcast through a rant video.
The platform I used for the video is MovieMaker; it is provided with the Acer computer. I found this platform restricting to use in the way of editing; adding effects, colour changing, etc. The difficulties I also had was finding a reliable site to use to edit my video. The sites required money or too much restrictions that it made it difficult to edit. I tried a program called VideoPad, but it was too difficult to use, I did not understand the different buttons and tools. So in the end I used the platform MovieMaker to polish off my rant.