Tag Archives: Chris Friend

Questioning Our Pedagogy

I choose to do the Hybrid Pedagogy podcast with guest speaker Amy Collier. The program I decided to use for my digital expression of the podcast was padlet. The podcast was very interesting and Amy Collier made many good points about the way educators think about their pedagogy in today’s education system. During the podcast we learn about critical thinking and how it can change the formulaic expression of pedagogy by teachers. It is very important that a instructivist model is changed and modified to a more constructivist model through the process of learnification. The education system needs to be as personalized as possible. The constructivist approach changes the way students think and instead of mass producing students that are all the same we can have students that want to ask the inherent questions about things they are interested in.

Lastly, learning outcomes are not always a bad thing but they are usually generalized to the whole class being at some specific point in the curriculum. These types of learning outcomes are forced upon the students and brings them to a point where they all know the same knowledge usually learned the same way. These types of pedagogy and learning values need to be re-evaluated. Evaluation by the use of critical thinking when done correctly can create a more individualistic learning experience that will spark inherent questions leading to new ideas maybe never seen before.

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Keep Calm and Question On

I chose to respond to the HybridPod Podcast with Chris Friend and Amy Collier using a sketchnote. Prior to this assignment, the extent of my art career was doodling cartoons in the margins of my class notes, which seems to have come in handy for this assignment. I decided to experiment with a sketchnote for this reflection because it is out of my comfort zone, and I wanted to embrace the discomfort of risk-taking, as discussed in the podcast! I had a ton of fun making it, and although the flow is lacking a bit I hope you can follow my thoughts.

Multimedia Reflection #1 (for a closer look)

The main take away from the podcast is the importance of critical pedagogy and questioning the latest and greatest teaching methods. I particularly appreciated the discussion of “canned” courses and how we can break through these with critical pedagogy and integrating technology in the classroom. I think Amy’s focus on embracing the discomfort of not knowing is so important, and teaches students that mistakes are allowed, and often lead to the best learning opportunities.

As a logical thinker who often places too much importance on the “right” answer, I think this podcast was a great introduction to this course for me. In my future classroom I want to emphasize the importance of giving your best effort and questioning the new things that students are learning. With my teachable in math, I think far too many teachers are “my way or the highway” thinkers. As an educator, my goal is to question my pedagogy while encouraging my students to question other ways to find the answers they are looking for. This collaborative environment will allow everyone present to embrace the discomfort of not knowing.

Kate Hatfield

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Don’t Understand? Don’t Worry.

Truth be told, I decided to listen to the Hybrid Pedagogy Podcast because I couldn’t bring myself to read the entire article.  I would much rather listen to a good discussion about pedagogy than to read about it on my own…  In this episode of the podcast, host Chris Friend introduces us to Amy Collier who shares her beliefs about education and her strategies to overcoming standardization in the classroom.  She introduces some similar concepts (like the different learning styles of students) and some new concepts (like “not-yetness”).  Apparently, sometimes the best way to understanding is to spend time struggling with not understanding!  For those of you who can’t bring themselves to read the article or listen to the podcast, here is a short 1:47 Powtoon I created to sum it up and to give you some insight on Amy’s way of Questioning Learning.

For those unfamiliar with Powtoon, it is a program to help create animated displays or mini videos that you can use to explain anything.  The website gives an example as using it to evaluate a business. Although, there is somewhat of a learning curve to it and it can be time consuming depending on how much animation you wish to add, I found Powtoon to be extremely useful. It helped me explain exactly what I wanted to and the unique animations help emphasize the key points of the presentation. As a future math teacher, I initially thought that I wouldn’t have any use for this in a math lesson. However, after creating this short video, I can see many uses to it.  One idea I had would be an animation to show division. You could show a number being decomposed into all of its factors through a short video. This would help any visual learners you have in a classroom. You could also narrate the video to help any mainly auditory learners. To any other kids in the class with different learning styles, this video can do no harm as it is a fun way to display new concepts. I am a fan of Powtoon and it’s ability to, like Amy, challenge the standardized (chalkboard & textbook) learning that we still experience today in math classes everywhere.

Anyway, enjoy!

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