Author Archives: bigjohn

Is your classroom trending? If not, Read This..

Being a teacher can be hard at any time. No matter the era. I imagine teachers had difficulties long before the modern public education system and today is no different. There is much disagreement and opinions on bringing digital tech into the classroom. I think we need to look out how we bring tech into the classroom. Simply, allowing device time as a reward is not the way to go. Lucky for us educators, there is a system set in place if your classroom is being left behind in this digital society. The Technologist Module can help!

I decided on creating a Twitter essay which was more difficult than I planned. I wrote out what I wanted to say but ended up changing the entire work to accommodate Twitter standards. I never use Twitter and only made an account for this class. Since then, I’ve only checked for what’s trending. For this artifact, I began by introducing the Technologist Module and breaking down the steps of the module. As I continued, my artifact had took a new route with almost every Tweet to try to stay within the character count. As I progressed I seen the advantages and some disadvantages of this format. Nevertheless, I am eager to try this approach in my classroom. I hope you enjoy.

Are Teachers Taking Enough Risks?

While listening to the podcast between Chris Friend and Amy Collier I created this sketch-note. The podcast discusses the options educators can take with students and their approach for self-knowledge. Collier discusses the idea of “Not-Yetness”, which is the notion of finding comfort in not knowing and not having everything perfectly ordered, and she believes this to be closely related to critical pedagogy. I represented this in the sketch-note with the running stick figure trying to grasp knowledge.

Collier then goes on to say that teachers staying in their comfort zone may be prone to becoming restricted or limited which may lead to the teacher transforming into “an enhanced grader.” She refers to this as the “canned course” model and cautions educators to be aware and urges educators to take risks.

So how can we avoid being the distant teacher who simply grades a paper? Or, how can we avoid embedding into the student’s mind that education is a clear-cut, right or wrong process?

Simple. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The risk may be high but the reward is greater and I think some teachers can benefit with this mindset. Listening to Collier, I realized I can succeed even if I don’t have all the answers as long as I keep trying to find new ways to engage with my students and adapt to the constantly-changing classroom

For this multimedia reflection, I wanted to try something new. Throughout my undergrad degree I was accustomed to writing papers and I initially wanted to complete a Twitter essay but I was attracted to the idea of a Sketch-note. After seeing a few examples online I decided this was the best method for me to represent my response to the podcast. While listening to the podcast it was easy to draw/ write the ideas I heard. I’m not much of an artist but I feel this sketch-note was a good way to get out of my comfort zone. Hopefully you can relate, thanks for reading!