Friday 30 May 2014

In trying to figure out how to complete the video assignment on instructional strategies, I have poured over quite a number of websites, YouTube videos, and software offerings. I wanted to share with everyone the one that has piqued my interest, PowToon. It seems reasonably easy to work with but best of all have been the resources they have produced to support the use of their package.

This video is an absolute must-see for anyone considering developing a video of their own. The directions offered by Ilya Spitalnik, PowToon's Chief Executive Unicorn, were literally the proverbial guiding light!
Check it out.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyB1Y9xkSec

Friday 16 May 2014

I have been really struggling with this concept of a "learning journal" that we are tasked with in our assignments. In doing some reading on different websites, I came across the books written by Geoff Petty"Teaching Today" and "Evidence Based Learning".
Mr. Petty has a phrase "theory-in-use" that he uses to describe "What you believe learning to be, and how you believe teachers can bring learning about." (Petty, 2009). His advice is that we utilize this "theory-in-use" to guide us in how we choose, implement, evaluate and adjust our instructional strategies in our classrooms, effectively creating a "learning cycle".  A major part of this "learning cycle", is the use of the learning journal to record the strategies that we have laid out in our lesson plans, the response of the student to those strategies, listing what worked and how, as well as what did not and why. We then review and reflect on our results and set about keeping what worked and removing what didn't.

The key is to determine why a particular strategy worked. In one example given in Teaching Today (Petty, 2009), the teacher has used a classification game in her lesson plan for figures of speech where the students would decide which category each phrase fit, metaphor or simile. In her reflections contained in her journal she was able to determine what was successful in the lesson and why. The game was fun, so the students were willingly engaged. It displayed the students level of understanding and skill at applying it in a far less threatening way than had she simply given them a written test and then scored their work. Now the teacher is able to determine whether this instructional strategy of the "classification game", can be used in other areas of her "theory-in-use" for other lessons in the future.

Ref.
Petty, G.(2009) Teaching Today A Practical Guide. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes
Geoff Petty - Improve your Teaching

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Self direction is becoming such an important part of our learning environments now, but how do we manage ourselves as self-directed learners? If we are unable to manage the change from our own histories of traditional learning, how will we ever be able to facilitate the changes with our students?

One of the many resources available comes from Singapore Management University.
SMU Centre for Teaching Excellence - Becoming a Self-directed Learner

Within this resource are ideas to help round out the complete process of how to achieve self-direction. The level of self-direction that we and our students will need to acquire is so much more than just finding the motivation to proceed. We must also learn how to manage our time, share our questions within our groups to help see all sides of a topic as well as learn new methods of presenting our findings and support information.

Monday 12 May 2014

As I begin the next phase of my journey through the PID Program with VCC, I am involved in learning about instructional strategies.

Through the early reading assignments from Student Engagement Techniques by Elizabeth F. Barkley, I am finding a personal relevance to this particular topic. Many of the examples and explanations presented are ones that I wish I was aware of much earlier in my parenting days. In the simplest of terms, I might have been a better teacher and facilitator with my perpetual students, my own children.

One of my favourite concepts centers on student engagement and its role in learning. Barkley comments that learning can occur without teaching, but teaching without learning is just talking. I think I spent too much time just talking to my kids.