Thursday, July 26, 2012

Tech-Knowlege-y?


GRADE 8! Yes, adolescents, puberty, hormones raging and peers being the utmost important part of these kids lives. I am determined to interrupt this. Well, add another element into their already complex lives and introduce (hopefully) a world of education where technology dominates. I am hoping this will be the leverage I need to keep them motivated to learn and to help me become as tech savvy as they are.Wait...introduce technology. I have to remember who I am talking about. They have already accepted technology into their lives, it is a part of their lives. I guess my role than will be to show them how this can be applied to their learning. Speaking of learning,  I have much to learn about this age group and I look forward to taking a peek into their individual personalities as I feel this is just as important as the curriculum I teach. But that is another topic for another post.

Upwards and onwards. Every spare second I have gotten for the last month, I have been learning. I think back to my university days when learning about problem solving and the philosophy of being stuck. I think about Mason and his theory that you have to become stuck and work your way through the problem to learn. Well, I guess I am somewhere on that continuum. I have been learning about so many different ways to incorportate technology in the classroom that my mind is spinning. I tell myself to slow down and remind myself that taking on too much at once time is worse than not doing anything at all. Theoretically, I think I will choose two or three things to learn and to implement in my classroom in September, but in learning these two or three only, I stumble onto something else that is equally or maybe better than what I was learning.

So, basically I am no further ahead than my last post. I have been using my time for reading about and learning about different websites and applications for the classroom. I have brushed up on my knowledge of Problem and Project Based Learning. Actually, it is this topic that has me consumed for the last week. For the last 3 years I have tried to implement a PBL environment. I have come far with it, but not quite where I want to be. Again, this is yet another topic for a future post. However, I will say that I have been trying to find a way to use PBL with technology and how to incorporate what I am learning into this type of learning environment. This makes sense to me as I try to create authentic learning experiences with my projects, I must then incorporate the technology. As it is this technology that makes sense to the students. Does it then become the medium to learning or the means? Or both? Hmmm....

Tech-KNOWLEDGE-y - yup, it is how we learn. It is a way of learning and it continues to freak me out a little. I am trying so hard to keep up with it. I can not imagine how "more experienced" teachers are feeling. I will prevail. I have to now start getting my head around the "what" I am going to teach because the "how" is through technology. So should I focus on the what and then figure out the how, or choose the how and then pick out the curriculum I can cover with that? Ohhh....Mason would be proud!

Elaina

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