Digital Blog Post #J- Chapter 11

The first topic in this chapter that caught my attention was digital teaching portfolios, particularly because I know that I will soon be completing my own teaching portfolio. A digital teaching portfolio is a collection of education and professional materials stored in an electronic format. It serves as an organized collection of materials that show a teacher’s growth and development overtime. It may include copies of materials, videos, audio, PowerPoints, photographs, and other multimedia. The text states that beginning to build your teaching portfolio as soon as you start taking courses toward a teaching license is a way to use all the activities and ideas from classes, field experiences, summer work, and community volunteering as sources. I have completed many assignments and gotten tons of ideas for my future in teaching from this course alone. I also feel that I have managed to uncover parts of my teaching philosophy that I could not pinpoint before. I intend to use the portfolio as a guide to exploring my teaching and think critically and creatively about how to teach students the best that I can. I think creating a digital teaching portfolio will be very useful for me and I am very excited to complete it.

The second topic I decided to include in my blog is democratic schools and classrooms. The goal of democratic schools and classroom is to increase the involvement of students in educational decision-making and academic learning. Democratic schools and classrooms are places where students and teachers make decisions about important aspects of educational operations together. This can include academic curriculum to school climate and rules. Critics like to dismiss this method by saying that when given the opportunity, students will make immature decisions that will not benefit their learning. I disagree. I feel that students should be able to give their input and be involved in their own learning. I think that when given the opportunity, students will choose academic methods or rules that are fair and also benefit them. In my classroom, before beginning a lesson, I would always like to discuss with students how they would like to go about learning it. For example, I would ask if they would like to have a debate, complete a research project, or do a role playing activity and then put it to a vote. I can remember a time when I was in high school and the administrators changed a rule. The students didn’t like the new change and protested, which led to the students and the school administrators to have a discussion about the policy and make a decision together. This allowed for everyone’s voices to be heard and point of views understood. I feel that allowing a school or classroom to take the shape of a democratic environment allows students to feel like their voices and opinions are actually valued and they’re not being treated like children, which I believe leads them to behave more maturely due to being treated more maturely.

 The last topic that caught my eye when reading through the text was entitled, “reasons for teaching with clickers”. This refers to students submitting individual responses to questions by pressing a button on a clicker device slightly smaller than a TV remote. Depending on the clicker model, students can answer multiple choice, yes/no, true/false, ranking, numeric, and even short answer questions. Once all of the students have submitted their answers, the system displays the correct answer to the question as well as the percentage of students in the class choosing each response. Student participation with clickers has many instructional advantages, including active learning, student involvement, real-time feedback, and question-centered instruction. I have personally used this technology before in a college level Biology class. I am not very interested in or very good at Biology, but the clicker system sort forced me to pay attention in class and therefore, succeed. The clicker questions were used as a participation grade, so that while we were being lectured or taking notes on a PowerPoint, a question would pop up every now and then. If you weren’t paying attention, you would lose precious points. It also gives more shy students a chance to answer questions anonymously and not hold back for fear of being wrong or appearing foolish. I would love to use this type of technology in my classroom.

Resources:

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

 Morrison, T. (2015, November 9). Benefits of using Clicker Technology. Retrieved November 9, 2015.