Well let the list of standards continue to expand ! This was an eye opening experience that actually resonated with me this week as my students were wrapping up a lab report and taking their finals. As educators we assume our students come to us with many technology skills which just is not true. I have students who still can't access the ECHO grade book correctly; instead they log in see the home page, see their grade and say "Why did you give me an A?"
( haha they never say that more like an F or a D). Then my response is to look into their grade book and look for assignment which are red, red is bad and green is good. I ask them to write down the red assignments and then come talk to me; in a perfect world this would happen, in my world I must go around to each student and guide them on this exciting quest for knowledge. This to me is one of the most important and basic skills our high school students need to me successful Empowered Learner. I have chosen Empowered Learners as an important standard I would like to focus on as I am so interested in how students learn and own their learning. The definition of Empowered Learner is students who leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences. This is really where I am at til the end of this school year providing technology in a away to empower my students to take a more active role in their learning. I am striving for higher percentage of student engagement. I am using a variety of tools to achieve this such as Quizziz, Socrative, Google Forms, Google Docs, and a few others. What I know I need to start with is that my students can access the agenda in ECHO. Once we have arrived at the agenda I must make sure that they can access the tools and assignments ensuring they are all with me( they are good at pretending). Things as simple as creating drop boxes for assignments and the asking them all to submit it before they even start to work to make sure they know the correct way to turn their work in is huge ! It can take for ever for them to do that I will show it on the big screen until I have 100% I also encourage students to help each other and that works very well. Just look at the challenges we have had as our Cohort logging into Kahoot the first few times we do these activities it is important to build in time for confused lost students, they catch on to these platforms pretty fast though. The standards on the ISTE site are all important and this awareness has really made me think of how I plan to incorporate them into my lessons. For the rest of this year my plan is to explore and develop the Empowered Learner since my students need that so much. Empowered Learner: 1a Students articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes. 1b Students build networks and customize their learning environments in ways that support the learning process. 1c Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways. 1d Students understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose, use and troubleshoot current technologies and are able to transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies. I copied these of the ISTE site so I will have them here as a reference as I continue my learning journey. Besides these being important for my students this is where I have been focusing my energy as an educator. I have really been feeling the need to "upgrade" my teaching to keep up with all the change and this Masters program and all of my work with Napa Learns is really helping me with that professional growth. I can write basic code, manipulate linkbots with code, use a variety of educational tools, learning google fun, and I see an increase in student engagement. I want all my students to be Empowered Learners!
9 Comments
Monica Knecht
2/24/2019 02:58:07 pm
Julie,
Reply
Julie Lovie
2/24/2019 04:43:31 pm
Thank you Monica it seemed like the right standard for my kiddos and where they are in their learning. I too am very excited about Google Classroom and super excited to say good bye to ECHO I think.
Reply
Scott Marsden
2/24/2019 04:25:55 pm
Julie,
Reply
Julie Lovie
2/24/2019 04:40:26 pm
Thank you Scott when I read it I knew that was the standard for me.
Reply
Tess Giner
2/24/2019 04:59:06 pm
And this is why you are Teacher of the Year!
Reply
Caitlin Mitchell
2/24/2019 06:04:30 pm
In the last few hours I feel like I have realized I would like to take on a completely different essential question and your blog post just helped me to focus in on the direction in which I would like to go! The empowered learner thing is totally what I am trying to accomplish! I hope you don't mind me jumping on that train with you... mine will look very different though since I have 6 year olds instead of high schoolers.
Reply
Julie Lovie
2/24/2019 06:36:57 pm
I love that and I feel I may be refining my research as well Caitlin. I admire your work with 6 year old children.
Reply
2/26/2019 09:46:19 pm
Hi Julie - I couldn't agree with you more in that we need to empower our students so that they can take control of their own learning. I know that I for one am guilty of thinking that students already know how to use all of the technology adequately (& probably better than me) but I know it is not always the case. With the Freshman that I teach I often find that students have not turned in their work online during class simply because they don't know their way that well around the system yet. I often make comments on students' work online, but it was only just recently that I realized that many of the students don' t know how to access them/ that they were there. If we can give and teach our students about the tools they need this can only but help improve their learning.
Reply
Catalina Goldstein
2/27/2019 07:00:43 pm
Wow students setting goals for themselves! I'm currently working on my students setting CAASPP goals for themselves (something my principal asked us to do). At first I thought it seemed silly, but why shouldn't students take an active and powerful role in their learning?
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Julie LovieJulie Lovie Is a Math and Science teacher at Valley Oak High School with 25 years experience in teaching at a continuation high school. Julie Also teaches at Napa valley Adult School in the High School Diploma Program. She is passionate about the environment, loves gardening, and learning. Archives
June 2019
Categories |