Final

Going through me semesters’ worth of blogs was a very interesting trip. At the beginning of the semester I was looking to set the tone for myself in this class. The tone I was after, was the kid who was going to look for an interesting piece of information to disagree with. I wanted to be the guy that would disagree with things to create more conversation and critical thinking. I have trouble with classes like this because I would rather communicate with people face to face, instead of behind my computer screen. With I didn’t bring the right attitude to the class right off the bat. I learned many different things as we went and I feel like this class made me grow as a person. I believe I grew because of the many different subjects in education that we covered that took me way past my comfort zone. I was raised in a very old school minded house and I am from a family full of teachers. I had beliefs that were taught to me long ago. I have always loved talking to my family about problems in education because I am hoping to one day become an administrator. I came in with a belief that I would be a great administrator and after this class I see that being an administrator or someone in education I will have to always be learning. I took just that lesson from this class full of tweeting and blogging. I was humbled by this class but I was also taught how to think. Thank you for that.

MOVING, ON! I seemed to just write what I had to for the week and I did the best I could to critically think about what we were learning. When I was introduced to the independent learning project my motivation went through the roof. I will talk about this later, I found that I was writing well when I wrote the learning blog. When I wrote for the independent learning it looks to me that I was writing with a purpose. This is where I learned that it matters for people to be motivated when they are writing. Writing, like sports, has its different forms and requires effort to become good. I am not a good writer, but I felt like this class helped me become a better writer as the semester went on. Themes in my writing would be someone who uses many words where a few words would do. I feel like this has happened in more classes that require word counts for everything. This happens in forums and reflections constantly. Writing is a hard thing to conquer because there are so many different things that go into it. In my writing, I enjoy using many words and using the word “like”. When I coach different skills, I have a bad habit of using the word “okay”. I say that word way too often. In writing my annoying word changes to like. While I’m writing this, a thought came to my head. I use like to describe what I am trying to say.   What I am getting at is the fact that my specific concern is the fact that I use the word “like” and my specific concern for the themes in my writing is long sentences and explaining my thoughts instead of just saying my point. After mid-term I figured out that this how I wrote my blog and using grammar was much more important than I first thought. I tried to put more effort into being clear and concise when we had our mid-term blog check in. I had been writing for the number of words and that was it. I wish this wouldn’t have been the case but that is what reflection is for I suppose.

I found many issues in my work but there weren’t any issues that surprised me. In life, I am an overthinker and very scatterbrained. I am starting to see this show in my reflection. What I am getting at is that I really wasn’t surprised to see how I was writing with informal structure and repeating myself constantly. I use the word like quite a bit at the end of the semester too. My biggest strength in writing comes out when I must write to be motivational or writing a speech. When I write a speech, I know that I have to get to the point. This helps me get to the point a little bit faster and not be so out in left field with my thoughts. I should have structure when I am just writing on a blog but blogging allows me to be a little bit more informal.

I will continue to revisit my blog during this summer and try to fact check myself. I say many thoughts that I have without exactly knowing if it is true or not. I fell that my blog is a good starting point for me to form opinions on things. Due to being busy this semester I didn’t put in the amount of time that I should of with some blog posts. I was not happy with my performance in this class but I did the best I could. I think that it is easy for me to not be happy with my performance now but during the times that I slacked off I felt like I was drowning with work in school. I learned what stress was and I feel like I am a better person because of it. I constantly thought that I was missing something in the class and the 30 day challenge was the major mess up of the semester for me. What I plan to do with our learning blogs is revisit and refine them. There are ideas in there that I need to have in my back pocket when I begin interviewing and teaching. I also see that there are many assignments about innovation in education already started for me.

I believe that weekly blogging was a great thing because it kept my brain actively thinking. Blogging keeps you engaged and learning throughout the week, not just when you type. I found myself  sitting in other classes planning how I would be writing my blog later on in the week. The process of planning and getting all the information ready was where most of my learning came from. In today’s world blogging is something that allows you to collaborate with others but share your opinion. Many people that are too shy to talk to many people at once finally have their voice and that is a great thing. Being able to sift through all the information that is out there in the blogosphere is where the real talent is. Figuring out fact and crap could set you apart in our generation. I loved the culture that this class built. I have never been more creative and pushed to my limits in a class before. I didn’t do great but I learned and that is worth a lot. This is the end and I am very excited to take what I learned in this class and put it to use in my profession.

Elephants?

The second article that we blogged about this week was called 9 Elephants in the (Class) Room That Should “Unsettle” Us by Will Richardson. This article was a fun read because it makes people think about things that aren’t really being thought about or talked about in day to day life.  He came up with 9 things that are happening in school today and they are issues that we aren’t discussing, but letting them slide as educators. For this assignment we chose 3 of the elephants in the room to discuss.

 

1. We know that most of our students will forget most of the content that they “learn” in school.

This was the first one that really stood out to me. I wouldn’t doubt that most people forget half the content that they learned in school but I wouldn’t go as far to say people forget most of it. There are many factors that go in to students forgetting and not retaining information. Motivation, how much sleep they had that week, the teacher that is teaching it. I feel like this is a question that will never be truly answered because there are so many things at play.

2. We know that deep, lasting learning requires conditions that schools and classrooms simply were not built for.

Deep lasting information retention and learning requires motivation. I never understood why were so mad that we were behind in global scores and we didn’t allow people in the education system to specialize in their field at an early age. Once again so many things have to go right for learning to happen and sitting in a desk isn’t the way for everyone.

3. We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in.

There is no doubt we are data driven in today’s world. We are so worried about where we rank in everything that it fed the data storm. I’m not a teacher yet but I am a Site Coordinator for the Afterschool Program and all I get to hear about in meetings and in services is where we rank and how we can make our data better. We set goals to make the numbers look like we want them to. I would complain about how messed up the whole situation but  I like to have a solution if I have a problem. There are issues that need handled and I look to be the best teacher I can be by keeping up with my profession and being open to new ideas always.

Innovation & Unlearning

At the beginning of this module I read innovation and I got my defense mode on. I then read the word unlearning and thought to myself ” here we go”. One constant thing every week throughout this semester was the fact that I was surprised every time that I read. We are in a time in education where not one person will completely agree with each other. In every part of life there are innovators of their craft. Education is just that, a craft, and this craft is a sitting duck. Education is a sitting duck, just waiting on a new idea created by an innovator of education.

The first article that I read was the Mindset of an Innovator by George Couros. This article opened up my mind and made me reflect on how i handle many different things in my life. I’m not sure why I feel like change in education is a bad thing where most of the other things going on in my life make me thing of how to change and make it something better.  The quote I liked the most from his article was ” I build upon what I already know, but I do not limit myself to myself. I’m open to and willing to embrace new learning, while continuously asking questions to move forward”. I love this quote for the fact that he wants to continue to ask questions and that is what innovators do best, they think. People who will continue to question things and come up with solutions to problems are the true innovators.

This leads me to the next article that we read this week. Teaching in the 21st Century, this was an article that explains that people have to unlearn things involving education to become true innovators. I believe my favorite quote from this article is, “We need to unlearn the premise that we know more than our kids, because in many cases, they can now be our teachers as well”. I have learned more from listening to my nephews talk to Siri on the I-Pad. There is something to being a child that allows you to come up with questions that older people wouldn’t think to ask. I feel that I would have been a more motivated learner if I would have had Siri when I was little. In closing, we have to unlearn ideas we have instilled in us, get out of our comfort zone, and question things that are said to be true to become true innovators.

Digital Story Telling

I have the chance to brag on my high school and the ability to let students be creative. In school we were a heavy football school with a long tradition of winning football games. Sargent High School had never won a State Championship in anything. In 2010 we got the chance and were embarrassed on NET in front of the whole state. In 2011 we learned life lessons through sport. We all outworked everyone in the state and we made sure of it. 362 days from the time that we were embarrassed in Lincoln  we came back and had the chance to beat the same team that we played the year before. We had “Finished Business”. Our motto was “Unfinished Business”, this isn’t a metaphor but it is something that has stuck with me since 2010. However after we were beat, the ball was then in our court. This is the metaphor I chose today. Whether there is business to finish or the ball is in our court I was able to learn these lessons from one sport and I love that my life happened that way. Back to bragging about my school, I was terrible at wood working so for that class I was allowed to take care of the film for the school once a week. In my spare time I worked on motivational videos on Movie Maker. After football was over I created a digital story of the season. Only issue that I ran into was the fact that our camera didn’t work for the last 3 plays. Plays that are crucial to this video. The channel that produced the state championships owned the video that we filmed the clips from. I then called them to see about copyright and they said if you could flip the screen and show it was off the TV we would be fine. This all happened because a school allowed me to be creative. It’s not the best video but there is a true video about the ball being in our teams court.

Fun Fact: #24 Tyke Kozeal of UNK will be drafted this year.

ILP What it taught me.

Throughout the Independent learning process this year I have learned many blogging and digital literacy skills and have picked up many tools that will help me in the years to come. My Independent Learning is something that I had always wanted to try and just never really found time for. I was really excited to see that we had an Independent Learning Project because I could get a grade for something that I had always wanted to do. At first I wanted to show what people could do with technology and teaching different techniques in the weight room. My idea with schools cutting weightlifting programs and PE, was show the fact that this could be done online, hoping it would land me a job at some point. As my independent learning went on, I continued to add more people that I wanted to help and I found myself programming workouts for a whole track team. Just when I thought I found my niche in this project, teachers hear about it and they were just looking for a diet to do. I had a discussion with them and they decided to let me share information with them. Now I am happy to say my Independent learning project was supposed to be programming but ended as a wellness project.

Motivation was an amazing thing to me throughout this process. This was one project that I looked forward to every week. I feel like I was excited because of time I was putting in during the week. This was a project I just could have fun with in the little spare time I had. This semester I became a fan of Independent Learning because of the experience that I had with it. As a future teacher I will look to use independent learning, however, It will be hard with the amount of time that I have with my students in Health and PE. I believe it would work with upper level students but it would be teacher guided so I could continue to cover what is in the scope and sequence. I have enjoyed my semester of ILP because I was allowed to be creative and get a grade for it. I now can see where allowing creativity can build motivation. If motivation is high the product of learning will grow as well. This part of the class is where I have learned the most.

Let’s Get Visual

This week we worked on making a graphic visual about our independent learning project. In the beginning, I wasn’t excited about making a graphic and I had a bad attitude with it. If I have learned one thing this year, it is to give the modules a chance. There have been many surprising moments and discoveries throughout the last 13 weeks. I once again found that I enjoyed using the Piktochart because it is a very easy to use, and a great way to create a visual representation of the information you have.

I found Piktochart to be easy to use for the most part. There was a process to go through because it was almost so easy to use that it was hard to use. If that makes sense? Having the ability to drag any boxes wherever you wanted was nice, it allowed me to set the page just how I wanted instead of following the margin rules you would have in Word or Publisher. I found it challenging to change the color of the graphics that I used. After about 10 minutes of clicking around I had it figured out. That is my favorite thing about most sites anymore, if you click around you can about learn anything. If you can’t figure it out, then google becomes your best friend.

I wouldn’t say that it was a super challenging tool to use but it came with a few difficulties. In the end, I found this site to be more fun than challenging. With my finished product I then considered the question, “Do you think there’s value in presenting information in a visual/graphic style?”. This is something I have always believed in because I am a very visual learner. There is no doubt in my mind that there is value in presenting information in visual/graphic style. I will use this tool in my health classroom because with stats and 17 year old people, visuals speak louder than words.

 

 

Digital Storytelling

This week we discussed digital storytelling and podcasts. I enjoyed this module because it is something I didn’t have much of a background with. I always loved when we would switch things up in class. I was always listening to audio books because I enjoyed listening to a story rather than reading it. I was a kid that couldn’t sit still without losing focus on the task at hand. It is safe to say my reading stamina was poor but when I was introduced to podcasts my listening stamina was good. For more on digital storytelling and how it related to my career I went searching for videos talking about this new educational tool.

The first video I watched was “The Technology of Storytelling” by Joe Sabia. In this video Sabia tells the history of storytelling by using all kinds of apps and webpages to capture the attention of his audience. The story is about the first man to change storytelling as we know it by creating the pop up childens book. Sabia is making the point that technology has allowed us to tell stories in all different ways. While I was watching this video I found myself so engaged with all of the things he was putting on the screen. I thought to myself, what if we taught lessons with all of these tools? How many students could I reach?

I then watched The Power of Digital Storytelling by Emily Bailin. In this video she spends 15 minutes talking about where she is from. She goes on to discuss the lesson she gives her students that has them write about where they’re from and to use pictures to tell the story. She discussed that adding photos to the words allows students to feel the emotion of each student. At the end of her video she shows a digital story using the same words as she opened the talk with. When she added video I noticed the change of how I felt like I was living the story she was telling. I understood more and I was more engaged in her voice. This showed me that learning could increase with digital storytelling. If we could use this to drive home things that students have to learn, learning and test scores could go up.

Attention!!!

Over the last week I have enjoyed doing the attention log. I truly enjoyed this activity because most of my technology use happens at home and I am the weird kid that liked to try to do as many things as I could at once, just to challenge myself. When I came to college I figured out I could play video games, text, and do homework all at once. I understand, probably not the best practice, but I am going to be honest with the attention log.

When I am doing homework I am in competition mode and going 100 miles an hour. However after doing the attention log I decided to shut off the TV and try to just focus only on the task at hand. This was very hard for me to do. My mind is always in another place and I have to make myself focus on focusing. Taking note on how I feel during this was interesting because I wasn’t used to how quiet the world was when the TV isn’t running. Being on my computer in the morning, sitting in my chair, with the TV off was the best way to do homework.

Now to discuss my challenge of playing a video game, texting, and doing homework. I only do this when it is homework that I don’t want to do at all. I felt a good sense of pressure during this but it is always decently effective because I do get homework done with pretty good quality of work. I think this is because the other two things I am doing are pretty mindless for a person that is my age.

The major thing that I took from this challenge was the fact that my productivity and quality of work didn’t change while doing homework because of how well I pay attention to start with. But when the TV was off and the house was quiet I had not feelings of anxiety or pressure, I was simply just doing homework. On the other hand I was in a near anxiety attack when I was doing three things at once. I never thought of how I felt while I was doing things on a digital platform but how you feel when on devices is a real thing.

 

Be Mindful

This week we studied digital mindfulness and at the beginning I wasn’t really intrigued. After exploring the readings and videos this week, I understood that this was an issue in the world that I have very strong opinions about. I have heard older teachers talk about how annoying the younger teachers were when they were having conversations and then were on the phone at the same time. There are generations today that see this mindless thing that we are doing while having conversations as completely disrespectful. In a world where that generation might be our bosses, this is something that we need to understand.

Thinking about writing this blog for the week I didn’t quite understand how to put this into words and then I watched “A Year Offline” by Paul Miller.

This video really spoke to me because Paul Miller had looked at both sides of the world because of his time away from the internet. He spoke about what being bored was really about and the fact that he learned how to play video games in this time because he was in his 20’s and didn’t know what to do with his life. The moment he brought up about having a conversation with his sister is what truly hit home with me. She told him that he was 100% available to talk to when he didn’t have a device in hand. At this point it all began to make sense, with devices in hand we are not 100% having a conversation with anyone. This is where the last generation without devices sees this a disrespect in the work place.

My major issue with people not being 100% there, is parenting. I am not a parent yet but I have had my fair share of conversations at the Afterschool Program with parents not 100% there. Parents on their phones actually match their kids. Today’s youth are starving for relationships with people and I completely understand why. If the student has parents that are on their phone all the time, they haven’t experienced a true relationship with anyone. One good way to get attention is to be in trouble. The 5 students that I have in mind have parents who are glued to their phone. After watching this video and doing the reading, I see one major flaw in the world we live in.

Everyone wants to make a difference in the world, here is our chance. If you want to be ahead in the world and make a difference, have digital mindfulness. This means when we are around people put your phone away and be 100% there. But the most important thing that must happen is walking the walk with our children. If you want your child to be a leader of his or her generation, put down the phones and learn to have a conversation. This means to look each other in the eye, speak, and listen. Amazing to think that this is something that could set people apart from their peers.

Future Active Activist

Today being an activist is easier than it has ever been because it is a post button away. We have places that you can make money for your cause like go fund me. We also have many platforms out there just to be heard and if someone likes what you say and believe they share it with others. It is a long chain of information and beliefs being passed and it can move fast. We do have teenagers doing really good and effective things with digital activism like the story in the article we read from TeenVogue. In this same article however, Teen Vogue claims that 2 in 5 young adults are dealing with social issues online. This is amazing to me that young adults are posting in masses to be social activists. I believe that digital activism will impact the world but I am nervous that it will do more harm than good. I want to make that statement without backing up what I said to make my point right here. Creating movements is all about just starting the conversation.

Personally, I haven’t participated in social activism because I represent an afterschool program and I wouldn’t want and administration see what I have to say or how I feel about certain things in case I would ever interview for an actual teaching job. Everyone has a voice but the difference in being hired and fired would be the difference in one Facebook post that rubbed people the incorrect way. This is where being a digital citizen and being a digital activist meets. Activists in history rubbed people the wrong way and some had consequences for that. Right now, in this time of my life I am undereducated and don’t have the level of respect to be an activist for the issues that I would want to fight for. In time, it will happen because digital activism is something that works. Let’s face it, it is a whole unit in our class. I was amazed that I hadn’t thought about people speaking their mind on social media as people being activists. I can’t wait to watch for people that are posting for their cause. I am excited to see firsthand if activism works.