Making "Digital Discoveries" in my classroom

Whenever I was asked the age old question “what do you want to be when you grow up?", for as long as I can remember, the answer was simple. It was just so clear. I was going to be a teacher.

So I did what every aspiring educator does.  I played school with my dolls for hours on end, making worksheets for the Cabbage Patch Kids to complete, delivering lessons to my barbie dolls.  I was always a good student myself, working hard in school.  I ended up at the University of Delaware to pursue a degree in Early Childhood Education. And so I embarked on my life long journey to be a kindergarten teacher at the age of 6.

And I have never second guessed my choice, that is until recently.  Well, I’m not even sure if that is a fair statement.  I can’t imagine spending my days anywhere other than in a classroom surrounded by 20 five and six year olds. I realize to some of you, that sounds like a nightmare, but for me, it is my happy place.

I love to see the smiles on their faces when they come to school each morning, eager to share an exciting story about losing their first tooth over breakfast.  I love the little hugs that I get all day long, and spending the majority of my day sitting criss cross on the rug.

What I struggle with these days is the constant push to be faster, smarter and better than we were yesterday and knowing that the responsibility falls solely on the teachers to get them there can be daunting.  Benchmarks aren’t being met, they are being exceeded. Students aren’t allowed time to explore, they are being timed how quickly they can complete a math sheet with facts to 5.

                            

I hear myself tell my students that “it is not a time for talking” instead of reliving the epic “tooth in the bowl of cereal” incident that happened just a few hours before and is so important to that little learner.  I feel myself putting pressure on these young children to learn in a way that is not natural or developmentally appropriate. Let’s face it - I am asking my kids to learn in a way that is just not good teaching. And it breaks my heart. I am discouraged and deflated.  

So I sit here, 15 years into my teaching career and I look around. I realize that I have lost my way. How did I get here?  Where did I make a wrong turn?  But most importantly, how do I get back?

I still believe that kids are innately curious. They need to feel loved, and safe, and trusted and valued in my classroom.  I believe that kids need social interactions and that learning is a process.  They need to know it’s okay to fail and they need to be an active participant in constructing their own learning.   The classroom needs to be OURs and not just MINE.  But more importantly, the learning and teaching needs to be OURS too.

So how do I get there?  How do I get back to the teacher I was so many years ago?  How do I find the balance between accomplishing the what by manipulating the how?

I can’t seem to get Simon Sinek’s voice out of my head: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.  I need to get back to my “why”, especially if I want my students to reach those lofty goals that have been set by the district.

I feel that my students have lost their identities, and so have I.

I want to give the classroom back to the kids. I want to work as a team with my students to construct the learning that happens in our room.  I want my students to learn from each other, to share the important information from their lives and experiences, they are only 5 and 6 years old after all.  I want them to experience their education instead of simply receiving it. I want them to be producers and not just consumers.

This week, with the help of Dr. Bogad, I was given the time, support and inspiration that I have been searching for. I need to take my classroom back but I feel like I need to take small steps to reclaim my ideals as an early childhood teacher.

I feel that I may need to disguise my efforts to restore my students identities, to revive their curiosity.  I find myself agreeing with Sir Ken Robinson. I find myself returning to the idea that all human beings are naturally diverse, innately curious and inherently creative.  And I find that I am missing this in my classroom.  I want to foster their love of learning and I don’t want have to close my door to do it.

In an effort to find a balance between the 2, I am going to take the advice of Britney Richer, and start with just 1 thing. I am going to incorporate an activity I am calling ‘Digital Discoveries’ into my school day.  

Students will be asked to document daily activities through the use of photography. Families will be enlisted to allow their child to borrow their smartphone in an effort to capture an image of daily life, such as “dinnertime” or “my favorite pair of shoes”. Then the family will email me the photo and we will take it from there, printing the photos for use in the classroom.

Once we have the photos in hand, the children will be allowed to manipulate and design a frame in which to showcase their work. Working with Kelly Reed, creating, making and manipulating actual materials really helped to solidify how important it is for kids to take an active role in their learning.  Children need to participate in constructing their own knowledge and this is one avenue to get us one step closer.

“Digital Discoveries” will help me make the jump from Technocrat to techno-traditionalist, using technology in a way to guide and inspire my teaching. Incorporating this activity into my classroom will help me to accomplish traditional classroom tasks through the exciting and motivating use of technology. It will offer a jumping off point to begin important conversations and truly get to know my students again.

I envision this project as a door into the lives of students and families.  It is a way to value each student and seamlessly incorporate their families culture and value into our classroom. Allowing the children to speak or write in their language of choice, whether that is English or their home language will help to develop a community where everyone feels valued and special for the learner that they truly are. We have so much to learn from each other, why not start with learning about each other. This activity will help me to get back on track towards the educator I once was, the educator that I strive to be again.  

As Postman and Weingartner argue, the environment of learning is more important than the content, and therefore teachers should begin to pay more attention to the learning environment they help to create. I often find myself asking a similar question to Wesch, ‘Have we made the mold too narrow or inflexible, or more likely, just not meaningful to inspire our students?”

I can only hope that continuing to build on the “Digital Discoveries” of my student’s lives throughout the school year will be meaningful and inspire more learning opportunities that I can even imagine.  I am not sure I can wait until September to get started.  Does anyone have a phone I can borrow? I need to take a picture of my shoes, they are my favorite pair after all.

*I emailed the self assessment rubric to Dr. Bogad

I believe...

I Believe...

I believe that children need social interactions to learn and grow and develop.

Kids are innately curious, they need to manipulate and touch things. Children need to work and play with each other. They need to problem solve through trial and error to come up with a solution. Children need to have conversations with each other, getting to know and learn about experiences other than their own.

I believe that children need to feel loved and safe and trusted and valued. They need to take an active part in creating our classroom community. Children need to take risks in their learning and in order to do this, and they need to feel safe.

I feel that children thrive in a community made up of diverse learners. Children can learn so much from each other and having a variety of cultures, languages and family experiences working together in our classroom community helps children to develop empathy and tolerance and appreciation for all learners. 

My final project needs to find a way to incorporate all of these beliefs seamlessly into my curriculum. I am hoping to include an ongoing project called "digital discoveries" into my classroom to reintroduce some of these very important ideals to my learners. Digital Discoveries will allow my children to learn from each other through the use of documenting everyday experiences while being creative at the same time. The students will be able to have authentic conversations, creating a cohesive classroom of learners though the use of technology.

Digital Discoveries - Pecha Kucha

Digital Discoveries Pecha Kucha

Turkle and Wesch, Wesch and Turkle

   

Tonight, I am struggling to answer the questions assigned for our blog: "What is the relationship between Turkle and Wesch? Do you see them as allies, or opponents in this discussion of new media and technology?"

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the readings. I think it is safe to say that I enjoyed reading Turkle a little more than Wesch tonight but I think that both articles offer valid points, and arguments and information. But "are they allies?" or "are they opponents?", I am really not sure. So I took some time to read a few other blogs to see if I could stir up some ideas.

After careful consideration, I felt that Amy hit the nail on the head. She was able to help me see what I just couldn't tease out myself, at 9:00 at night, at the conclusion of day 4 of class, with 2 young girls that are missing me during the day and a little extra needy in the evening, and making dinner, and, and, and...

Anyway, Amy so eloquently stated "I feel that the relationship between Turkle and Wesch is that they are both studying the world of people, how we learn and interact. I don’t see them as allies or opponents. Turkle is studying the idea that people are too attached to their devices and should step back to learn better conversation skills. Whereas Wesch is adjusting his classroom to better fit our changing world and the way students learn best."

and all I can say is "I AGREE".

Even living in today's society, I am continuously shocked and amazed (and a little guilty myself) of the amount of time we spend hooked up to a device. I mean, do you really need to pull your bike over on the side of the road to take that phone call? Do you need to be checking your Facebook at the dinner table? Why do we feel the need to be "plugged in" all the time? It wasn't that long ago that people had conversations, real face to face talking conversations. Where you clearly understood the meaning and context of the conversation because you could hear the intonation in her voice and see the expression on her face. You were not left analyzing the meaning by reading the text over and over and over, wondering just what she meant when she said...

I worry that we as a society are losing our interpersonal skills. As Turkle says, we have "confused conversation with connection" and I think its a slippery slope, and a dangerous one at that.

Go, Go, GoNoodle

So what is the purpose of GoNoodle? 

Why use it in your classroom?  

 Move with a purpose!  GoNoodle makes morning meeting, daily subject transitions, afternoon math, indoor recess, and even living room dance parties much more exciting and fun.  GoNoodle make everyday moments better!

GoNoodle is so much fun for kids and teachers alike.  And what's even better, is that it works with kids across all grade levels.  Getting up and moving is a motivator and a welcome break to the monotony of our rigorous and unexciting current classroom curriculum.  GoNoodle is quick (videos last any where from 1-10+ minutes) and fun and energizing!  What else could we really ask for in the classroom!  

Oh, and one more thing, it's FREE!!!


The GoNoodle site is visually appealing, full of silly characters and fun colors. It is very user-friendly and easy to navigate but be careful, it is also easy to get lost (lost if the fun videos I mean).

Signing up is easy and stress free, all you need is an email and a password (and your birth year).  You can sign up as "I'm a kid or parent" or "I'm a educator". 


Once you are logged in, the site is very easy to navigate (and that is coming from a bonafide Digital Immigrant).   Here is what it looks like:

As you click across the menu bar at the top, you will find

Champs : collectable friendly monsters are the primary motivation system.  Every time you play an activity with your students,  you help to grow your champ.  They collect activities out of 10 and then you advance to the next Champ. 

Explore: Videos are organized by "newest in GoNoodle".  Each video tells you the title, amount of time it takes and the category it falls into.

Categories:  There are broad categories and then subcategories under each.  Categories range from Curricular to Sensory and Motor Skills

Channels: The channels are simply a different way to organize the videos.  Here they are organized by interest.  When you hoover over the "channel", it offers you a brief description of the videos you will find there and also the number of videos that are on that channel.

As you explore and use GoNoodle with your students you are able to mark your favorites to return to with ease and convenience.  You can also search a particular video you want to show.  You can filter your search by duration of video and/or energy level.

With GoNoodle, I feel like the possibilities are endless to infuse some fun back into our day!

Seventeen, Self -Image, and Stereotypes

I am not going to lie, I had a hard time choosing a chapter to read.  I spent a lot of time looking at the titles, choosing one that I thought sounded interested, reading the first few lines and then changing my mind.  Here is the chapter I finally settled on: Seventeen, Self-Image and Stereotypes
by Bakari Chavanu.  I guess I was feeling like I needed some more information about how our culture and the media shape our views and how important it is to teach people (not just students) to look at it thought a critical lens.

In this chapter, a high school teacher works with his 11th grade students to do just that.  The class participates in a 7 week unit around media literacy in advertising.  His goal is to "help students consider more critically the role and influence of medial, particularly the pervasive and intrusive nature of advertising, and how it conveys certain values, messages and ideas that often perpetuate sexist, racist and pro-capitalist points of view." (p. 24)

He began the unit with a self assessment of media interests and habits.  He used a resource titled "What's Wrong with Advertising?" and then he had his students perform satirical skits.  This is a great way to have the students begin to look critically at advertising.  By having the students act out the stereotypes they identified, it brings it to life, allowing the students to really tap into their creative side. In addition to the skits, the class also watched and critiqued TV commercials, questioning the everyday adds as they watched.  Sometimes the commercials were presented without sound to help the students begin to understand the underlying messages and then to see the powerful role the music, editing and voice-over have when media is "influencing our values and decisions as consumers".

Some students were resistant, claiming that the media had no influence on them.  They were challenged to name their favorite car and to no great surprise, they all names cars that were advertised in the commercials they were exposed to on a daily basis. This illustrated to the students that very often we are not even aware of the biases that we are internalizing because they infiltrate our daily lives so seamlessly.

The work with commercials prepared the students to watch watch Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Images of Women, a "humorous analysis of how images and ads shape our values."

I think it is important to note that media teaches us what is considered "normal" and "good" and it is sad to say that we are part of a "culture in which one out of five women has a serious eating disorder, where adolescent girls increasingly have problems with low self-esteem, and where blacks, especially women, have historically had serious problems and prejudices concerning lightness and darkness of their skin".

This chapter gave some concrete examples of activities that teachers could incorporate into their current classroom curriculum to help students begin to develop the critical questioning skills that they need when they are consuming or producing media.

can we unlearn the myths?

Growing up,  I had a pretty good relationship with Disney.  My family would go to Disney World at least every other year. You know, it is said to be the "Happiest Place on Earth".  As young children we would stay for a week or more and experience it from top to bottom but as my brothers and I got older, our visits to Disney World got shorter and shorter.

I owned all of the Disney movies, on VHS of course, and can still recite most of the words, especially to all of my favorites. But I would by no means say that I am obsessed with Disney, and believe me, I know people that are OBSESSED with Disney.  

I have 2 young girls.  My oldest, despite my best efforts, has not really taken to Disney.  She has watched some of the movies and has decided that The Little Mermaid is her favorite with Beauty and the Beast a close second.  As a toddler she watched The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (which, in my opinion is a terrible show from a educator's point of view.  I am very disappointed that the writers do not take advantage of their captive audience of young children to properly incorporate skills and concepts, like the correct order of the days of the week, or logical ways to solve the problems they encounter in each episode, but that is for another blog on another      day).  We have only visited Disney World for 1 day as a family.

So anyway, even after frequently watching Disney movies as a child, I never dreamed of being a princess.  I didn't hope that Prince Charming was going to come and rescue me.  I didn't want to live happily ever after in the fairy tale that was portrayed in the movies that I enjoyed so much.  I had different ideas of what happily ever after looked like.  Maybe I am not the norm. Maybe most young girls spend days pining for the fancy dress and the horse drawn carriage and the castle and the prince. It just wasn't my thing.

As I was reading Christensen, I could relate to what she was saying.
Of course the media influences us. Isn't that its job?  If you take a close look at cartoons, the "secret education" is everywhere.  However,  I couldn't help wondering, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" I get that stereotypes are rampant in cartoons, especially in the cartoons that we watched as kids. Stereotypes and bias are everywhere in our culture.  They are evident on TV in commercials, cartoons, sitcoms. They are all over magazines and billboards. They are embedded into the songs we listen to on the radio.  Everywhere you look, you are hit with the "secret education" of our culture.  So it begs the question, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"  Is our social culture plastered with subliminal messages because we are trying to reinforce the SCWAAMPiness of our country and influence the masses ... or isour nation so SCWAAMPy because we grow up seeing these stereotypes everywhere we look?

And is there a way to combat these stereotypes and bias from manipulating the way that we see others and the world? If according to Christensen, at the age of 3, children already have a set of stereotypes in place; then, how as teachers, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers, etc do we help children see beyond what the media wants them to see? How do we help them "unlearn the myths"?

I remember seeing Frozen for the first time, a little over 3 years ago.  I took Natalie to the movie theater to see it when it was first released. I was an adult of course, and it gave me a new appreciation for Disney characters.  The female leads seemed to break the rules of a traditional Disney princess. Anna is real. She is human. She is flawed. She makes mistakes.  She is silly and unsure of herself. Anna is strong and brave.  She has a love and loyalty to her sister that is not usually found in Disney movies.

I have probably seen Frozen upwards to 10 times (remember, I have a 5 year old at home) and it never fails, I am always surprised by the ending.  I consistently find myself assuming that the "act of true love" is going to to be a kiss between Christof and Anna.  I find myself smiling when I am reminded that the "act of true love" is between Anna and Elsa.  The bond that the sisters share is strong enough to break the spell.  Love comes in many forms and I love this little "twist".