Digital Discussion Forums
Here you will find accounts of my digital discussions over twitter. They will be archived and reflected on in various ways.
My First Twitter Chat- Storified
This is a collection of the highlights and learnings from my first twitter discussion group. I was a peripheral participant. So I followed but did not engage during the actual discussion. After I made connections with some of the participants. Just click through the slideshow to view my comments along with some of the tweets.
Community Building
A large component of a PLN is being an active participant. I have just now realized a PLN that I am part of. For my cognition and learning class, we respond to a study question of our choice from the weekly reading then post our responses on a class blog. This allows us to read, respond and discuss our thoughts with other professionals. In our class we have TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers, single subjects teachers of different subjects, and multiple subject teachers. This gives us a wide range of different points of view on our thoughts.
Each week there are usually around 4-7 different study questions we can choose from. All of the question connect back to developing our educational philosophies and teaching strategies. This week we read the last chapter of the book and there was only one question: What is the most urgent issue that you see in your educational practice?
I was looking for some of my multiple subject colleagues' response, to see their thoughts because we have the most similar practice. I came across a TESOL students response that was different than the kind of responses I expected and chose to respond to it.
Each week there are usually around 4-7 different study questions we can choose from. All of the question connect back to developing our educational philosophies and teaching strategies. This week we read the last chapter of the book and there was only one question: What is the most urgent issue that you see in your educational practice?
I was looking for some of my multiple subject colleagues' response, to see their thoughts because we have the most similar practice. I came across a TESOL students response that was different than the kind of responses I expected and chose to respond to it.
Study Question: what is the most urgent issue that you see in your educational practice? What would be the question you would like to ask in the research project.
So far my most urgent need in my educational practice is not finding academic theories that coincide or complement my personal ones, but rather figuring out how all of these theories directly pertain to the students I am teaching. Right now I am at the stage where I can understand these theories and can hypothesize how to use them in the classroom, but when it comes down to actually doing it, I struggle actually designing lessons which use these ideas. This is something that I want to work on and feel that this project will allow me to do. In terms of the research project, the questions I want to answer are: How do I help my student improve her self-efficacy in reading, writing, and grammar? And How do I design a lesson in which grammar can be seen as a first person experience? In other words, I want to be able to make what she wants to learn more authentic for her so she does not struggle with recalling the information, which in turn will help her to be more confident in her own abilities. My student is highly motivated and interested in improving in the areas she has self-identified as troublesome. This being said, I do not think her educational needs are strictly mechanical. I think that her self-confidence in her ability to use English like she uses her native tongue are the reasons why she struggles with grammar, reading, and writing. |
I think it is interesting that you have not found academic theories that coincide or complement my personal ones. I wonder if you trying to fit your beliefs into the theories rather than trying to fit the theories to your beliefs. I personally do not find one theory overall that fits my educational practices. However, when examining my beliefs and practices I see the underlying guides of many of these theories. I think you should examine your beliefs and guiding principals of your educational practice. Just bullet the things you find most important in the way you teach, the things that no matter what you believe are essential to your classroom and the way you understand students. When you are done with the list even if its short, try to apply the theories. IE if you believe every student's ideas should be heard and even if they are wrong about an answer, by working as a class, with classmates, or with you they can develop the correct understanding then that is a nod to social constructivism. Remember its your classroom and even if you don't see the theories that apply to your teaching, you have your own beliefs and guide your own practice. Let the theories fit you not the other way around.
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Second Twitter Chat- The First 1:1 iPad
This chat is from a month ago but was amazing (better storified late than never)! This was the first 1:1 iPad chat. I read this chat and asked one question in it. Here are my key points of learning from the chat! I did not include my one comment and the 2 responses in my storify because it ended up being irrelevant.