Week Six

"Learning in the Collective" - Thoughts

I am lucky, at my school we have build in PD time every week to collaborative with colleagues and community members. Myself and the other two math teachers at my school use this time to talk about pacing, lessons and usually technology. It is not required that we meet with only our department groups and periodically we meet with other teachers to discuss students, and/or curriculum. This built in time is quite different from my first teaching job and I appreciate "learning from others."  (Thomas)  

I have also participated in a lot of online classes through the University where we have collaborated during online class time and also collaborated outside of class preparing lessons. I've enjoyed the classes where we have to participate during the class, I believe that "a collection of people, skills and talent [will] product a result greater than the sum of its parts." (Thomas) The classes draw teachers in from all around the state of Alaska and each teacher is able to bring a different teaching perspective, from small rural schools to large urban schools. We are all able to listen and learn from each other. 

The idea about classroom learning vs website/blog learning caught my attention. Thomas spoke about how in a typical classroom a teacher delivers the information and students write down the lecture topics and examples and then they take a quiz, taking guesses at what the teacher will ask for questions. All along not really learning the information but memorizing it just for the quiz. "Finding answers and memorizing facts do nothing to inspires students' passion to learn. If anything, they dull that desire and make learning a tiresome burden." (Thomas) 

Thomas went on to talk about how people learn through the internet. If you want to learn about gardening for example, you can go online and read information or join a blog discussion and you will learn the information even though there is no quiz at the end of the gardening season. 

So I find myself asking the question, how can I shift the way that I teach so that students are not just memorizing information for the quiz, but really learning it? A quote from an Edutopia article I read is pretty spot on...."And the four walls of your classroom no longer limit your students' reach. To thrive in this always-on community, students and teachers must become agile learners, creators, and collaborators. Their success and our country's future depend on it." (Rubenstein)

Rubenstein, Grace. “Collaboration Generation: Teaching and Learning for a New Age.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 3 Dec. 2008, www.edutopia.org/collaboration-age.

Thomas, Douglas, and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Publisher Not Identified, 2011, Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (n.d.). Retrieved June 23, 2019, from https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B004RZH0BG.