My post secondary experience here at East Stroudsburg would be categorized into the two higher ordering thinking categories, evaluating and creating. In the Master's ELED program, we have talked collaboratively in groups about influential people in education. (Evaluating) We have been asked to research certain educators (Bloom, Gardner, Dewey, Paley, Cortes, and Walker) and use the research to learn and model their experiences through papers, lessons, powerpoints, etc. We do this with one goal in mind, to educate the children the best we can. We use our judgements to critique and judge these educators' prior knowledge and experiences to see if we agree and can use their ideas and thoughts in our classrooms. Secondly, in the Master's ELED program, we have created many projects to enhance learning in our own classrooms. I have completed various projects that included interactive math bulletin boards, social studies' Kid-friendly power point on Africa, science experiments for kids, literacy stations, and reading inventories and hands-on activities for struggling readers. All these projects and/or activities make learning more engaging and more fun for the students to learn the curriculum.
The reason that the Master's ELED program is geared towards the higher order thinking categories are to challenge teachers to be more creative and flexible. Teachers should use and apply what they learn and create more interesting and engaging lessons and activities for their students in their classroom. The students today learn differently than thirty plus years ago. They do not want to be lectured or asked to read pages from a textbook during class. They want to be challenged. In this technological world, students want to learn through different media. They want to learn through making their own powerpoints, webquests, podcasts, and interactive websites. In order for students today to succeed in the future, they need to be equipped with old knowledge and resources that they can later connect to future information. As educators, we are responsible to prepare the students for the future by teaching them what we can about now. Creating projects from previous classes or learning to create technological projects will help the students to become as prepared as they can be for their next step in the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I can't agree with you more about the need for educators to change the way they deliver their instruction to meet the needs of the students, gain student interest, and motivation due our societal change to a more technologically advanced world.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the activities that we experience in our graduate classes are very essential to keeping us current. These skills are then transferrable to our students. I'm not sure that I agree that students learn differently than 30 years ago. I think that we were trained differently 30 years ago. We were bored by lecuture classes but there weren't any other alternatives. Technology has pushed education to become more flexible and engaging. It was all we had so we didn't question it. I sometimes think that we are not creating "educational stamina" in our students. We all know that when we get to the working world, not everything is possible and sometimes you have to do mundane tasks and look for the exciting things in different ways. I'm not trying to be cynical because I worry that we are not training students for the real world. Does this make sense?
ReplyDeleteEducational stamina is an interesting idea. I often find students want to do an instant task analysis, and if they find they cannot perform the task in a short period of time they throw up their hands and say, "I can't do this". This is why I think long range goals and projects are so important to develop stamina. The ability to "plow through" something that does not give instant gratification is important.
ReplyDelete