Transliteracy, the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media is the greatest tool that a teacher can develop in an ever evolving and more technologically enhanced world.
The lives of our students are constantly being shaped by the ways that they interact with technology. Their engagement with media, be it written, visual or auditory, happens almost exclusively through the screen of a device. A teacher’s ability to modify their instructional practice so that it full engages students where they are is beginning to be the marker for quality teaching. My greatest challenge in trying to adapt to a world that requires transliteracy is figuring out a way to incorporate web 2.0 tools into my instruction in ways that authentically enhance my teaching. As a result of receiving my masters in innovative education I went from being an instructor who limited their tech integration to powerpoint, to one that is constantly searching for ways to integrate technology in fresh ways to develop my students critical thinking skills. Whether it be increasing communication between my students using surveys, enhancing a learning experience by making it more visual with apps like desmos or using video tutorials to help my students learn and review material, my instruction has grown because I am able to present my students with many different learning experiences.
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Receiving my masters in innovative education has been a great reminder that I am a lifelong learner. Our ability to grow, change, absorb new techniques and refine our practice can be a continuous process as long as we are open to receiving new ideas.
Looking at many of my department members, those who are so resistant to change, it is clear that they are stuck in an educational time warp. Many of my colleagues are using the same materials, techniques and outdated practices from their early years of teaching. While our student’s mindsets, outlooks, habits and future opportunities have changed, my colleagues have resisted updating their understanding of an evolving world. I am grateful for the opportunity to develop as a teacher and look forward to the influence this program will have on the lives of my students. It has been an honor to be a student at Touro University. It is apparent that social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity are fibers that a built into every course at the university. Participating in the graduate school of education and receiving my masters in innovative education, the root of my pursuit of higher education has been my desire to unite compassion and service in creating a more student-centered spaces for learning.
In this program, I began my action research trying to find a solution to the problem of math anxiety. I saw how defeated my students were, walking into a class that they had already failed once, feeling that there was no way they could overcome the crippling effects that math anxiety had on them. It was only through humanizing practices and collaborating with my students to create a positive community that I was able to develop my initial research into something actionable - flipping my classroom. Flipping my classroom has been one way that I have been able to develop intellectual inquiry, discovery, and passion for life-long learning in my students. After flipping my classroom and challenging my students to take ownership over their learning, I saw more motivated kiddos who were not only more ready for assessment but more willing to participate and ask good questions in class. After more practice with my flipped classroom model in the 2019-2020 school year I will definitely feel confident enough to share my methods out with my department and then with other content areas. This will contribute to the promotion of interprofessionalism that Touro has built into us over the course of this masters program. Meeting as a class last week was a revelation! It was such an amazing experience to have the cohort in one place and even better to have my questions instantly answered by JP or Lisa. I felt that I was able to experiment and try new things with my capstone video because of the expertise in the room. Knowing that I would trouble shoot issues with other cohort members and our instructors, in real time, gave me to confidence to go further than I thought I would be able to in iMovie.
Some of the new things I explored in iMovie were re-framing pictures, changing the play speeds of certain clips, adding in descriptions over certain video clips and playing with sound of my uploaded videos. iMovie automatically chooses to use the Ken Burns effect when you include a still frame in your movie. For some of my still frames this effect was dramatic and went with the theme of the capstone summary but for others, like the Napa learns icon, it distracted and confused the eye of the viewer. I figured out how to disable this effect and even how to choose the way that the photo pans, wither bottom to top or the reverse. I also was able to slow down a clip so that it focused in on a particular student in slow motion and added the dramatic effect that I really wanted. The biggest change from my rough draft to this more final draft was the inclusion of explanatory information over certain video clips. I love that in iMovie there is a lot more flexibility in where the text can go over the video, unlike in Adobe spark, which I feel is limiting in this regard. Adding explanation of what is happening in the scene helps guide viewers and also helps the highlight the information that I want viewers to take away from the summary. |
Brandon DeJesusMath Archives
July 2019
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