"We have learned to 'play school'. We study the right facts the night before the test so that we achieve a passing grade and thus become a successful student."
-High School Student
How many of us have felt this way at some point in time during our academic careers? More importantly, how can we prevent our students from feeling this way? One of the answers (and a theme common to our 780 seminar series) is by engaging our students.
Engage - to attract and hold the attention of; engross; to draw into; involve
We all know from our psychology classes that attention is crucial in learning. So my question for you guys is this, how are we going to engage our students? What have we learned in the past 3 months that will allow us to attract and hold their attention? With only 2 weeks left of class, I thought it would be a good time for us to summarize some of the engagement methods we have learned in seminar and in some of our other classes. The video I've posted here is called "Pay Attention" and it's focus is on the use of technology to engage students (it even has a fun little cell phone experiment). It's similar to Shift Happens or Did You Know videos but I still thought it raised some good points about how technology can be used as tool for engagement. Enjoy!!
Cheers,
Erin :)
Hey Erin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the little video...way to use technology :) ha. WEll I did laugh out loud when "E-Portfolio" came on the screen..apparently it's pretty popular!
I think it's great that teachers are trying to reform the system by reacting to where their students are at. However, it leaves me with the thought of "what is education anyways"? Are teachers just at the front of the classroom to cater to kids? Sometimes all this stuff seems so feel-good...and maybe it's just because I am reading a book right now titled "Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity: One Season in a Progressive School" and it's souring my generally optimistic view of how education-can-change-the-world attitude.
Anyways, back to technology. Yes, I'm all for it. duh. It's probably pretty stupid to not say that. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bring into the classroom...we are the statistic's they show in this video, and clearly have grown up with changing technology. At the same time though, I have never been asked in my education to make a podcast or a commercial or get an international text on my cell.
One great tool that another Methods teacher gave us to use is AUDACITY. It's a nifty little site where you can record your voice, send out instructions, and get kids to email their voice in to you. If you're doing poetry reading, second language orals, music stuff...etc, and your kids miss class, or for homework, they can do something and then send it in to you online. Oh yeah, it's also free.
Making sure your students are engaged when you are teaching is probably one of the most important aspects of teaching. If your students are not engaged while you are teaching you might as well be teaching to an empty classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional methods that have been used for years still have a role in today's classrooms but supplementing these methods with new technology that students are so comfortable with is an excellent way to engage them. In our Grade 9 classes there are probably going to be students who learned how to type and use computers before they even learned to write by hand. It's a pattern that is not the same as to how we grew up and we need to keep that in mind. Today most kids can send text messages, e-mails, have profiles on multiple social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) and even if they don't they can probably pick up on this technology very quickly.
Being comfortable with technology gives a teacher a starting point because you have students who are confident in using technology and use it in a way that they relate technology to fun or interesting. So our job as teachers is to find ways to use something that students both like and are comfortable with and use it to our advantage to engage and teach them.
Here is a short video showing High School songs at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, Minn. that are being engaged using social media tools and the Internet which allows students to learn in different ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxIz_3o3O0