Goal+1+Philosophy+Tracie

Goal One: Philosophy


Tracie Weisz EDET698 Philosophy for Teaching with Technology

As both a teacher and a learner, I am committed to building and maintaining my personal learning networks. The early days of building my PLN not only gave me a flood if ideas, it also opened up a professional collaborative world. As I learned, experimented, and taught, I found it became a never-ending spiral that continually motivated me. I'd learn something, try it out, reflect, give feedback to my PLN, deepen my thinking about the process, realize I was onto something good, and take another step. Everything I did, even the things that didn't work out so well, confirmed that overall, I was on the right path. I was changing the way I taught. This changed the way my students learned, it changed how I perceived them, it made me raise my standards for them constantly, and greatly broadened my perspectives on meaningful learning.

I believe in guiding my students toward being lifelong learners. I model this for them, and teach and encourage them to use collaborative networks discerningly and responsibly. I believe that being a part of any network brings with it certain responsibilities and habits of citizenship, which students should hold as dear to them as they do their offline reputations.

Being lifelong learners also means being adaptable, and coping with change. In the age of ubiquitous technologies, how do I help my students with the concept of change? I model it for them every day. I show them web tools they may be unfamiliar with, and encourage them to try them out to see if they like them or can use them. I help them develop criteria they might use to evaluate tools. My students know that with web tools and platforms, there are no guarantees. The program may not be what they need, it may be glitchy, or they may love it and it disappears next month. But my students will also know that there are probably many other, similar tools that will do the same thing. The technology is not the thing. One particular piece of software or an application is not going to make or break anything - there are many of ways of going about getting things accomplished. I try to always instill that attitude in my students, and the best way I do this is by modeling this behavior myself. Sometimes things don't work. I want students to problem solve, and use what they know to look for something that does work. I want them to understand that problems like technology not working are trivial. It doesn't change the fact that things need to get done.

I believe in teaching students the habits of mind they'll need to adapt to change. We need to give them meaningful tasks and interesting problems. If we do this, and also set our own minds to being flexible in allowing them to attack and solve them, we'll have the benefit of seeing them do some incredible things to reach their goals. Having the opportunities to do this on a regular basis changes the habits of mind of students. They feel as though they are in charge of their learning, and they take that responsibility seriously. They cease to do this for the grade, but do it rather because they really want to know - it's a worthwhile challenge to them. Thinking and operating this way naturally prepares students to more readily adapt to changes. Students know that if the goal is a worthwhile and interesting pursuit, they will have to deal with obstacles that come up along the way.

Planning for teaching this way is not always easy - we often have to do a lot of learning ourselves. We must be committed to the idea that the integration of technologies and 21st Century Skills is vital to our students to become productive citizens and lifelong learners in their future.

__**Artifacts**__: Following are two curriculum outlines I wrote for implementation of a technology course in my school in 2011. One was for students, and the other, which paralleled it, was for teachers. The teachers had the same curriculum, with the added element of implementation instruction. The courses were based on the idea of offering a survey of emerging technologies. Students and teachers would learn important web-based multiuse platforms, categories of web tools, and a variety of digital literacies. There was also in-depth digital citizenship curriculum built in as it's own piece, and then integrated with the rest of the units in the course. In 2012 I took the basic outline for the student class and wrote it into an online course for Alaska Learning Network (AKLN). As of present, this course still exists in our school, and I am still teaching this course to high school students across the state of Alaska via the online course. The foundations of the curriculum for the course are the ideas I've built in to the Alaska TOOLkit as a basis for what kinds of technologies are most effective for learning in the classroom, and that teachers can learn to use for integration in their teaching.