Micro-credentials

I think that using micro-credentials in the place of traditional professional development is a fabulous idea.  What are micro-credentials? Micro-credentials are credentials that represent skills, interests and achievements earned by an individual through specific projects, programs, courses or other activities. Instead of requiring individuals complete an entire college-level course, for instance, micro-credentials could be awarded for mastery of particular skills.  Why is this better than traditional professional development? 1. Teacher earn credential is area that interest them (say in learning). 2. Teacher earn credentials in areas that will help them (need to learn). 3. Credentials can be earned at anytime and at their own pace. 4. It is more interactive than normal professional development. I tried out earning some of the Apple Teacher credential and I found it to be both very easy and interactive.  In traditional professional development someone stands up and lectures everyone about something and everyone just sits and listens. With micro credentials not only do you get a say in what you are learning but it is also interactive. Teacher can earn micro credentials that will help them build skills that will help them in the classroom to be more effective teachers. There are many options to choose from. To be a Google Certified Teacher the course is free, but there is a charge for the exam that would be required to demonstrate completion. (Level 1-$10, Level 2- $35).  For Apple Teacher the course is free but the components are skill based and include iPad, Mac, Swift Playgrounds, imovie, numbers, Keynote, and Pages. Microsoft Teaching offers a free course and you may select this course or any other course (or combination of courses) that earns points in the educator community. Bloomboard offers dozens of credentials on many different education-related topics and the course is free. Participate Learning offers a variety of courses, many of which come from various organizations. Some are free; some have a cost associated with them. With so many options to choose from any teacher could find something that would really help them become a better teacher.

Instructional Coaching Model

Travis Bender, a fellow teacher at Oak Mountain, asked me to aid him in the instruction of his students in using Google Forms to make self and class quizzes as well as studyguides that students can use to prepare for tests.  The first thing that I told him to do as a pre assessment was to have the students each make a 5 question quiz on their own on the material that they were currently covering in class. We would then look at the quizzes that they had created and talk about the good, the bad and the ugly and discuss what kind of improvements they would like to make to their quizzes.  Next we would make some goals that we wanted to achieve in the next few days including making a good 10 question quiz that is about the material that the class is covering at the time and using all of these quizzes to compile a class studyguide. Then Mr. Bender and I would make preparation as to how to best achieve this goal and reserve the chromebook carts so that we know we have enough devices in the classroom for each student.  Next we would for the next few days implement our plan that we had come up with and help the students along the way. At the end of each day we would reflect on how our progress and see if there are any changes that need to be made. We would make our adjustments and then help students improve their quizzes. When we had a good bank of quizzes we would then compile the quizzes into a studyguide for the class to use. Finally once we were done with the instruction Mr. Bender and I would sit down to talk about we had done and see if there where any changes that would need to be made if we did it again.

What are the most important aspects of designing professional learning activities that are meaningful to the teachers but also aligned to standards?

The most important aspects of designing professional learning activities for teachers is to make sure that it is something that the teacher can actually use in the classroom to help student learning and understanding.  I can’t tell you how many learning activities or professional development hours I’ve had to sit through that in no was helped me improve my teaching or benefited my students in any way. It was just done so that people could check the box that it was done.  For this last year with the Alabama Quality Teaching Standards we can 3 of the standards that we focused on for the year. One was chosen by the district, one was chosen by the school, and the last we got to chose. I would saw that the one that I chose what probably benefited me the most because it was something that I wanted to grow in.   I chose 2.8 Uses formative assessments to provide specific and timely feedback to assist learners in meeting learning targets and to adjust instruction. It's not that I did do this at all before, it is just that it was somewhere where I felt I could improve on and I know that there were some professional development opportunities that were available to me over the course of the school year.  Since this was something that I wanted to learn and I knew that it was going to positively affect both my teaching and my students learning I felt like it was a great learning activity that was aligned to standards. The school chose the standard of 2.5 Engages learners in developing and monitoring goals for their own learning and behavior. They chose this standard because we started a new class that was called Soar60 in which the students had 60 minutes to have lunch and do whatever they needed 4 days a week and one day a week they would go to an advisory where the teacher would monitor students grades and mentor students.  We had professional development on this and while I do think it had a positive impact on the student learning I don’t think it was quite as effective a learning activity and the one that i selected mostly because it wasn’t as relevant to my teaching or content.

Andragogy vs, Pedagogy

How can you teach someone unless you know something about them?  Pedagogy is a child centered teaching approach, while andragogy is adult centered.  There are many differences between teaching children vs. teaching adults, and the better you understand these differences the better you can reach your target audience.  When teaching children the teacher is responsible for all instruction and evaluation of learning. When teaching adults the learner is responsible for his or her own learning and there is more of a self evaluation of learning.  Children learners are made to go to school whether they want to or not, and told what they have to learn and what they must do you move on. Adult learners must be ready to learn and must see and reason to learn something. Pedagogy typically involves subjects where the teacher is the source of most knowledge and experience.  Andragogy involves more real life activities where the learners bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to add to the teacher’s. Knowing your audience is the first step to teaching them. Children come to you ready to learn and it is up to you to give them the information and skills to move on to the next level. Adults will only come to learn when they are ready to and when they see a need to learn, and they have an active role in what and how they learn.  Adults are quick to question things they don’t agree with or that go against their prior experience, whereas children will usually take whatever the teacher says as the truth without question. As students move from childhood to adulthood they will start moving from the pedagogy to andragogy. In my experience it is during the teenage years that this transition takes place. This is when they start questioning why we learn something and developing prior knowledge and experience from which to pull from.  Knowing where they are maturity wise is one of the first steps you need to take to teach someone. You must first know who you are teaching before you can reach them.

Is teaching adults is different than teaching children?

Teaching adults is definitely very different from teaching children.  Children are eager to learn whatever the teacher is telling them despite its relevance to their live while adults needs to see a reason to learn something.  Children will take whatever the teacher says as true while an adult learner is more likely to question the validity of a claim. Children are also most often ready to learn whereas adults have to be ready in order to learn.  Adults learners also need to feel a sense of control over their learning whereas children would rather have their learning controlled for them. The one powerful thing that an adult learning has that a child does not is a wealth of experiences to pull from and to relate things too and a self determination to make themselves better.  Most of my teaching experience is with teenagers which are in between children and adults so they are kinda mix of both. My students want to see a relevance to something before they learn something like adults. Most of my students are ready to learn when they come to my class as long as they are not be distracted by any of the numerous things that tend to distract teenagers.  The older the students that I have are the more likely they are to want to have a sense of control whereas freshman usually just want to be told what to learn. The same is true of questioning the validity of a claim, freshman will take what you say as law where seniors not so much. These are also some of the same thing that I have seen in myself throughout my journey as a lifelong learner.  When I was a child I just wanted to learn about anything. As I got a little older I still wanted to learn but about things that interested me like science, space and music. Now I want to learn about things that interest me but I also have a self motivation to learn things that will help me advance my career like I am doing now. I am going to question the validity of a claim if I feel it is invalid and I like to have control over my learning.  I also know that have have to be ready to learn in order to learn and luckily today I can honestly say I am ready to learn.

iBook

I use iBooks about once a week.  There is an amazing about of book and resources on there when it comes to Geometry content.  There are many books that have interactive videos and resources that students and teachers can use to help cover content.  Thing the power of the technology will allow iBooks to do even more in the future in the way of interactivty.  iBooks is also a good e-reader just to have a digital copy of your book.  Student today would rather have a digital copy of their book that to have to carry around a 10 pound book.  This is the way that the future of the written word is headed and iBooks is one of the resources leading the way.

Virtual World Design

How does traditional instuctional design differ from teaching in a virtual world?  The first and most obvious difference is in the learning environment itself.  The traditional learning environment is the physical classroom with instruction being centered around and coming directly from the teacher.  In a virtual world the "classroom" can take any number of forms from a virtual room in a building modeled after a real classroom to a science lab on Mars.  This allows for teachers to have much more freedom in the virtual world to try to engage learners.  The virtual classroom also relies much more heavily on the social aspect of learning and how it can aid in the learning process and in this way it is much more student centered. 
How are traditional instruction design and teaching in a virtual world similar?  The end goal of both of the instructional strategies are the same, to empower students with some kind of knowledge or skill.  They both rely on some kind of grand design and guidance from a teacher or instructor as well as a good amount of planning. 
Why is social persistence considered important?  Social persistence is vital because we are social creatures.  When we are little, we learn to do most physical things by observing and imitating others and we learn speech and social skills by interacting with others.  I feel the importance of social interaction does not diminish as we get older, we are just forced to cut out the social aspect in a traditional classroom.  Teaching in a virtual world allows us to incorporate some of the social aspects of the learning process. 
What are some of the positives and negatives of using a virtual world with adults?  Some of the positives I feel are that it is less structured and allows for much more freedom for the adult learner.  Adult learners can come from all over the world and at whatever times are good for their learning schedule.   I feel that the main negative for adult learners are that most of them are still not very "tech savvy" and some of them are even afraid of new technology and interacting on social media.  Adults that are apprehensive about learning in a virtual classroom are not going to get as much out of it as one who embraces it and jumps right in.  As both of the articles stated, we are still very early in the design and implementation of virtual worlds in education, but I feel that the effect it will have on the future of education will be as dramatic as about anything else we have seen.