Educational Philosophy
When I think about my philosophy and what that entails I can think of two words that describe what I want it to be, reflective teaching. I want to be a reflective teacher in every aspect of the word. I want to be able to give my students valuable learning experiences that give them a type of ownership of their learning. I want to be able to grow and learn from them as well as them from me. In the environment that we have created I want for the classroom to work cooperatively to further our educational experiences as teacher and students.
In my classroom I try to make sure that the students and me working together as a team. Throughout my training and experience in teaching I have found that some of the best student results come from finding the right balance between teacher centered activities and student centered activities. In order to be a “great” teacher I feel this is an important aspect to have. Another important quality I would like to instill in my classroom is teaching my students to have ownership of their learning. In my years of teaching I have realized that when I teach a student a new concept that he doesn’t understand whether it is concrete or abstract if I make the idea meaningful to him/her and relate it somehow to what they know or what they have done then the concept becomes more real to them. They then take ownership of that idea and begin to understand the concept. In order for productive learning to occur in my classroom I expect my students to be an active participant in the activities provided. I feel it is important for both teacher and student to engage in meaningful conversations and discussions in order to learn from each other. I always tell my students it is better to give me a wrong answer than no answer at all. If they are participating than I know learning is occurring. Finally my goals as a teacher include providing my students with as many different technology resources as possible to enhance their learning. I am always trying to find different ways to teach different concepts. With so many new resources available to us, there are more ways to achieve this goal.
In closing, I try to find a way to promote meaning through many activities using many different activities and resources to bring understanding and comprehension to each student. I expect that through these activities I have brought upon a positive learning experience for children and they will go on to have more experiences that are meaningful later on in life.
Writing this philosopy down helps me by keeping track of where I am and where I want to be. This lets me put down on paper exactly what my goals are, and how to achieve those goals. This is also helpful to remind me what expectations I have for myself and my students, sometimes I seem to forget what these are.
As far as what uses I see for blogging so far, I am hoping that this will help with my communication and participation just as it is in my classroom. I am hoping that i will be able to reflect on some of my own thoughts ideas as well as my classmates.
After reading the article on Educational blogging, I would have to say that most school are not anywhere close to meeting the potential of blogging. Blogging as I understand it is to write about something that is of interest to you and then others may comment and reflect on what you have written. In the beginning of the article where it discusses the fifth grade student seems generally interested in the concept of blogging. He seems to like the idea of writing something on his blog and having other people share their thoughts and ideas about what he wrote. I thought this was one of the greatest ideas ever. The student says, " Blogging is an opportunity to exchange our point of view with the rest of the world not just people in our immediate environment." I think this idea of blogging sounds fabulous, where students are able to get feedback from others about their writing, thoughts and ideas. When reading on through the article I started to see that this is not how blogging is used in most schools. I would figure in most schools it is giving you a topic to read or write and then reflecting on that. This to me defeats the purpose. If you are choosing an idea for me, which is probably something I am not interested in I am less likely to want to pursue blogging as a whole. So as I stated, no, I do not believe that we have me this potential just yet. I think that we are preventing this from happening just based on the fact that in schools we do have to have certain restrictions. We can't just let kids write whatever they want. There have to be guidelines set up and the state curriculum has to be followed. If it's not in the curriculum, then it doesn't need to be or can't be covered, is the thought of many.
After reading Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning I would say that the most influential part of the article to me was the discussion of live video cameras in every room. I think that the author is probably right about this. I think that this is the next wave of the educational field. I guess it kind of hit home for me considering that I am a teacher and I started to really think about what would it be like to have a video camera in my room at all times. At first the thought kind of scared me and then I began to read on. He states, "it'll force teachers to consantly evaluate what they're doing,and it will change the relationships among teacher." He is absolutely correct. I would always be thinking to myself, "is this the right way? How else could I teach this? Does someone else have a different/better way?" This would actually promote much needed communication between all staff members, not just teachers, but teacher aids, librarians, instructional specialists and so on. I also think this would give parents more involvement with their child. They would know what the child is doing, why and for what purpose. Instead of the age old question, "What did you do at school today?" The child responds,"I don't know" or "oh nothing." The parents would actually know and be able to reinforce concepts that were taught. We shall see what happens.
Lastly, my expectations for the class are to learn more about automating vs. informating. I know I am more of the automating person and I would like to see if maybe this class can transform my thinking. I also expect to learn more about technology, communicating and relationships as the articles have discussed. I hoping to bring this new found knowledge back to my classroom and campus and maybe change some of the ways things are done.
