6.3: Field Experiences:
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Artifact
Instructional Technology Tool Lesson Plan Project Reflection The Technology Tool Lesson Plan Project was designed to encourage candidates to assess the needs of a classroom of students and integrate a technology tool that directly and organically addresses that need. Candidates were required to design an authentic lesson with differentiated instruction and to demonstrate trouble-shooting abilities as needed. For this project, I collaborated with a math co-teacher who had identified a significant gap in his special education students' understanding and that of their peers, and that even so, few students were able to remember the material on tests. We decided to use a Memrise -based lesson along with a whole-class collaborative graphic organizer to create a whole-class collaborative study tool that students could access from their phones in preparation for a make-up exam. This field experience and the others provided on the Field Work tab fulfills the spirit of Standard 6.3. This appropriate field experience challenged me to teach a lesson that synthesized my learning in previous courses and to apply the content and professional knowledge in a classroom setting with struggling students. The previous course content learning relevant to this experience include the study of constructivist learning theory, the UDL web design principles, the Engaged Learning tenets, and the study of emerging internet tools. The constructivist design included grouping students in pairs to brainstorm and create Memrise mems (mnemonic image and text-based slides for math vocabulary) to include on a whole-class Memrise tutorial and separate graphic organizer, each of which the collaborating math teacher posted to his blog and each of which was accessible by all students' personal mobile devices on or off campus. I employed the UDL principles (CAST, 2015) to design the lesson by incorporating written, verbal, and visual instructions, each of which was accessible as needed via file hyperlinked on the shared graphic organizer. To ensure the lesson plan met the Engaged Learning indicators (Williamson, 2013), I designed the overall lesson plan to encourage analysis of, application of, and creation with the critical math content giving them such trouble. I also ensured that the task collaborative and performance-based. The internet tools included seamlessly in the lesson plan design demonstrate my ability to apply professional knowledge, skill, and dispositions to lesson design. The three instructional technology tools fully integrated in the lesson include Memrise, Snipping Tool, and YakItToMe. Each of these was included because of my evaluation of its attractiveness, engagement potential, multi-class usefulness, and user-friendly formatting. From completing the experience detailed in this artifact, I learned that providing students with plenty of time to explore new web tools is critical to appropriate implementation. Though students today are digital natives, many are far better attuned and willing to explore socially popular web tools than educational ones. Guidance and support are critical to encouraging students through unfamiliar internet territory not immediately tied to their social internet presences. Perhaps more important, though, I learned that many students unused to critical thinking require extensive brain training in order to accomplish higher level thinking goals, and web tools like Memrise provide effective platforms for such training. If I could repeat the field experience, I would provide more time for students to practice with the technology and repeat the process regularly throughout the semester to encourage critical thinking and creativity with course content. Following the make-up exam, which assessed the content studied during the lesson plan, I met with my collaborating teacher and discussed the attitude and performance impact of the lesson. He reported that a disturbance in the class made discussion of the lesson's meaningfulness and the tool's usefulness impossible. He also reported, however, that students’ make-up exam scores indicated significant improvement in their ability to remember and apply the content. Encouraged by this feedback, I plan to incorporate the tools throughout my curriculum this school year and to regularly assess the impact in collaboration team meetings. This experience impacted my collaborating teacher’s improvement and by extension, faculty improvement—he presented that significant improvement in test scores to his collaboration team, who expressed interest in learning more about the pedagogy. References CAST. (2015). About UDL: Learn the basics. National Center on Design for Learning. Retrieved from http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl Williamson, J. (2013). Indicators of instruction for engagement, empowerment, and deep understanding, retention, and transfer of knowledge. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1BhCHaU. |