If you’re like me, there are so many tasks pressing for time in my calendar that I tend to feel as though I don’t spend enough time on assessment data. Really coming to understand what my students know feels like one of those things technology can help make more efficient. There are great ways to capture and collect snapshots of formative assessment using technology, which can also be a tool to enhance learning.
As a child of poor immigrants from rural Philippines, I often heard about how my parents grew up without running water and limited electricity. They told my brothers and me stories about the things that they didn’t have while growing up, and how they overcame traumas of war and poverty. These anecdotes made me feel equally grateful and guilty, while also motivating me to strive for success. In fact, it is through these stories that I learned the importance of attaining a college education as a way of fulfilling our parents’ American dreams and somehow compensating for the historical trauma that my family had overcome for centuries.
The use of humor in the college classroom has been researched extensively (see Segrist & Hupp, 2015 who summarized 41 years of literature on humor in the college classroom) and has been shown to have many benefits for students (Banas, Dunbar, Rodriguez & Liu, 2011; Garner, 2006; Huss & Estep, 2016; Pollio, 2002), some of which are:
Dr. Arline Bronzaft is worried about the effect noise could be having on your health. She’s an environmental psychologist whose research on the impact of noise in New York City has changed noise code policy and brought a lot of attention to the dangers of noise to humans. Her latest collaborative project with the Department of Environmental Protection of New York City is the Sound and Noise Education Module. This module provides interactive, multi-disciplinary, STEM lessons tailored to teach elementary, middle and high school students about sound and noise in their neighborhoods. Activities in each lesson encourage students and teachers to participate in citizen science projects by collecting and analyzing data.
It was estimated that in January 2017, there were more than 1.8 billion websites. And as most of us know already, a website can be a personal, commercial, governmental website, or a non-profit organisation. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking, to providing news and education.
Over the last few years as a School Psychology doctoral student, I have begun to experiment with various social media and technology platforms with hopes to improve efficiency and service delivery. I have found that the attention and information consumption of youth are structured into small but high-volume increments of time. Each social media platform serves its own purpose in the lives of our youth and as educators we must utilize this knowledge to bridge the educational gaps that exist.
Kindergarten today is not like it used to be – a place characterized by engagement with social skills and exploring through play. Over the past twenty years, Kindergarten has become much more concentrated on academics as a result of federal, state, and local policies as well as parental concerns that emphasize the acquisition of basic skills and passing standardized tests. In fact, there’s research that supports the idea that Kindergarten is the new first grade. In response, preschools have become more academic, especially promoting early reading and math skills. Children now know more than they ever have at this age about these subjects.
It’s the first day of class and Marie is a brand new teacher. She has just finished her professional degree and has had some experience as an assistant teacher, but this is her first time being the head teacher in an early childhood setting and being fully responsible for the children in her care. During her training she learned about developmentally appropriate practices and working with families and children from diverse backgrounds, but nevertheless she feels overwhelmed and underprepared to deal with the day-to-day challenges of being an early childhood educator. Marie is expected to provide a high-quality experience for her children but her own anxiety and stress is getting in the way of her ability to provide the children in her classroom with a nurturing and positive educational environment. Her anxiety sometimes spills over into her interactions with other teachers and parents which in turn affects the behavior and learning of the children under her care.
On Twitter, educator Justin Tarte wrote about technology in education no longer being a luxury but a necessity. Larry and Laurie, the campus Luddites and technophobes will need to retire to make way for the new tech-savvy teachers of tomorrow. Technology will not be for the rich districts; it will be for everyone. Every school will have some form of 1:1 and all teachers and administrators will need to be able to adapt to changing software and technological tools in the future. Good teaching and good pedagogy will still be needed, but we are approaching the science of learning from a different place than when I began teaching. This is a great change.
As I write this post, I have a smile on my face because I just ended a class that included several “woos”, high-fives and screaming! And, no it wasn’t because my heel broke in class and I landed flat on my face (I’ll reserve that story for an APA event so that I can fully act out my embarrassment). The hooting and hollering came from the excitement students had while they played a review game on Quizlet Live. As a teacher, I really enjoy experimenting with new tech tools in my classroom, even if it ends with me cursing under my breath at my computer after school. Through my adventures in experimenting with technology, I have learned a few lessons: