#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning WEEK 4 CHALLENGE #1 My Survival Kit

#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning WEEK 4 CHALLENGE #1 My Survival Kit

Our first goal this week has been to create some sort of presentation about all the things that we teachers usually carry in our bags, briefcases, backpacks or keep in our desks the lucky ones  who don't have to wander around the school. Mine has three buildings and sometimes I even have to carry an umbrella with me. 

I was not aware of the bunch of things I carry in my backpack, which is one from Ikea and has two detachable sections: a bigger one -which always stays at school- and smaller one, which goes between home and school.

Some 12 grade students have witnessed the process of displaying them and taking pictures of them. They were amazed and couldn't avoid  a laugh. Then I have explained why I was doing so and they have learnt that there is a huge amount of unnoticed work before and after classes. I've also told them that that's the key point: our intention is that lessons can flow  in spite of eventual problems and for that reason, we usually go loaded with all kind of resources and experiences.

In my Teacher Survival Kit I have also included some ideas and feelings, because I think that our attitude and behavior is something we always carry with us into our classrooms and which is seen and felt by our students. I have also told them about this and  for a short moment I've seen myself as a valuable person in their eyes.

  

#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning WEEK 3 FINAL REFLECTIONS.

#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning 

WEEK 3 FINAL REFLECTIONS. 

Since Tuesday 13th of February, Weeks finish on Mondays and start on Tuesdays. Ending up with challenges of the week on time has become itself a goal so auto be able to fulfill the following ones and keep the track. This week however I am a bit delayed since extra hours at school tend to increase as the end of the term approaches.

DIGITAL LEARNING THEORIES:

During the week finishing today we have worked hard to learn about digital learning theories. At first it may seem a pointless set of scholar productions far from the daily teaching reality, although a more detailed look reveals that in spite of a great deal of abstraction, some of the theories are quite down on the ground. The one I chose to mindmap is R.A.T. basically because I felt it could help me evaluate how I am using technology in my class and make me improve my teaching practice in a more sensible way by setting a simple, S.M.A.R.T. goal at a time. I have realized that I am halfway, not only using technology in a  REPLACEMENT stage as a REDUNDANT tool instead of textbook or board. I sometimes, not consistently yet, propose apps for an AVERAGE, ACCEPTABLE  AMPLIFICATION of the content, trying that students learn from real English use on the web. I have even done a little TRANSFORMATION, enabling my students do a TERRIFIC creation turning a boring class activity into a complex collaborative mission or challenge whose product has surprised both students and me.

Another positive points of this theory is that it allows me to relate my use of technology with the students’ relationship to the technology. This may be rated as  Passive, Interactive or  Creative (PIC). These standards may vary from one student to another, which also points what I should do in my teaching practice: helping them to move from P to C while I am moving from R to T.  Check this article by Dr Royce Kimmons for more details about this and  some nice diagrams about this shifts.

DIGITAL FOOTPRINT:

As a second challenge, I have  surveyed my students (and some other kids around) about their experience and habits on the social networks. This has given me a sound knowledge about what age the kids start accessing the net and using social networks. I've learnt several things about this:

1. they start using the net and the social networks at an early age: 10 years old;
2. Most parents are apparently concerned with what their sons do online, although they do  nothing to check effectively their deeds.
3. A high percentage of them post pics and videos of themselves on social networks, regardless of the future consequences it may have.
4. Kids are absolutely unaware of what their digital footprint is and how it could affect them in the future.

From my point of view some kind of action should be taken about this. The different levels of ability that teens and parents have in terms of internet use, safety and privacy make most of the later unable to protect their children from something they have never heard of and don't even consider a threaten. This leaves the matter in the hands of teachers and teens themselves to spread the knowledge and awareness about social networks misuse.

However, I must admit that, at least, my own background does not allow me to transmit this specific information about digital responsibility, unless I undergo a training process to get the necessary qualification. The same could be said about most of my colleagues, especially those over 50, for whom the digital gap between their use of technologies and their students' is an unachievable and discouraging fact with obviously negative side effects. 

In my opinion, the issue of Digital Citizenship should be included in curricula from the earliest stages: primary school. Also, teacher training schemes ought to provide these skills to break the vicious circle of unawareness and irresponsibility we are in now. Finally, educative administrations should promote campaigns among young people aged 10-22 in order to fight this misinformation problem.

#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning WEEK 3 CHALLENGE #2:

#EduGoalsMooc The Goal Minded Teacher: Challenges to Transform Student Learning 

WEEK 3 CHALLENGE #2: Reflections upon our students' (& my own) digital footprint.

After dealing with Digital Learning Theories, we have been faced with the importance of making our students aware of their own digital footprint. 
First we had to read some articles about different aspects about digital footprints:

• Some of them dealt with basic facts our students' should learn about what they post online. 
• Some others were lesson plans that deserve a look and that, some way or another, I will try to adapt to my students. Here you have them numbered: 1, 2 & 3. 
• A couple of them were about how adults, even scholars, tend to have little care when it comes to posting or taking things from granted on the internet. 

All this care and attention required to have a professional coherent digital footprint may seem a little bit disappointing or such a big an effort, especially when we take into consideration the 1001 social apps that show up every month. 

• One of them, Snapchat, take things a little further promising users that post will be deleted, a promise which we cannot be completely sure about being fulfilled. 
• Some others enable  music videos recording and sharing while others allow to produce many different versions of pictures, text, sound and video "intercourses".

After that, we are invited to share and analyze the results of a survey on Digital Footprints that we have previously adapted from a Google Doc template. Mine has been answered by 23 kids, aged 10-19, most of whom are my students from 11th & 12th grades, the rest being some of my oldest nephews and nieces. That's why 82% of the answerers are between 16 and 18 years old. 

One of the most surprising  conclusions that can be drawn from this survey is that the first time my students used an electronic device was at 10 years old, exactly the same age at which most of them (30%) first accessed the internet. Also from 10 -12, 65% of them joined their first social network. 
This coincidence is highly significant . It seems that they are born to the internet when they turn 10 years old, which coincides with the social/religious occasion when most kids are given their first cell phone.

On the other hand there is a contradiction between the parental care  shown by the facts that 82% of kids were allowed to join their first social network and that 96% of parents tell their children about internet security whereas  77% of kids suffer a complete lack or scarce attention from their parents in terms of revision and check of the contents they access online.





Finally, I would also like to comment on the high percentage of students that have shared personal videos or pictures on the internet, something directly linked with the Digital Footprint left by any of them. Luckily, Is spite of the early age they started leaving a footprint online, 87% deny having been bullied online.