ED 307, or Teaching Strategies in a Digital Age, dives into teaching the 21st century student and how to become a well equipped teacher for these students. After completion of the course, students have a toolbox of strategies and tech tools. They will also have built an understanding of how to assess these tools. The student will also be able to build and teach content-based lessons using digital technology. This was done through the completion of a 21st Century Skills Assignment, Flipped Classroom Assignment, Constructivism Assignment, Partnering Pedagogy Book Review, Partnering Pedagogies: An Investigation, and a Lesson Plan and Presentation Assignment.
Check out some of my work!
21st Century Skills
In order to be able to teach the 21st century student, we had to first learn about the 21st century skills and how they impact students and the modern classroom.
After we learned about the 21st century student and the 21st century skills, we were able to start diving into teaching strategies. The flipped classroom is the first strategy we learned. In a flipped classroom, students complete work outside of the classroom, such as watching a lecture or completing chapter readings, and then come to class and apply the information they learned in a project. I really enjoyed learning about the flipped classroom, and plan to implement this strategy into my secondary classroom.Check out this video about Flipped Classroom!
Constructivism
The next teaching strategy we learned was constructivism.When using the constructivism strategy, students are creating their own knowledge, and reality is determined by the learner's experiences. We learned about the teacher's role, the student's role, constructivism educational theorists, examined the PAR Model, and explained how we would use this strategy in our own classroom.
The textbook used for this course was Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering For Real Learning by Marc Prensky. After reading all of the chapters, we were responsible for reviewing the book as groups using a wiki. This was one of my favorite projects, and I would love to do something similar in my own classroom. This wiki addressed each chapter of the text. We wrote a summary of each chapter, linked to outside sources, added images, and even explained how we would implement this book into our classroom. Not only did I learn a lot about teaching 21st century students, I also learned a lot about team work. I really enjoyed this text and will be reaching for it in the future!
Partnering Pedagogies: An Investigation
For this assignment, we looked at partnering pedagogies. These included inquiry, problem, and project-based methodologies. For this assignment, I reviewed Global Collaboration Project and how to implement them into the classroom. I was really excited to complete this project and learn how I could implement this into my own classroom.
Check out this video explaining Global Collaboration Projects!
Lesson Plan
The last thing to do was to create a lesson plan using everything we had learned this semester. We had to create a lesson following one of the partnering pedagogies learned earlier in the semester. I chose to make mine based off of the Global Collaboration Projects pedagogy. I had so much fun creating this lesson, and I hope I can implement this into my classroom in the future!
I had so much fun taking this class! I learned a lot about the 21st century student and how to become a better teacher for them. Before taking this class, I knew very little about technology and how to introduce it in the classroom. After this course, I feel confident in my abilities and know that I can lead my students towards 21st Century Skills. I hope to implement many of these lessons into my own classroom and help my students thrive in this new digital world.
"It's time for teachers to move from being content providers to being coaches, guides, and partners for their students to achieve their dreams." - Marc Prensky