I am 'B' in my group, so I read Learning Connection-Digital Storytelling.
What: Digital Storytelling is basically a way to help children of all ages read and comprehend better. These strategies help students in subjects: English language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, and special needs. They represent a set of experiences that contribute to their message by explaining each and every strategy they use and how it helps the students. Some of their strategies include fluency, graphic organizers, active listening, cooperative learning, question asking, mental imagery, sequencing, summarizing, and vocabulary.
So What: Some of the new ideas that stood out to me were Allington's Five Pillars: writing, reciprocal teaching, differentiated reading instruction, access choice and collaboration, classroom organization, and expert tutoring. These five 'pillars' hold up the structure of their teaching strategies. They are very important and one strategy cannot succeed without the other. In order to best help our students learn and retain the information we are teaching, we need to understand their individual needs, help them find their best reading/writing levels and what kind of a learner we are. It is our job as teachers to know these strategies and teach our students through their best paths. It was very informative and we can take these points and expand on them in our future teaching strategies.
Now what: I can expand upon all of these teaching strategies in my future classrooms. Entire curriculums can be based off of their pillars and ways of teaching children. Allington's Five Pillar's are my favorite part to this article because the stategies are easy to understand and expand upon towards our own ways of teaching. Overall it was a great article and points.
Article Found At: Richards, P., Royer, R. (Nov. 2008) Learning Connections-Digital Storytelling. Learning and Leading with Technology. Retrieved from CSUSM Cougar Courses site.
I feel the standard that I will be able encompass is number 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity. This standard entails that the teachers be creative in teaching and creating learning experiences both in the classroom and in the virtual environments. To complete this standard, as a teacher, we must be able to fulfill the following:
a. Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.
b. Engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources.
c. Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
d. Model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.
I have always been a creative and crafty person. I love art, activities, dancing, teamwork, and leading by example. I believe that because I am also a very visual and kinesthetic learner myself, I am able to understand how children may learn. There are many different types of learners and as teachers it is our job to be able to create lesson plans that can teach all of them equally. I love history and part of this is understanding and exploring real-world issues. In my future studies/lesson plans I will try to incorporate this and help the students understand the need for solving problems using resources.
In one of my other education classes (350) we did personality/learning style tests that basically told us what kind of a learner we are based off of various questions about how we would react in certain situations. The way that I answered my questions told me that my two main "favorite" ways of learning are Visual and Kinesthetic. I feel I have always known I was a visual learner and I thrive when I am hands-on or doing things myself; this is the best way I learn. In order to help our future students learn, it is important that we promote student reflection and understand each of their indivual needs as well as thinking, creative, and planning processes. I think I will excel in completing this standard because I have a learning style that benefits me with learning through creativity and inspiration.
Thank you for reading, I hope it helped explain this standard as well as give insight into my personal learning/teaching processes.
Brianna Adair
http://www.eslteachingandtechnology.com/TeacherNETS1_InspireStudents.html
https://sites.google.com/a/csd3-brhs.org/professional-development/teacher-standards/-facilitate-and-inspire-student-learning-and-creativity
http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2
