Every so often, my writing has incorporated how my perspective on my master's program shifted from what I expected to the reality, especially as I reflect on my journey in COVA. What I expected was a bunch of reading, a little writing, and taking assessments where I just recalled theoretical practices in a multiple choice format. From time to time, I also anticipated creating materials for a digital platform and figured I would just use what I already had created and implemented in my classroom. Campus and district colleagues consider me a technology guru and my itsLearning and Canvas pages have been used as exemplars for what an effective use of the learning management system should look like, so they should be good enough for a master's program, right?
What I have learned is there is so much more to building effective and significant learning environments where students can be vocal and engage in choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. A blended learning environment is not about taking what is done on paper and putting it into a digital format for students to access (think how textbooks have just gone from physical copies to digital versions), but leveraging the digital resources to enhance student learning. While we are still in the last few months of the school year, I am already thinking ahead to 2024-2025 planning and how to truly implement what I have learned in my graduate school courses to enrich future students beyond the methods and structures I have used so far. Fortunately, this term I am in a course that is exactly what I expected a part of the program to be... creating materials for a digital platform and organizing it as a course in the digital learning platform! Perfect! Beginning the work now, especially on the content we just finished covering in this school year, allows me to immediately reflect and implement feedback on the successes and areas of improvement for this year towards next year. Starting here with the third nine weeks content will establish a foundation of the processes and structures I can use to strengthen my changes, adjustments, and enhancements to the other nine weeks when I am not officially in the graduate program anymore. To start this process for 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks, I answered some underlying instructional design questions, created a Fink's 3 Column table, and wrote a course outline to get feedback from peers in my graduate program. Most of the peer feedback addressed the strengths of being realistic about the limitations of grading policies and procedures but not letting that deter me from seeking opportunities for outcome-based learning in the context of acquiring and developing 21st century skills and finding appropriate activities and resources to meet this lofty goal. This 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks Planning video walks through these materials. Recently, I have been using ChatGPT as a resource to generate questions or ideas for me to consider. Sometimes, I will submit my writing and ask ChatGPT to generate what questions it thought I was trying to answer to see if my responses truly capture my intention. Other times, I will ask it to create its own rubric and then grade me on the rubric, with suggestions on how to improve my score in certain categories. For this assignment and what I have created so far, I simply asked what I should consider to enhance my work further. Here's its response.
I think what I do with my 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks components will address these concepts. When implementing the outline, I will show explicit samples of the learning and assessment activities that address scaffolding techniques, differentiation for remediation and extension, and digital resources. I also believe my Week 1 with the community building component will speak to fostering the collaborative learning environment. Something I had not considered is incorporating possible obstacles that could arise from this structure and the associated resources but as I proceed through the work, it is something I will explicitly acknowledge and proactively find options and solutions to these potential problems.
As the 2023-2024 school year comes to a close and I graduate in May, looking forward to the future and what I could do better brings a renewed sense of purpose and hope. Of course, I am still trying new things every day in my classroom and with my Algebra 2 team to better serve students and engage them in significant learning environments for authentic learning opportunities, but through reflection, I know how I could adapt, enhance, and enrich student lives further through a more intentionally designed blended learning environment. While I look forward to the summer, I also look forward to applying what I have learned through my experiences in the classroom as a teacher and as a student for the future.
References
OpenAI. (2022, November 30). ChatGPT. Chat.openai.com; OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/
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My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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