Hello friends,
Lets just get right to it.
To start off, I would like to acknowledge that while I was provided with a lot of opportunities that benefited my development in my sport, the highschool that I attended was not very inclusive at all:
- 85% of the students were high performance athletes, who all knew each other prior to even coming to the school
- Did not have any special education classes or accommodations for students with different physical and intellectual needs.
- Class/school outings and events were almost always physical activity based and did not incorporate any modifications or adaptations (the expectations was that you would participate)
- You were praised for your athletic accomplishments, but I didn’t even know that we had an honor roll until I found out I had been on it (on my graduation day actually)
Before recently, I had never even considered the fact that teachers have the ability to accommodate for students with different abilities; I had never experienced that.
It’s kind of ironic because I do have a learning disability, and I always just thought learning was harder for some people and you just had to figure out how to get through it. Everyday in class I am proven so wrong and I don’t know how it makes me feel; I feel sad for my younger self, I wish I was nicer to her and I feel embarrassed that, if that was my teaching philosophy, I am already setting my students up for failure.
Multimedia principle of learning tells us that combining photos with the words can make learning better, and while yes I agree that pictures and words help when learning, I think that this can come close to providing too much information and actually just confusing students.
After hearing every ones thoughts from the video we watched today, which everyone has agreed filled our cups to the brim and spilled them**, showed me that learning is so subjective and we have the power to influence our students learning. I always just thought there was 1 way to teaching and it involved a lot of words and reading exactly what the slides said, that I didn’t even believe that you could learn any other way. One thing that I felt stuck with me while watching this video and listening to the different theories, is that even if you implement different multimedia strategies, you still might not reach your students if you are lacking in other areas; when you are using so many different modes in the classroom at one time, you can overload the student and it can become complicated and might make the lesson more complicated.
Even just in the 3 weeks I have been here, I have learned more ways to teach than I have fingers on my hands.
Knowing that we can actually make student learning easier makes the weight of the responsibilities of teaching feel even heavier. If my teachers had implemented just one of them, I would have had such a different experience in school and to know that we can have that negative or positive impact on our students just by modifying an assignment to fit their needs.
During Link2Practice some student feedback was that there were too many words on the slides, but some said that there weren’t enough words and they didn’t like staring at the blank page. Hearing all the diverse responses to different multimedia’s in class makes teaching seem 10x scarier because it really isn’t a one size fits all profession.
My dad gave me this book when I got into the program
and I think it really speaks to how important all aspects of teaching are (and the idea is just so cute):
- I now know that doesn’t just mean a textbook, it means:
- being competent enough with technology to create more diverse and fun learning environments (while also being able to assist your students)
- collaborating with other areas of expertise (or researching outside of your area and possibly using videos for extra support with your lessons)
- understanding who your students are before you can even think of telling them how to learn.
Thankful for gadgets and gizmos! until next time,
xoxo