A Lesson In the Life of an MAET Graduate
Just today, as I began thinking about how the Master's in Educational Technology (MAET) Program at Michigan State has changed me as a teacher, my administrator, Mr. Barnes, entered my classroom to conduct a formal observation of my teaching practices. As he came in, the students in my class were rushing to finish the warm up so they could disperse themselves onto other learning tasks. After about 12 minutes of class time, Mr. Barnes came over to me and stated that he thought what I was doing “was amazing.” He exclaimed, “this is education!” and began to text other administrators at our school to come and see the various things that my students were doing. At that moment I realized that designing engaging learning experiences, embracing failure as learning, creating network learning and affinity spaces that pair experts with novices, and providing feedback during formative assessments weren’t just things I wrote papers on and did for graduate school, they were concepts that were now present in my own classroom. In this essay I hope to present examples of how the courses that I’ve completed at Michigan State have benefited my classroom and have given way to authentic learning experiences that benefit the educational community that I am a part of.
The Warm Up
The lesson that Mr. Barnes observed began with a warm up that prompted students to compose their own mastery objectives. Students completed this warm up by analyzing a list of learning action words from Costa’s Level’s of Thinking and Questioning and relating them to the learning task that they were about to complete in my class. Next, students typed their objective onto a shared Google Document for others in the class to read and comment on. It is important to note that the students are able to choose the task they are working on on any given day. For example, some students may be defining and relating vocabulary terms while others take a quiz or work on a project. By sharing the various objectives on a Google Doc, a sense of community and appreciation for where one another are in the learning process is created. At the same time, the students who struggle to compose a meaningful objective statement can learn how to from reading the examples created by others and considering the comments that they receive on the comment they’ve posted. The whole process takes about 8 minutes and then students proceeded to whatever task they are working on for that day.
This simple warm up combines a number of concepts that I gained knowledge of while at Michigan State. First, allowing students to compose their own mastery objectives shows that in my classroom, students are in control of their learning. In this format, the learners decide the pace of their learning, the tools they will use and the speed at which their learning will take place. All of these concepts were covered in a course I took called CEP811: Adapting Innovative Technology to Education. This course taught me about a framework called Universal Design for Learning. Exploring how students learn through the UDL lens taught me to place more value on allowing learners to set individualized learning objectives and goals, choose the tools they will use to construct knowledge, and self determine the pace of their learning.
Leveraging technology to create a learner friendly warm up is also a skill that I learned during my MAET Program while studying the Technology, Pedagogy, and Content (TPACK) framework. Using Google Docs for this warm up gives students an opportunity to share their objective with their teacher and their peers without much effort. In doing so, expert objectives can be viewed novices and organic opportunities to praise or offer feedback are created. Learning how to find, evaluate, and leverage 21st century technologies (such as Google Docs) is something that I practiced often in CEP810: Teaching Understanding with Technology. It was here that I was introduced to the maker culture and learned different strategies and techniques for repurposing materials and technologies in order to get things done (GTD). In short, I’d say that using Google Docs to get a whole class of students to compose, share, and critique mastery objectives in just 8 minutes is definitely GTD.
Another MAET course that inspired the design of this warm up is CEP813: Electronic Assessment. This course placed a heavy emphasis on the importance of feedback throughout the learning process. In this warm up I have utilized technology to create an online space where novice learners can learn from experts and quickly modify their work based on feedback that they receive. Allowing peers to monitor this online space in view of the teacher fosters an environment for targeted and meaningful and constructive feedback to be given.
Design and Distribution of Learning Tasks
Once students completed their warm up they began working a variety of tasks that were designed to promote individualized learning within a networked learning space. The tasks that learners set off to complete were designed and packaged in a Google Document and delivered via Google Classroom. From this document, learners select the tasks that they feel will best prepare them for an upcoming formative assessment. Students complete these tasks independently, in pairs, or small groups at a pace that is agreed upon by myself and the student. Combining students into groups using Google allows for students to become members of learning communities so they can support one another throughout the learning process. Once a series of learning tasks and formative assessments have been completed, students choose a summative assessment so they can show transfer of the knowledge they’ve learned. The options they choose can be an exam, a Transfer Task from the ACPS curriculum guide, a project that I have designed, or they can design their own project in the project creation space.
Designing and delivering lessons in a manner that combines technology, pedagogy, and content to meet the needs of learners best is a product of the knowledge I gathered while in CEP800: Psychology of Learning in School & Other Settings. In this course, I experimented with creating opportunities for students to write and research collaboratively online in order to construct knowledge. These experiments resulted in the development of collaborative learning tasks that allow learners to model research techniques, effective use of technology, and good writing habits for one another. Facilitating lessons in this way requires me to be flexible with how learners use their time and allows students to construct knowledge in a manner that suits them. For example, some students may need to see examples of finished products before they can be confident in the direction they want to go in. Others may read or watch the directions online and know exactly how to complete a task without any help at all. Either way, I have found that giving students the freedom to choose the pace and method for completing their work in the online presence of others promotes independent problem solving, metacognition, and elevates learning outcomes for most students.
Creating a Networked Learning Space
Even though my classroom is a physical space with a teacher, and students inside of it, I like to think of it as a "networked learning space." This is because almost all of the work that students do in their Google Documents is read, reviewed, and then critiqued and commented on by either myself or their peers. At the end of each class period students are prompted to stop working and are given the names of two other students in class. Students then go to the “shared with me” section of their Google Drive and comment on each others progress in the same manner that they did during the warm up. As part of daily routine, this activity brings closure to the vast majority of each days lesson and also gives students something to look forward the next time they revisit their work.
For me, creating network learning spaces was the product of the experiences I had while completing CEP817: Design Thinking. This course provided me with a design mindset that taught me that any solution to a problem is a temporary solution. As a designer of learning experiences, I must collaborate with others and ideate in order for my designs to reach their potential. By creating network learning spaces for my students, I am hoping to pass this mentality of collaboration and learning onto my students. One goal that I have for my students is for them to become 21st century learners. I want them to understand that the work they do can always be improved as long as they continue to define their task, consider their ideas in lieu of developing solutions and those that already exist, and are willing to update their progress in order to overcome more challenging obstacles.
Networked Learning Projects
Students who are ahead of the class or are in need of a content break can choose to work on their Networked Learning Projects. This project requires students to choose a topic or skill that they have very little experience with, develop a learning goal related to the topic, explore online resources related to the skill or topic, or share their learning experiences and/or mastery of the skill with others online.
This project that I’ve designed for 6th graders was inspired by the very first MAET course that I took, CEP810: Teaching Understanding with Technology. The course challenged its students to learn something entirely new using only online resources. I found this learning task to be so rewarding and fulfilling that I wanted to share it with my own students. Another course that I completed, CEP812: Applying Educational Technology to Practice introduced me to the work of Dr. James Paul Gee and the concept of affinity spaces. Since completing these classes, I have experimented with using affinity spaces to support and enhance the network learning projects that students in my classroom are working. Introducing this type of organic learning opportunity to my students has resulted helped foster an educational setting where students are willing to take risks, have a hunger for knowledge, and enthusiastically seeking ways to solve problems.
I hope this reflective essay has shed light onto how much I value the concepts and skills that I learned while completing my MAET at Michigan State University. While the examples that I shared all stem from one class period, it is important to note that the MAET program has also allowed me to gain an appreciation for the educational community that I am a part of. Collaborating with colleagues from around the globe reinforced the concepts I was learning in my courses. Offering and receiving feedback during the learning process, giving due diligence to each phase of the design process, and accepting that failure is learning helped transform me into a dynamic designer of learning experiences who has the confidence to change the way that students view learning, set goals, and solve problems.
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