Category: Wordview

Develop an awareness of your worldview and how this relates to others’ worldviews

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Video Conferencing

Today we learned about video conferencing, accessibility, and modality.

Video Conferencing increases accessibility. Students who are unable to attend a physical class, whethere its because of location, disability, or mental health, students can attend class through video conferencing.

We considered a variety of questions through this session:

Why do we need to have required face-to-face experience as a class?

Should an instructor’s preference override student accessibility? Or student preference of modality?

Does/should modality bias exist?

Should we allow flexibility in modality accessibility? What are the implications?

Jess and I worked together on these questions through discussion, and she posted our answers on her twitter page.

How teachers design instruction and allow flexibility affects the levels of our students’ engagement. There tends to be a binary way of thinking in terms of modality: face-to-face or online. Researchers and instructors are working on changing this way of thinking. The more flexible an instructor is with their presentation of information and student access, the better and more accessible their instruction is. “Blended” instruction is a dead term. There is no increased access to learning afforded by blended learning and blended can not meet mobility needs.

Teachers carry bias when entering the field in terms of modality, whether they intend to or not. It is important that teachers are aware of these biases, and work to break them down and extend past their comfort zone in order to accommodate all of their learners. Once teachers provide freedom, location is no longer important or an obstacle. I have been fairly biased in terms of face-to-face instruction, as I have tried online coursework, and it was not effective for my learning. I have come to realize how allowing more flexible modalities and different points of access will directly impact the inclusiveness and acceptance within my classroom community.

I have linked some examples of successful Video conferencing and alternatives to face-to-face instruction, and places for further research.

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Minecraft is Awesome!

Today we had a teacher and students from Colquitz and Spectrum school, where we were taught all about the Microsoft owned program, Minecraft. Minecraft is an incredible platform for both teachers and students to help them dive into different subject matters, make connections, and change pedagogy. There is an edition of Minecraft called Minecraftedu that allows students and teachers to access the program and change modes from tutorial to survival. In Minecraftedu teachers have the ability to change the settings and modes. They can adjust how and if students communicate, what resources are available to them, difficulty, controls, and so much more. The teacher also has the ability to relocate students within the game, have private conversations with them, and help students stay on task and focus. The students that came into our classroom were unbelievably excited and full of knowledge about the program and ways that it could be used. When playing the game in our class, peers were constantly talking, helping each other out, and learning from one another, leading to the building of rapport, communication skills, and bonding opportunities. The teacher discussed how she had learned a plethora of skills from her students while incorporating Minecraft within lessons. One of the most interesting skills she learned was instead of blurting out resources and instructions for students, she allowed them to play around with the crafting tables. If the students try out different options for themselves, they are more likely to retain the information they have learned and struggle less with resources in the future. The tutorial mode is structured more by the teachers and implements teamwork, ideas of career decisions, and different subject matters.

Integrating Minecraft into the classroom allows students to understand what career path they may want to go down. One of the students discovered that he is interested in becoming an architect, and another student loved the amount of creative freedom she had and was steered towards the arts. Minecraft is also beneficial in building community within the school. If teachers hold Minecraft at lunch and recess, students are interested can join and meet other students with similar interests. This creates a safe space for students where they can connect and build a community. Students can also work together online while in different locations. One of the students had used Discord and Skype in order to walk through what they had created on Minecraft and explain why and how they connected to the curriculum. If there is a particular set of skills and instructions the teacher wants the students to achieve, she hands out papers with checklists to help students reflect. This allows students to see their development, use metacognition, and understand how successful they were. The lesson held on Minecraft has taught me that teachers need to have an open mind and be willing to change and build on their pedagogy in order to interact with students and their interests. Teachers don’t have to be experts in order to use Minecraft with their students, they need to enter the class with an open mind and a willingness to learn from their students.

 

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