4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Artifact: Diversity Blog Post
ITEC 7430 Internet Lesson Plan
My mastery of this standard is demonstrated in my "Diversity" blog posting and the Internet Lesson Plan I created in ITEC 7430. Together, these two artifacts and my reflection address the three elements contained in this standard.
Our population is becoming more and more diverse every year. Because of these changes it is imperative that teachers have the ability to model and facilitate cultural diversity and the ability to support diverse student needs. Nowhere is this truer than in middle school, in my opinion. As I mentioned in the blog, there is a wide variance in the maturity of 11-12 year old children. At this awkward age individual self-awareness is a strong factor in students' emotional well-being. The research I conducted for the diversity post led me to Dave Edyburn. In Failure Is Not an Option, Edyburn describes the many ways that technology can meet diverse student needs. His argument, which I am now fully in agreement with, is that our education system has placed too much importance on the ability to recall facts as opposed to being able to find out what you need to know. To me this is the essence of constructivism and I'm continually aspiring to use more constructivist teaching methods.
Increasingly diverse student populations also require that teachers have the ability to enhance cultural understanding among students. In the blog I describe some digital tools and resources that promote "connected learning." Web conferencing technologies such as Skype allow individuals and classrooms to connect in ways that could never occur without the technology. By opening the doors to other cultures students are able to get a real look at their counterparts in other parts of the world.
I provide a rationale for the use of blogging in the classroom as an example of how digital tools can be used to increase global awareness. The "publishing" nature of weblogs connect students to an audience outside their classroom, automatically connecting them to a wider community. This naturally leads to considerations that relate to an increase in global awareness. Also, the commenting section of most weblogs require young bloggers to consider diversity among their readers.
My Internet Lesson Plan incorporates many of these elements as well. The unit, titled the Minimum Wage Project, required that students learn about wage laws in other countries and among other cultures. At the end of the unit the students wrote a letter to their Congressman stating their position on the minimum wage. While this may not be considered a global issue, the students did familiarize themselves with wage laws from other countries and examined the relationship between income and cultural background.
The analysis of the article written by Dave Edyburn stuck with me. He changed my thinking on the role of special education and the meaning of fairness. Our focus on measurable student outcomes has inhibited quality teaching in many ways. I was not a teacher prior to the No Child Left Behind Legislation in 2000, but I have felt increasing pressure to teach to a test so that I feel that I have job security. I think this adherence to rigid test scores changes the incentives and motivation factors for teachers, and is unfair to a subset of students. (Standardized testing works to the advantage of other students) One thing stuck with me from Edyburn: Fairness occurs when students get what they need. Fairness is not ‘everyone gets the same thing.’ Through the completion of this artifact I've learned the value of constructivism as it affords each student the opportunity to get what he or she needs. If I had this learning opportunity to do over again, I would probably try to incorporate some web conferencing in my Social Studies classroom to connect with a classroom in a country covered in the sixth grade Social Studies standards.
The work that went into the creation of this artifact improved student learning, especially among my special education students. Personally, I've taken a softer approach toward the rigid "teach the standards" methodology I used prior to this class. I have some children in my classroom who have scores below 80 on the WAIS-IV test. For these students I am scaffolding their lessons and differentiating much more than I did before. In sharing my beliefs about how and why I'm supporting the needs of my students with other faculty members I am impacting faculty development as well.
Our population is becoming more and more diverse every year. Because of these changes it is imperative that teachers have the ability to model and facilitate cultural diversity and the ability to support diverse student needs. Nowhere is this truer than in middle school, in my opinion. As I mentioned in the blog, there is a wide variance in the maturity of 11-12 year old children. At this awkward age individual self-awareness is a strong factor in students' emotional well-being. The research I conducted for the diversity post led me to Dave Edyburn. In Failure Is Not an Option, Edyburn describes the many ways that technology can meet diverse student needs. His argument, which I am now fully in agreement with, is that our education system has placed too much importance on the ability to recall facts as opposed to being able to find out what you need to know. To me this is the essence of constructivism and I'm continually aspiring to use more constructivist teaching methods.
Increasingly diverse student populations also require that teachers have the ability to enhance cultural understanding among students. In the blog I describe some digital tools and resources that promote "connected learning." Web conferencing technologies such as Skype allow individuals and classrooms to connect in ways that could never occur without the technology. By opening the doors to other cultures students are able to get a real look at their counterparts in other parts of the world.
I provide a rationale for the use of blogging in the classroom as an example of how digital tools can be used to increase global awareness. The "publishing" nature of weblogs connect students to an audience outside their classroom, automatically connecting them to a wider community. This naturally leads to considerations that relate to an increase in global awareness. Also, the commenting section of most weblogs require young bloggers to consider diversity among their readers.
My Internet Lesson Plan incorporates many of these elements as well. The unit, titled the Minimum Wage Project, required that students learn about wage laws in other countries and among other cultures. At the end of the unit the students wrote a letter to their Congressman stating their position on the minimum wage. While this may not be considered a global issue, the students did familiarize themselves with wage laws from other countries and examined the relationship between income and cultural background.
The analysis of the article written by Dave Edyburn stuck with me. He changed my thinking on the role of special education and the meaning of fairness. Our focus on measurable student outcomes has inhibited quality teaching in many ways. I was not a teacher prior to the No Child Left Behind Legislation in 2000, but I have felt increasing pressure to teach to a test so that I feel that I have job security. I think this adherence to rigid test scores changes the incentives and motivation factors for teachers, and is unfair to a subset of students. (Standardized testing works to the advantage of other students) One thing stuck with me from Edyburn: Fairness occurs when students get what they need. Fairness is not ‘everyone gets the same thing.’ Through the completion of this artifact I've learned the value of constructivism as it affords each student the opportunity to get what he or she needs. If I had this learning opportunity to do over again, I would probably try to incorporate some web conferencing in my Social Studies classroom to connect with a classroom in a country covered in the sixth grade Social Studies standards.
The work that went into the creation of this artifact improved student learning, especially among my special education students. Personally, I've taken a softer approach toward the rigid "teach the standards" methodology I used prior to this class. I have some children in my classroom who have scores below 80 on the WAIS-IV test. For these students I am scaffolding their lessons and differentiating much more than I did before. In sharing my beliefs about how and why I'm supporting the needs of my students with other faculty members I am impacting faculty development as well.