The next few posts will be my thoughts and a-ha's from TCEA 17 convention.
On Wednesday, Feb. 8th, I had the honor of attending
Eric Sheninger's session Digital Pedagogy for Deeper Learning.
First of all, great session. He really presented well and kept the audience engaged with questions to respond to through our devices. I was too busy listening and tweeting that I really didn't get a chance to take notes. I didn't want to miss anything. But I will do my best to relay the message.
Some of the main takeaways I got:
1. If we don't get pedagogy correct, all of the technology devices in the world isn't going to help.
Technology is a tool to help teachers reach and engage students and their learning. It isn't an event like lunch or PE, something that happens once a day or every once in a while.
He touched on the
SAMR model as a good start, but did question where is the focus on learning in this model. Basically, the model should be looking at the task being asked of the student and how can the technology help with that. Too often, I believe the SAMR model gets used as a tool to get more technology in the classroom. That is where
TPACK comes into play. TPACK looks at the technology, the pedagogy, and the content together.
2. Rigor and relevance
Eric pointed out several things Rigor is not. It is not more or harder worksheets, AP or Honors courses, higher level book in reading, more work, or more homework. A lot of rigor should be the teacher planning for students to go into deeper thinking and work on the topic.
I've always seen the model drawn out like this.
And I get that. We want students in the upper right quadrant, higher level questioning and thinking, creating...
But when he showed this image, it really kind of hit home.
I tweeted out this picture and it was my most retweeted and favorited tweet of the week. This tells me others have never seen it presented this way either and it triggered something for them as well.
Eric also engaged the audience with different web polling tools such a
PollEverywhere and
Mentimeter. I have always used Poll Everywhere in the past and look forward to using Mentimeter in a session. Looks easy to use and will also create group word clouds.
He asked the question, "How can the use of tech support and/or enhance pedagogy?" This is what the audience came up with.
A few other leadership takeaways:
In his school they did not collect lesson plans, they collected assessments that were for 2 weeks in the future.
He suggests putting the TEKS standards on your rubrics so students, parents, and community can see them.
Students should create knowledge for the real world, not just for the classroom. (Reminds me of the quote I hear often, "If your students are sharing their work with the world, they want it to be good. If they're just sharing it with you, they want it to be good enough." ~Rushton Hurley)
Finally, an interesting approach to PD. Give teachers genius hours to learn what they want and have them show their learning and how it helps their classroom in an e-portfolio. Great idea and alternative to the old Sit and Get.
Would love to get Eric to ou
r district to learn with our district leaders.
