Differentiated iTouch Learning - February Updated Thoughts

 

My thinking now is that iTouches are a fantastic opportunity for students to take responsibility for their own learning and construct it in their own ways to make it most meaningful to them.  I made a few more realizations and thought connections over the last few weeks.  One is that some students in my main placement (especially the ones I described in my last Tech post that could possibly benefit from iTouch differentiation) are disturbingly low on classroom learning motivation right now.  Another observation has been that when they get the opportunity to unleash their imaginations for a moment they are as engaged in the classroom learning environment as the others. 

If an iTouch was in every students’ hands for even a little time every day in connection with some classroom learning subject matter, they could be guided and encouraged to use a little freedom and creativity to make a digital story or interactive poster or timeline, anything, as partners, small groups, or the class.  There wouldn’t be a power struggle between the students and the teacher because the teacher would be putting concrete power in their hands. 

I got pretty excited over this BBC news article: Genes ‘play key role in classroom performance.  It explains that learning environment really only counts for about half of student achievement, the rest is due to our individual genes.  This strengthens the potential value of personalizing education with tools like interactive information technology.

New questions I have are what are the potential pitfalls that I am still unaware of?  I understand there are safety issues and the technology must be supported by effective teaching, that it must be used to support a cohesive community not separate everyone, but what else? 

What if not every student can hold an iTouch in his or her hands?

 Would it be a detriment to the students if they have one year with a teacher that incorporates tons of personalized learning with interactive technology, followed by years without any (could the experience discourage them in later more traditional-technology-lacking-unpersonalized education)?

Equity and Algebra Tiles

Using the grid frame with algebra tiles to work through multiplication in algebra blew-my-mind.  It made algebra so much more clear to my head, and I don't remember ever particularly struggling with it, I guess I just never understood there was a bigger concept to understand.  After that activity during our last class, where we experienced many different ways algebra can be thought about, the readings, Group Worthy Tasks (Lotan, 2003) and Orchestrating Discussions (Smith, Hughes, Engle, Stein, 2009), really hit home.  Just as described, I needed time to think about an algebraic equation myself, discuss with others, and work through with manipulatives a variety of thought processes to get to the point where the algebra tiles on the grid made sense to me.  And it was the connection I made myself, just as we talked about in class and was discussed in both readings, that x2 is an area and on the grid I could see an actual area.  If only I knew I was such a mathematical wizard when I was younger, well, I'd probably actually be in the same place, but I would have gotten a lot more of a thrill out of math classes.

I must admit, I am still working through the beans as negative and positive numbers.  Is it that you don't subtract because you can't really subtract in real life anyway, you can just move it or change it?  Money doesn't actually go away, it just leaves one pocket for another; apples that get eaten don't disappear, they go through the digestive tract.  Is all this why we don't subtract, we just add the opposite?

Some points in the readings remind me of the Culture of Power Delpit described, and that when we were talking in class and the readings explained having multiple entry points to the learning, it is about equity, so that complex instruction with group-worthy tasks and effectively organized discussions in mathematics isn't just a good suggestion, it is necessary for equity.

Phonics

The first three chapters of Word Identification Strategies (Fox, 2008) were interesting to me because I wasn't completely sure before I read them what early reading strategies were, especially phonics.  Phonics stands out to me because it is something I remember my dad talking about, how in elementary school his teachers only taught with phonics and it just didn't work for him, and I didn't know enough about the subject to ask him questions about it.  Now I want to ask because as I was reading I wondered how anyone could learn to read without phonics, connecting speaking sounds to how they are expressed in writing.

I asked my husband how he was taught reading and writing because from a young age he was being formally taught at least two different languages at once, English and Arabic, and for both he was taught the alphabet letters and their corresponding sounds and how to put those letters and sounds together to make words, or, pull apart the words into their letter sounds to figure out what the word is.  So it made sense to me how phonics would naturally be how to learn reading because it is just the link between the audio sounds and the visual symbols.  Then it hit me like a brick: phonics would a crazy way to teach reading to a student that was deaf, and, my dad is very hard of hearing and probably was from a young age without anyone really noticing.  Now I understand why phonics is an important tool, and, absolutely must be used in conjunction with all of the other early reading strategies described in the book, because not every tool does work for everyone, ever, but probably something of everything helps almost everyone.

It was a little fun reading through the chapters and thinking about where some of the first and second graders in my main placement are at and where my kindergarten buddy is.  I think my kindergarten buddy is a "prealphabetic word learner and precommunicative speller", she is inconsistent with white spaces, her letters are sometimes turned a different way, pictures are prominent, her writing wanders on the page, and she was writing the same two letters over and over the other day (ERERERER).  That is very exciting because that is where the book says a lot of kindergarteners are at and then I know that some of the first graders I see are "partial alphabetic word learners and semiphonetic spellers" at various levels.  I appreciated a lot how the book emphasized that being able to identify the different stages and understand how they are and can progress to the next helps aware teachers encourage students to their advancing stages.

As I understand it, it is in these early stages of learning a first language that students are cementing what they already identify objects as in spoken words to their written words, so that now the concept of a tree is a real tree tied to being able to say it, read it, and write it.  When a student is learning a second language how does the new way to say, read, and write it tie to the real tree idea?  In my own experience all of them get all tied together and it almost makes learning a new written word for tree harder if I already know a way.  Or, maybe it makes it easier that I already have multiple ways of "knowing" tree, so my brain already has some nice pathways.  So do people who speak multiple languages eventually get a stronger separation between the languages or a really strong intertwining of all?  Is this very different for children who are learning more than one "first" language?
I hope I remember more about my own learning as I think about it more.

The METACOGNITION aspects were really interesting to me.  This video talks about it some, but doesn't quite do the amazing process justice.  Maybe it needs some of the rhyming strategies described in the book to pick up the energy a little bit.