Saturday, April 13, 2013
Connecting to Students in a New Way
This week I wanted to focus on Chapter 8 A Literacy Pedagogy for Multimodal Composing by McVee. There was one section that I mainly wanted to focus on, in the section of Why Multimodal Inquiry, all the information I found to be very helpful in how they want to make the shift from a traditional classroom to the 21st century classroom. I found that this section of the chapter provides us as future teachers insight into what our classrooms may be like when we become teachers. In my opinion traditional classrooms do not hold interests in students to learn, and it does not give them a chance to practice with new tools that they will probably use in higher education. As McVee explains traditional schooling is what is causing "student disengagement in classrooms," and she is exactly right. Students are not able to express themselves freely if they are not given even the slightest chance too (McVee 116). Since most of students outside lives are engulfed by technology, why not bring it into the classroom somehow. It will keep the students engaged and they will be more willing to learn something new and will be excited to experience a new way to learn it. Students at times may not seem like they care and I am sure some of us were like that in some point in our educational journey, but in all reality they do care. They want to get out of it as much as they can. So why not as a teacher put the time in to make there educational experience the best it can be. "We believe many students desperately want to see school as connected to who they are and are becoming...," and this is especially because technology is a major part of the new generation, it is what they use in their daily lives (McVee 116). So why not connect technology, multimodality somehow to the classroom, give the students a feeling that we listen to them and give them the feeling of importance. I mean isn't that why we are all becoming teachers? To change the lives of students and to see them become successful. I think making the change from traditional classrooms to the use of multimodality in the classroom is something that we will see more and more teachers switch over to in the next few years. It may take some teachers who use the traditional way of teaching to switch over, mainly because they are not willing to take the time out to learn it, but eventually I think we will get there. As teachers we should not be afraid to learn new things, after all we are teaching students new things. So why not learn together, in the end it will benefit both the teacher and student.
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Absolutely Casey!! We as teachers must strive to really cater to our students needs while keeping a fair balance of what they need to know. As Miller and McVee said, we must change our pedagogy because technology is such a rapid-pacing field that kids will need to have technology in the classroom in order to pay attention.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, educators have already realized this and have started making changes in the ideas of Smart Boards, Online classes, and other technological ideas. I look forward to researching and seeing what we can do!
I believe in the same principle. If we integrate technology into our lesson plans, then students will be more likely to pay attention because you are making a connection to their outside world. I often talk with my younger siblings who are in grades 4th and 6th currently, and I ask them what teachers are boring and hard to learn from, and they quickly reply with "the old ones!" Before I laugh at their unabashed use of the word "old", I ask them why the "old" ones are boring, and it is often because they talk and write on the board, and do not use a computer or give them online games to play. This is funny because an "old" teacher was what I was used to until high school, and I had to deal with their set-in their-ways attitude. I think as time moves on, our generation of tech-savvy teachers will override the traditional methods of teaching and bring about a new era of education, where technology holds every educator's hand while they teach their subjects. Even now as we rate educators at the end of the semester, we are asked questions such as, "Did the professor utilize technology If so, how?" And we put that professor up on the chopping block for using or not using technology! It is amazing to think that when I thought about becoming a teacher in 7th grade, I did not think of the integration of technology into my lesson plans. As an aspiring teacher though, I will do everything I can to help these new age techies learn English, even if it means making lesson plans revolve around the use of a computer.
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