New Educational Era

   Students’ progress depends on a wide range of social and developmental competencies, such as the ability to monitor one’s own learning, persist at challenging tasks, solve complex problems, set realistic goals, and communicate effectively in many kinds of settings.

   This is a new educational era, where learning may become disassociated from age groups. Education can now be individualized and self-directed; educators become supporters who are primarily facilitators and mentors rather than lecturers. Educators work on distributed sources of content (virtual) and take place in a variety of physical settings.

   Teachers now days are looking for a different assessment, a different teaching method, documented by a portfolio of digital badges and real-world projects, rather than traditional grades or certificates. Yet, most schools continue to use standardized achievement tests, focusing exclusively on reading and math, as their primary means of gauging student progress with the existing K-12 education system.

   The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution. New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges which allow all ages to pursue learning on their own terms.

   Educators should be able to adapt and incorporate the new power of technology-driven learning for the next generation of students. To be effective in this changing environment requires that the builders of the new education system understand the customization, interaction, and control of the technologies driving the changes in education. Education must provide people the knowledge they want when they want it and to support and guide them as they learn. Develop the ability of computers to give learners immediate feedback and to engage learners through simulation in accomplishing realistic tasks. And put learners in charge of their learning, so they feel ownership and can direct their learning where their interests take them.

   The vision of an educational system that can integrate all the different elements we see developing, is the key for the new educational era. But computers can carry out all the algorithms taught through graduate school, and yet mathematical reasoning is more important than ever. Therefore we should spend time teaching students to solve sophisticated problems using computers rather than executing algorithms that computers do well. Memorizing information is becoming less important with the web available, but people do need to learn how to find information, recognize when they need more information, and evaluate what they find.

Source:

A New Educational Era: http://vibrantlearning.aam-us.org/resource/resource-2/

A New Era for Educational Assessment: http://www.jff.org/publications/new-era-educational-assessment

Rethinking education in the age of technology: the digital revolution and the schools: https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Collins-Rethinking-Education.pdf

Cross-Curricular Teaching or Phenomenon Based Learning

When professional educators combine their energies and reinforce the same deep learning, the stream of information is clearer for the student, the learning activities are more fluid, and the student's reservoir of knowledge and skill fills faster.

Education, now days, doesn't meet the deeper learning needs of students. Fortunately, it can be accelerated by consolidating teacher efforts and combining relevant contents. Cross-Curricular Teaching implies that students will follow a particular stream of inquiry to the headwaters, rather than simply sampling all the possible streams.

Educators need to understand and accept a few requirements:

1. Deep learning engages the whole student (and teacher), heart, mind, body, and soul.

2. It requires enthusiastic partners within students, parents, and community.

3. It requires intensive preparation. As the rapid development of society, teachers need to update their knowledge and way of teaching students.

4. Assessment must mirror learning. Teachers should evaluate students reflecting mastery of learning objectives rather than mere assignment completion.

5. Collaboration is necessary. Students must be taught how to collaboratively gain knowledge and skills in order to be expert learners and demonstrate their learning by applying and creating.

In order for all this to happen in a sustainable way in our schools, deeper learning requires that groups of teachers pool their talents, resources, time, and efforts to maximize coherence, relevance, and connections among the content areas.

Teachers should work with other grade level teachers and find common topics to prepare to teach subjects jointly rather than separately. Teachers must start collaboration with another teacher from a different department. The task of all educator teams is to provide a rich, rigorous, and relevant flow of knowledge and skills, and then find a way to lead the students to this water and then make them thirsty enough to drink deeply. Students and teacher teams focusing on learning deeply have the force to achieve learning beyond the traditional education dam and shoot out over the spillway to not only understand the torrent of available knowledge, but to also add to it in phenomenal ways.

The Blooms Taxonomy meant that the first step would be to seek knowledge, comprehend it, apply it in real life scenarios, analyze and further synthesize with other concepts and subjects. With Phenomenon Based Learning, this linear progression turns into a roller coaster ride, which has become a challenge for teachers and students.

The learner starts with a phenomenon or a real life scenario, analyses the linkages with different concepts and subjects, identifies the gaps in knowledge and understanding, seeks out that knowledge, comprehends it for each subject area and then synthesizes it. So essentially what was a process of construction has now been broken into deconstruction and then construction. First deconstruct the phenomenon into different concepts and processes, understand them and then reconstruct them into the original phenomenon and probably draw parallels with other phenomenon.

This educational methodology is more student-centered because they will do it in his or her own manner, the number of linkages and the pathway chosen will depend on their prior knowledge. Educators can use a number of resources and online platforms to engage their learners in a discussion on what subjects and concepts need to be learnt so that the phenomenon can be understood.

Phenomenon Based Learning is an opportunity to integrate the best of learner centrist approaches and it is the way forward as it is closer to how learning happens in real life, an unexplained phenomenon starts off an inquiry, becomes a lifelong pursuit and results in new knowledge and understanding. Phenomenon-based structure in a curriculum also actively creates better opportunities for integrating different subjects and themes as well as the systematic use of pedagogically meaningful methods, such as inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project learning and portfolios. The phenomenon-based approach implements a versatile utilization of different learning environments.

As an educator, I believe that a holistic real-world phenomenon provides the starting point for learning. Breaking down the dominance of traditional subjects and isolation of teaching is an opportunity to more fundamental change in schools. Integrated knowledge and skills about real world issues enhances teacher collaboration in schools and makes learning more meaningful to students.

Schools should teach what young people need in their lives rather than try to bring national test scores back to where they were.

References:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/cross-curricular-teaching-deeper-learning-ben-johnson

http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/trends/1981-edtech-meets-phenomenon-based-learning

You're free to speak.

        Educate, shape, mold productive entities for an eminent and effective future. All these concepts can't be linked to the development of individual personalities. Every child is different, learns differently and enjoy things in different ways.

        For children to learn, they need to internalize and capture the information so that they can adapt it to their reality. As a teacher, we use to present a small structure and we try to stick the child to a paradigm without having the opportunity to get his or her own reasoning.

         We're all adapted to a sad and boring standard of living. A way of life that makes you vulnerable to depression and  makes your life a nonsense waist of time. You find yourself at a comfort zone where you prefer to stay for "security"... thinking you're doing something good for you, working as hard as you can... WELL... think again! You are only completing a schedule and following a regulation based on the immediate benefits of authorities. You're not standing up for yourself declaring why you don't agree with your boss, or why you're mad at your partner who's always right even when he or she is wrong. Well, we can blame this on education. The lack of "think by yourself"... giving students the answers to questions not allowing them to develop or get to the answers by thinking. ACTUALLY USING THEIR BRAIN.

        An unfair world where children are educated as robots without freedom to think , criticize , analyze and especially apply concepts to their daily situations, problems, or realia. What if we stop this established methodology? Every child, as an special and unique entity, can develop an overwhelming intelligence and a desire to express thoughts, feelings, believes, disagreements, and so on. We all have the right to say how we feel and what we believe... We learn and grow from those mistakes we face. 

Each child should be treated as a special and individual entity. Now days, teachers spend most of the time yelling at students and not wanting them to move from their chairs. As a teacher we can't force them to be seated , but if we get them interested in the class we're teaching, that is a satisfying victory. A subtle and effective way to get their attention is to apply it to their daily basis and what they see every day. Present what we teach with an everyday situation and children will feel comfortable because they know what they're talking about, they will compare and contrast, they will see familiar terms,  they will internalize meanings, and the best reaction you will get, is their confidence to give an opinion and speak their mind.

A permanent goal, a teaching philosophy, a way of living...

Teaching is what I wanted since I was a kid, and to be able to help children learn is my primary philosophy. As an educator, I really like to let students be themselves. I think that everyone has the opportunity to success in his or her own way.  I believe that each person is unique and should always have the opportunity to be heard. Their opinions, ideas, complain, suggestions, critics have to be taken into consideration. Each student deserves the chance to develop their personality in a comfortable environment with values and, of course, I always try to show good leadership for my student. I try to create a comfortable learning environment based on respect instead of fear. For me, students are my main priority and I know that they are all different. I like to encourage them to explore opportunities and use the environment also.

In my classroom, I apply creativity, stressing the importance of education and, at the same time, letting the student have the freedom to think and discover knowledge. Encourage the student to value effort and the determination to succeed.

Growing professionally is one of my eternal goals. We never stop learning. I am always open to new ideas and suggestions and I want to be involved in more educational activities: study, research, and expand my knowledge to be a better teacher. I have to be well prepared for every lesson I teach, with a good planning of time and materials that will ensure that the lesson will be successfully learned.

I believe that in the end students will have self-confidence, and good interpersonal skills to survive in this world.

My special end of the school year!

Those tears were like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeam. She looked at me and said she will always miss me and started crying, I couldn’t help it either, I cried with her, tears of joy, laughter, and most of all, love.

As a teacher I can say this is my weakness... I get too attach to my students, and now, even tired and hoping to get the so deserved summer vacation, it’s the happiest yet saddest moment of the school year. Saying goodbye and watching them grow fast, learn fast, change fast... watch them go.

Tears of joy are the sweetest tears. That lovely hug, makes me realize how I love my job: such an emotional, real, lovely career. I’m so happy for that moment... I can say that all the work was worth it; not only to teach them, but to learn from them. So maybe, one day at the time, we can change the world.