Digital Blog Post B: Chapters 3&5

1. Communicating and Collaborating

Page 59-61 {3.4}

Technology has introduced a variety of new ways to communicate with others who are sitting next to you or across the globe. This helps businesses, project partners, or even pen pals to collaborate in a much more efficient and timely way. Within the classroom, incorporating different web tools and forms of technology enhances every student's experience. It also introduces active learning, group work, and collaboration. Because of my progressive-essentialist approach to teaching, I am extremely passionate about including group based activities in my lesson plans. Many studies have found that when students are mobile, their brain is more awake and the result of their work is of higher quality opposed to when students are sedentary in a lecture-based classroom. There are many ways to teach the core curriculum through discovery and hands-on learning. Many group projects and collaborations are completed through the use of active learning while also incorporating the essentialism mindset. 

2. Expressing Creativity 
Page 61-63 {3.5}

Many students claim that are unable to express themselves properly in their school environment. The implementation of technology into classrooms is helping to advance the opportunities for self-expression through school work. Relating back to my approach to teaching, I hope to leave many windows open in my lessons for my students to use their creative niche. Allowing students to create prezi's, act out a lesson in groups, make a poster board telling a story line, and choosing a topic for a research paper, you are holding open the doors for students to interpret and explain different subjects however they want to.



3. Cyberbullying
Page 122-123 {5.6}

Unfortunately, the prevalence of cyberbullying {especially older grades} is no joke. Although there is no real way to prevent cyberbullying from happening, it is important to talk about it in schools. Every student has a story as to why they are the way they are; even if you don't know their story, you should be respectful. At this point, I don't have any ideas to teach the concept of bullying; but, I hope by the time I am ready for my own classroom I have some ideas. Each student's safety and comfortableness is so important in a classroom; therefore, it is extremely important to stress the zero tolerance for bullying in a classroom. No individual school or teacher is able to catch each case of cyberbullying; but, as a community I hope we can stop many of the cases to keep our students safe.

Sources 

Creativity In The Classroom [Motion picture]. (2015). USA.
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O'Loughlin, Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.