The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (1999) established that, “Learners combine experience (action) and thought (reflection) to build meaning. Both parts must be present to support the creation of new knowledge.” (p.1). Such combination has proved to be quite right in my own experience learning throughout the course of the program. The opportunity to a hands-on approach to learning followed by a weekly reflection has enriched my experience learning as an adult. I cannot recall a time when I reflected upon my learning in a conscious way, at least not as a requisite set by a teacher. If I carefully reflect upon my previous learning experience I do find that I was somewhat aware of my learning process all throughout elementary, middle and high school, but it wasn’t until college and now graduate school that I am required to reflect upon my previous knowledge and the one gained through a course or class.
During the EDLD 5366 Digital Graphics course I found myself realizing how things have changed for the good in the technological and digital realm. A couple of years ago I would have had to learn how to code HTML and program the whole website from scratch. Now, with the advantages provided by the Web 2.0 tools available online, creating a website becomes a simple thing to do. Easily teachable to young children, it brings a whole new array of possibilities to the classroom setting. I have to confess I was a bit worried about working on creating a website in collaboration with a remote team, where we would only meet through the use of social networks, email and sites on the cloud. My worries disappeared after the first week working with my team. Communication was prompt and efficient, everyone was on task and I was able to really feel part of a team, even when we barely knew our faces. Seeing the involvement of every member of the team and their performance throughout the four weeks previous to submitting our assignment, gave me an extra encouragement to perform above my abilities and motivated me to work harder on both the collaborative assignment and the individual ones. I can only surmise that working on a team, though remotely, would only bring positive results when all members are highly motivated to work together.
In the educational classroom, we see that students work better in collaborative, hands-on activities and language-rich environments. The dilemma is now how to bring the digital media into play. Nonetheless, what we see when we participate in professional development is described by Gerstein (2011) as “the students… get in small groups to discuss these questions. They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their faces while remaining silent.” As an educator I must change my own perspective and attitude towards reflection. I know it is hard for me to share my thinking, even when it is right there, at the top of my mind. It is not possible to teach students to reflect upon their knowledge unless I do it myself! I have tried to fix this in my class by implementing a “Learning Cycle” chart that allows me and my students to understand our background knowledge before we start a lesson, as well as propose a learning goal and predict an outcome. This year I shifted the use of the chart towards online activities, such as using Wall Wisher for students to post their reflections.
For the past two years, my class has worked on creating a blog with the activities we participate in at school. Though it has been really successful, I would like to implement the same effort towards creating a class website. So far, this is only wishful thinking, since the blogs are provided and secured by our district, while the website is still to be approved district-wide. The risks involved in “putting information online” are still being considered by our district. Parental permissions are required for any publication and online safety is always an issue. With the blogs being monitored and protected by our district, it seems I am limited for the time being to the exclusive use of the gBlog before I could move to working with my students in creating a class website. One of the most helpful tools I could utilize with my class is a wiki, which would promote “creativity, collaboration, and communication” as described by Solomon and Schrum (2007).
I foresee all these will change in a near future. Educators will be able to enrich the classroom experience expanding the wall of the school beyond geographical borders with the help of Web 2.0 tools, bringing true meaning to education in the 21st Century.
References
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. (1999). Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism. Retrieved on February 20th, 2012 from http://www.sedl.org/pubs/tec26/intro2c.html
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, new schools.
Gerstein, J. (2011). Where is reflection in the learning process? Retrieved on February 20th, 2011 from http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/where-is-reflection-in-the-learning-process/
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