Friday, July 1, 2016

Professional Learning Networks/Week 1 Blog



After the reading material this week in Music Learning Today, by William I. Bauer, I have new and better of understanding about how content knowledge, technology knowledge, and pedagogy knowledge overlap to make a more meaningful experience for our students.   Having a knowledge base of one area, but not the others leaves the educator at a disadvantage of a meaningful teaching experience (Bauer, 2014).  Furthermore, this leaves the students with a learning disadvantage as well.  Below is a chart from the book that shows the overlapping of all areas needed to produce great learning experiences:


Also, the text material discusses the digital natives versus digital immigrants.  Digital natives are individuals who have grown up in this technological world with all of its advances.  These are my students and my children.  They naturally catch on to new technology with minimal help or assistance needed.   Digital immigrants are individuals like myself who did not begin our lives with the technology that exists today, but have grown into or with it as it has developed in our lives.  Learning still occurs fairly well, but not as naturally as the natives (Bauer,2014). At times, I ask my own students to help me with technology.  I find that they are fast and can explain it to me quickly. They are always eager to teach the teacher.   The lecture for this week takes it one step further and adds analog holdouts as being individuals who avoid technology (Bazan, 2016).

                The work environment that Facebook provides their employees is amazing.  It is obvious in the video that they created and environment for the creators.  Maximizing the use of their space and making sure all the employees have their needs met.  They also discussed that their goal is to hire as many people necessary that know about coding and technology.  The other video opens the eyes of the viewer to the fact that we can all learn not just to code, but learn technology (Bazan, 2016).  I have to say that it was intriguing and amazing to me how much the young students in this video were able to do using technology. 
                The article about professional development really hits home for me.  Professional development for the music educator has been a passion of mine and something that I have wanted to see change in the district that I teach.  We have very little to no development geared just for us and often have many hours wasted in sessions that have nothing to do with what we teach.  It is very frustrating and difficult at times.  This article had lots of good information about networking with other teachers and I look forward to using these soon.  Blogs, news feeds, podcasts, and Wikis can all be used to create our own learning networks (Bauer, 2010).


References:
Bauer, W. I. (2010). Your Personal Learning Network: Professional Development on Demand. Music Educators Journal, 97(2), 37-42. doi:10.1177/0027432110386383

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music.

Bazan, D. (2016, July 1). Technology Assisted Music Teaching & Professional Development. Lecture.



1 comment:

  1. Hi Amanda!

    I completely agree with you with having a better understanding now after reading all the materials for this week! I did not fully realize how much technology is out there and how much it can be used in the classroom. Everything is technology based, and is evolving still.

    I find it interesting how our students are the "technology generation" or Digital Natives and that they can do a lot with technology, but still not know somethings. For instance, I asked my students to print an assignment, and they did not know how to print, but they knew how to upload it to Google Drive or DropBox, or to another online source. I find it interesting that printing is foreign to them but, they know how to do other technology things with assignment.

    I also agree with your statement about Professional Development in your district. I wish there was more for us to benefit from in my district. There is so much out there, but we need the in-depth training and commitment from our district and coworkers to fully invest into professional development hours.

    Thanks for your post!
    Sara

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