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About the Author
"Far and away the best prize life has to offer is
the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
Theodore Roosevelt
My name is James Landis, and I am the 7th grade Accelerated English Language Arts teacher at American Canyon Middle School. I am currently in my fourth year of teaching (2017-2018)
I enrolled in the Innovative Learning Master’s program because I love what I do and I want to do it well. The Innovative Learning program was designed by Touro to help teachers reimagine the concept of school and learning from considering open and collaborative approaches to learning, to exploring entirely new models of performance.
Our school is becoming increasingly digital. We encourage our students to bring their own digital devices, as well as loan students with year long access to Chromebooks. Our students utilize Echo (our school website) on a daily basis. Many of our assignments are created and completed vial digital resources. This means that our students spend the majority of their day on a device. The Innovative Learning program provided me the means and the opportunity to truly research an inquiry which I was passionate about. How can I best leverage all these digital tools to best support student team work in order to develop critical thinking skills?
the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
Theodore Roosevelt
My name is James Landis, and I am the 7th grade Accelerated English Language Arts teacher at American Canyon Middle School. I am currently in my fourth year of teaching (2017-2018)
I enrolled in the Innovative Learning Master’s program because I love what I do and I want to do it well. The Innovative Learning program was designed by Touro to help teachers reimagine the concept of school and learning from considering open and collaborative approaches to learning, to exploring entirely new models of performance.
Our school is becoming increasingly digital. We encourage our students to bring their own digital devices, as well as loan students with year long access to Chromebooks. Our students utilize Echo (our school website) on a daily basis. Many of our assignments are created and completed vial digital resources. This means that our students spend the majority of their day on a device. The Innovative Learning program provided me the means and the opportunity to truly research an inquiry which I was passionate about. How can I best leverage all these digital tools to best support student team work in order to develop critical thinking skills?
Reflections on your Journey
Link to my Masters site : MisterLandis
Link to my Blogs: Blogs
Link to my Blogs: Blogs
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning program
So what impact will this program have on my pedagogy and what changes will I make to educate in a more innovative way?
To begin with, the knowledge I have gained thus far has already allowed me to begin rethinking and reevaluating how I have done things in the past and how I will do differently in the future. I have been exposed to several great courses, each focusing on a different way that I can innovate my personal pedagogy. Each course has opened my mind to new strategies and ideas of how to better serve my students.
Equitable classroom
One essential element of any successful class is the clear presence of equity. The course I took on the Dynamics of the Equitable Classroom challenged me to rethink the ways I can make education accessible to all students. Equity, of course, is not about giving every student the same thing, but rather whatever is needed by each individual in order to be successful. Equity is about providing each student an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or mastery of a skill. For my future students, this will mean more options. As an innovative educator, I will recognize that there are many ways to demonstrate mastery of a concept. Students will be encouraged to demonstrate their skills in a variety of forms. For example, some students are more comfortable creating engaging graphics than speaking publicly. I will provide my students a range of mediums to choose from and allow them the opportunity to decide how they will demonstrate their abilities.
New Literacies
Another important skill for an innovative educator is the ability to gather and interpret data. My research course has taught me the importance of looking for patterns of issues that students may be facing, whether with content or behavior. Once I think I have identified an issue, I should then look at the issue through different scopes. How it occurs and affects not only my class, but beyond. Is it an issue with the whole grade level? My whole site? What about at the district and state level? By examining the scale of the issue, you can better determine your response. For example, if it is an issue occurring at the district level, what is my district doing to address the problem? Whereas if it is something only occurring in my own classroom, I will need to create my own solutions. One specific example was when I addressed the need for improving critical thinking skills in my ELL population. The course also helped me rethink my approach to seeking solutions. I have become much better at conducting thorough research as well as designing my own research study. I am better prepared for designing assessments, treatments, and analyzing student results to determine larger implications.
Sense Making
Another enlightening course from the Innovative master's program is Sense Making. Sense making is a student centered concept in which educators try to consider a concept from the perspective of the learner. It is important that students become aware of their own metacognition and unique learning strategies. What will be their context for the new information they are receiving? It all depends on their own unique experiences and prior knowledge. Students use the context of what they already know (or think they know) to integrate new ideas and experiences. As an innovative educator, I will pull from the works of Brenda Dervin in my attempt to “bridge the learner’s gap of understanding”.
Visuals
Another way I will think outside the box will be to incorporate more visual strategies. Specifically, I am referring the work of Dr. Baggio regarding Visual Thinking strategies. Dr. Baggio’s work has helped me to understand how valuable strong visuals can be for student learning. Today’s students live in a world full of screens. Graphics and Icons are everywhere. Baggio suggests that this is not necessarily a problem. In fact, there are many ways that educators can utilize visual strategies. I have already begun planning how I can redesign and relabel components of my physical classroom, as well as within directions of activities.
Digital Tools
Being and innovative teacher today would be impossible if we did not address educational technology. My course on Digital Tools has helped me rethink the role technology can and should play in my classroom. Today’s students are bombarded by the demands of modern technology. While they may think they are “naturals” the truth is that students need to be explicitly instructed in basic digital literacy. The Master’s course on leveraging digital tools has helped shift my focus to developing my students’ digital citizenship skills. I am already planning how my students will earn their digital “driver’s licenses” by demonstrating that they can navigate the internet safely and appropriately. At its core, innovating with digital tools is really about turning students into digital leaders. If digital leadership is the goal, then purposeful integration of technology is the “how”.
As an innovative educator, I will find engaging ways to explicitly teach students how to effectively utilize technology. They will need more than just the basics of Gmail, Google Drive and Docs. Technology is ultimately just a tool, granted a new shiny one, but a tool nonetheless. A tool is only as useful as the imagination of the person wielding it. I would like to challenge my future students to become digital leaders. This will mean not only accessing digital resources but actually creating products. My students will need to use their products to create positive change in the world around them. Educational technology is about allowing every student the opportunity to make an impact on a potentially worldwide audience.
To begin with, the knowledge I have gained thus far has already allowed me to begin rethinking and reevaluating how I have done things in the past and how I will do differently in the future. I have been exposed to several great courses, each focusing on a different way that I can innovate my personal pedagogy. Each course has opened my mind to new strategies and ideas of how to better serve my students.
Equitable classroom
One essential element of any successful class is the clear presence of equity. The course I took on the Dynamics of the Equitable Classroom challenged me to rethink the ways I can make education accessible to all students. Equity, of course, is not about giving every student the same thing, but rather whatever is needed by each individual in order to be successful. Equity is about providing each student an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or mastery of a skill. For my future students, this will mean more options. As an innovative educator, I will recognize that there are many ways to demonstrate mastery of a concept. Students will be encouraged to demonstrate their skills in a variety of forms. For example, some students are more comfortable creating engaging graphics than speaking publicly. I will provide my students a range of mediums to choose from and allow them the opportunity to decide how they will demonstrate their abilities.
New Literacies
Another important skill for an innovative educator is the ability to gather and interpret data. My research course has taught me the importance of looking for patterns of issues that students may be facing, whether with content or behavior. Once I think I have identified an issue, I should then look at the issue through different scopes. How it occurs and affects not only my class, but beyond. Is it an issue with the whole grade level? My whole site? What about at the district and state level? By examining the scale of the issue, you can better determine your response. For example, if it is an issue occurring at the district level, what is my district doing to address the problem? Whereas if it is something only occurring in my own classroom, I will need to create my own solutions. One specific example was when I addressed the need for improving critical thinking skills in my ELL population. The course also helped me rethink my approach to seeking solutions. I have become much better at conducting thorough research as well as designing my own research study. I am better prepared for designing assessments, treatments, and analyzing student results to determine larger implications.
Sense Making
Another enlightening course from the Innovative master's program is Sense Making. Sense making is a student centered concept in which educators try to consider a concept from the perspective of the learner. It is important that students become aware of their own metacognition and unique learning strategies. What will be their context for the new information they are receiving? It all depends on their own unique experiences and prior knowledge. Students use the context of what they already know (or think they know) to integrate new ideas and experiences. As an innovative educator, I will pull from the works of Brenda Dervin in my attempt to “bridge the learner’s gap of understanding”.
Visuals
Another way I will think outside the box will be to incorporate more visual strategies. Specifically, I am referring the work of Dr. Baggio regarding Visual Thinking strategies. Dr. Baggio’s work has helped me to understand how valuable strong visuals can be for student learning. Today’s students live in a world full of screens. Graphics and Icons are everywhere. Baggio suggests that this is not necessarily a problem. In fact, there are many ways that educators can utilize visual strategies. I have already begun planning how I can redesign and relabel components of my physical classroom, as well as within directions of activities.
Digital Tools
Being and innovative teacher today would be impossible if we did not address educational technology. My course on Digital Tools has helped me rethink the role technology can and should play in my classroom. Today’s students are bombarded by the demands of modern technology. While they may think they are “naturals” the truth is that students need to be explicitly instructed in basic digital literacy. The Master’s course on leveraging digital tools has helped shift my focus to developing my students’ digital citizenship skills. I am already planning how my students will earn their digital “driver’s licenses” by demonstrating that they can navigate the internet safely and appropriately. At its core, innovating with digital tools is really about turning students into digital leaders. If digital leadership is the goal, then purposeful integration of technology is the “how”.
As an innovative educator, I will find engaging ways to explicitly teach students how to effectively utilize technology. They will need more than just the basics of Gmail, Google Drive and Docs. Technology is ultimately just a tool, granted a new shiny one, but a tool nonetheless. A tool is only as useful as the imagination of the person wielding it. I would like to challenge my future students to become digital leaders. This will mean not only accessing digital resources but actually creating products. My students will need to use their products to create positive change in the world around them. Educational technology is about allowing every student the opportunity to make an impact on a potentially worldwide audience.