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Todd Mills / About Me Mills Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author
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About Todd Mills
I am a teacher. After over twenty years in the classroom, I am still excited about how I can better help my students learn.
My wife and I are the parents of two preadolescences. Through parenting, I am learning even more about child development and learning. Significantly, because of this, today I am compelled to help my students become masters of their own learning. After all these years, I feel that I have mastered the content that I teach. I also think that my pedagogy is very strong. I love teaching and know that personal consistency and change will keep me going strong. My students show both a continuity and change as well. They show continuity in that they are still middle school students with all their constituent joys, foibles, challenges, humor, points of insight, and struggles in understanding; in other words, they are adolescents. They show change in that the children are exposed to more ever-changing technology at an earlier age. This is affecting how they learn. Todd |
 Link to my blog
 Link to my Innovative Learning Website
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Reflections on My Journey
In an age where information is at our fingertips, knowledge is not power. Wisdom is. How does one attain wisdom?
We do not attain wisdom by looking up the average beats per second of a hummingbird. (53 per second if you are an average North American Hummingbird according to the US National Parks Service (I looked it up!)) I think that one path is through asking quality questions. Do not only ask what, who, where, when types of questions. These give you knowledge.
The student approaches wisdom by asking the why and how questions. How does a hummingbird achieve 53 beats per second? How does it feed such energy? Why should I care about the speed? How can what I learn about these answers better serve me, my community, nation, or world?
I saw some friends asking questions about how teaching could be improved. These friends asked a lot of why questions. They introduced me to Touro University.
I was attracted to the Touro program because of the innovations that I saw in my peers who had worked through Touro to attain their Masters in Education. I saw how they added a new element beyond content and pedagogy... technology.
I saw the TPACK model at work.
I saw results.
I see now that combining great content, pedagogy, and technology can indeed create a sweet spot of learning so that we can better meet our students' needs; so that we can better help our students ask quality questions; so that we might help our students pursue wisdom.
This project is just a first step in using the TPACK model to help my students cultivate their own curiosity. A curiosity that may awaken wisdom.
We do not attain wisdom by looking up the average beats per second of a hummingbird. (53 per second if you are an average North American Hummingbird according to the US National Parks Service (I looked it up!)) I think that one path is through asking quality questions. Do not only ask what, who, where, when types of questions. These give you knowledge.
The student approaches wisdom by asking the why and how questions. How does a hummingbird achieve 53 beats per second? How does it feed such energy? Why should I care about the speed? How can what I learn about these answers better serve me, my community, nation, or world?
I saw some friends asking questions about how teaching could be improved. These friends asked a lot of why questions. They introduced me to Touro University.
I was attracted to the Touro program because of the innovations that I saw in my peers who had worked through Touro to attain their Masters in Education. I saw how they added a new element beyond content and pedagogy... technology.
I saw the TPACK model at work.
I saw results.
I see now that combining great content, pedagogy, and technology can indeed create a sweet spot of learning so that we can better meet our students' needs; so that we can better help our students ask quality questions; so that we might help our students pursue wisdom.
This project is just a first step in using the TPACK model to help my students cultivate their own curiosity. A curiosity that may awaken wisdom.
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning Program
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My wife asks, "How do you know how to do that?"
My simple answer captures my lasting learning: I learned it through my courses at Touro. She presses further, "They taught you that?" "Actually," I reply, "I taught myself with their encouragement, inspiration, and, sometimes, push." This program has brought me from a place where I constantly questioned the need for more technology in the classroom, to a place where I am asking, as I set up my units, how I can better reach my students' needs by incorporating technology? I have learned many technological tools that I will use, and, more importantly, have my students use so that they can better learn, share their learning, and express what they have learned through technology and 21st century skills. |