Month: September 2020

Image From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4267108/

In the past week we watched the film Most Likely to Succeed, I found the film quite interesting as it shows a school in the United States that is based entirely on free or guided inquiry learning. In most of the classes in the education program there is a large emphasis on free inquiry projects, this is something I had never really experienced until now. The concept is quite fascinating, by allowing students free inquiry to guide their own learning experience they grasp concepts that are much more complex beyond their years. At least that’s my take on the outcome. For example the one boy in the film was working in a group on a project, some of the other kids in his group were interviewed and were saying that he kept making the plans more and more elaborate and complicated. His approach was too ambitious for the project, he admittedly said this during his individual interview, he also admits to procrastination and how that negatively affects his group members. I think for a young teenager to realize these characteristics is beneficial to their learning and growth as a person. Another example I saw in the film was a girl that was put in charge to organize a play for the teachers and parents at the end of the term, throughout the term she was in charge of the entire play and managing the other students. At the beginning of the film she was shy and quiet, by working with others and managing the students she came out of her shell and became a leader, although still quiet they play was put on, and she had become a leader. An interesting part of the film was when students and parents expressed their concern about the learning process. Some students and parents were concerned that they were not being taught in a way to succeed in the current educational system, these students and parents are concerned about the kids making it into university and being able to do well on the standardized tests. This is a tough concept because you want your child to be successful in school but you also want your child to be happy and successful in life. Being successful in school does not equate to being successful in life, but, learning how to work with others and explore concepts yourself through inquiry is something that might actually equate to success in life. In our Zoom meeting some interesting critiques on the film came up in our conversations, one of the most fascinating critiques was that the film was simply advocating for the privatization of education. What was meant by this is that the free inquiry model was portrayed as only being suitable in private schools. When I watched the movie that was not the thought that popped into my head, However, after having discussions with other students who viewed the film much more critically than I it made sense. Overall I do believe that the inquiry based model of learning can be used in the public education system and perhaps this film was meant to be a means to promote the privatization of education. But for me the main point I took away is that free and guided inquiry is a means to have students create deeper meaning and connection to the material as well other students.

WordPress

Today I am writing about my experience setting up my WordPress blog and getting to know the interface. During class on September 15, 2020, we were guided through creating our own blog via WordPress by Rich. I had set up a blog on WordPress previously, however, I had not done it through https://opened.ca/. This added a new dimension to the process of creating my blog, I found it slightly more difficult than creating the blog through WordPress directly. I understand that there is a need to use the opened technology to allow easy access to classmate’s blogs and for ease of access to my blog. Rich did a fantastic job of guiding the class through the process and made it significantly easier than attempting to do it myself. I guess ‘difficult’ is not really the correct word to use but perhaps tedious is a more suitable word.

Blogging as a Pedagogy

Truthfully I had never thought of blogging as a pedagogy on its own, I thought of it as a tool to be used within a separate pedagogy. I had used blogging in several classes at university but never had the knowledge to understand that it was being used as a pedagogy. After reading articles and poking around a little I found multiple sources explaining how blogging is effective in being its very own pedagogy. This semester for the Education program multiple classes are requiring blogs as a major component of the course work, in the past, I would have scoffed at the syllabus and been frustrated by the blogging component. But after reading Sylvia Rosenthal Tolisano’s short post Blogging as a Pedagogy: Facilitate Learning I was convinced that blogging can be used effectively to teach and learn, I am now committing to blogging as a way of facilitating my own learning. Tolisano’s post states that:

Blogging can support the strategies, techniques and approaches to facilitate the learning in your classroom no matter what grade level, age group and subject area. Blogging supports four primary areas:

1. 1. 1. Reading
      2. Writing
      3. Reflecting
      4. Sharing

To expand on this while blogging the student is required to read, write, reflect, and share their ideas on a wide variety of topics. By using blogs students must read and write but do so by sharing multimedia, reflecting on their own material and other student’s blogs. Having the ability to share and reflect ideas creates constant improvement in student’s thoughts and ideas, this can change a student’s ideas or improve upon them by having feedback from classmates. As the semester moves on I plan on keeping this idea in mind and striving to create insightful blogs and replying to classmates posts.

Picture Taken From http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/06/03/blogging-as-pedagogy-facilitate-learning/