A Kline's Reflective Practice

This week I learned that situated cognition is an idea that challenged previous beliefs about learning and knowledge. This idea centers around the concept that learning needs to be situated in the context it is practiced in. So for studying something like vocabulary, students need to actually be using the terms in the context they are going to be used in to truly learn the meaning of different words.               This connects to what I do as a teacher because if you accept this idea as true it requires teachers to re-think what they teach and how they teach it. For me this seems to mean that I need to focus on designing learning activities where students can learn by doing. Lesson design needs to revolve around the idea of creating authentic problems where students can interact with real-world type problems so that they understand both the content and the real-world applications where they may need the knowledge they’ve...

The book this week read about the five Net Smart Literacies -   attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration and network smarts. Attention focused on how to be mindful when using technology, especially the internet. Crap detection, focused on how to consume news or information online with acritical eye. Participation and collaboration discussed how we can both participate online and how the internet can be a great tool for supporting collaboration. Finally, network smarts discussed how online networks have structures, and how we as consumers need to be aware how these structures can help to develop stronger connections among people. The part of this book that gave me the most ideas for lessons I might do in my own classroom was the first section on attention. I really like how Rheingold outlined how with diligent work we can create habits that help us pay more attention to how and when we’re using the internet. I think a lot of my students could benefit from practi...

In reading the comments from last week’s blog it really seemed to affirm that using a survey might be a great tool to use to figure out what my student’s media usage is really like. Moving forward I think I will try and create a google form to use with my classes to see what their usage is like. Once I have that I think it will help to give me better insight on what my next steps might be in helping my students become better consumers of information.

This week we read the Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson a book all about how we consume information and things we can do to build healthier habits and get away from our over-consuming ways. In this book Johnson splits his ideas into three parts, first he outlines the problem (that too many of us only consume information that support our own views), then he goes into ways in which we as individuals can fix this, and finally he extends these outward and talks about the scalability of these issues. I learned the most from this book in reading the ideas that Johnson outlined in the second part where he thoroughly discusses what we can do to consume information in a healthier way. A lot of this information I was already vaguely aware of because as a social studies teacher I think a very important part of my job is teaching students how to be good consumers of information. There were several sections that really articulated some of the ideas I try and share with my students, for exa...