Growth

I feel that the goals that I listed at the beginning of the course still stand.  I have already learned so much in this course, but I know that I still have more to learn.  Aside from the technology goals listed in my first blog post, I would like to add a few more.  Not only do I want to learn more searching skills to better help my research, but I would like to be able to teach my students these helpful skills as well.  Because they are a part of the Google generation, I am not sure that they know any other way to search besides simply typing a question into the Google search bar and pressing the enter key.  Instead, I would like for them to comprehend that their search terms actually matter.  As Miller and Bartlett (2012) point out, “search skills are important: subtle differences in the semantic construction of search queries, including the ordering of Boolean operators, the use of synonyms, antonyms and abbreviates can return hugely different results.  Second, it is important to know the nature of the returns to these searches” (p. 40).  Although I am guilty of occasionally typing something along the lines of “what does NASDAQ stand for,” it seems like my students type questions for literally everything instead of relying on keywords.  Maybe they search this way because they missed out on all of the old commercials that ended by telling viewers a product’s AOL keyword…

I also want to make my assignments and teaching more fun for the students.  I do not want them to see everything that they are required to do as mundane and boring.  Carol Dweck (2010) writes, “When presenting learning tasks to students, the teacher should portray challenges as fun and exciting, while portraying easy tasks as boring and less useful for the brain” (p. 19). I believe the same thing, and I want my own students to be able to think of an assignment not as a chore but more as a problem that they are trying, even eager, to solve.  To encourage this mindset, Dweck (2010) even offers this note: “when students don't master a particular unit of study, they don't receive a failing grade—instead, they get a grade of Not Yet.  Students are not ashamed of that grade because they know that they're expected to master the material, if not the first time, then the next time, or the next” (p. 19).  In my classroom, I actually allow make-up tests for students until they show that they truly understand the material.  The point of my class is not for a student to be assigned a number or letter grade but for them to actually grasp the concepts that I am teaching and to move forward with that learning.  Personally, I like to think of my tests like a driver’s test.  If an individual fails the driver’s test the first time, they do not just give up; they go home, study, practice what they missed, and keep going back until they leave the DDS with their license.  I want it to be the same way with my class, where a student can keep practicing and learning until they have mastered the material.

References

Dweck, C. S. (2010, September). Even geniuses work hard. Giving students meaningful work, 68(1), 16-20. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Even-Geniuses-Work-Hard.aspx

Miller, C., & Bartlett, J. (2012). ‘Digital fluency’: Towards young people’s critical use of the internet. Journal of Information Literacy, 6(2), 35-55.