Self-Regulation

There is no doubt in my mind that self-regulation is difficult. As a continual student I know that I still struggle with completing assignments on a schedule when I have a long-term window to complete them in. As an employee, this never seems to be a problem which I haven't quite figured out about myself. With all of this personal experience I fully understand the necessity of this skill. With this competency the elevator starts off with having long term activities. The most important detail at this level is that students are provided learning goals and grading criteria at the beginning of activity. Long term activities seem to always end up either super beneficial or a horrible waste of time. I think I tend to avoid them because I am always afraid that they will end up the latter. I see the benefit in spending the time coaching students through the process of self regulating because it is a very crucial skill that they will use more and more as they get older. I would like to begin adding more opportunities for self regulation into my learning activities. I think I will start by working with students on how to plan out of allotted time in order to get work completed in shorter time frames. Then I think I will work on lengthening at least one activity per quarter and working in opportunities that allow for feedback and correction within the activity time frame. I look forward to facing one of my fears in teaching and conquering it!

Use of Technology for Learning

This competency is somewhat what I expected to learn about in a "21st Century" class. 21st Century has become synonymous with use of technology. I understand now that the 21st century competencies consist of way more than just technology but with this competency we come back to the issue of technology in learning. One of the most important "a-ha" moments I had this week was in the differentiation of learning to use technology and technology FOR learning. The competency is titled using the 'for' terminology but through discussion and activities I have realized that most people think of technology in terms of just learning to use it and not using the technology to produce work or to aid in the actual learning. The first level of the elevator only require students to personally use some form of technology to complete a portion of the lesson. This seems easy enough when not thinking about recreating the wheel to be incredibly creative. Creative uses of technology might be more difficult. At the highest level students are required to produce a product of technology that was also required to construct knowledge. 

This competency seems to be one of the most challenging. One of my biggest challenges is finding the time to both teach students how to use the technology and then expecting them to use what they've learned to then use the technology in another activity. Most of my students are not extremely computer literate so I fear that finding the time to accomplish both of these tasks would be difficult. On top of that, our classroom access to technology is limited so another challenge arises. However, I feel as though this competency is important to still incorporate because it is a realistic expectation of both students and working adults. I am going to make it a goal in my own teaching to find opportunities to use technology for learning. Regardless of the difficulties and challenges this competency is too important to leave behind. 

Skilled Communication and Collaboration

I have really enjoyed diving into the skilled communication and collaboration competencies this week. In my opinion, these are two of the most practical and important competency areas as they are extremely applicable in real-world applications. In terms of skilled communication I think it is easier to implement portions of the elevator and that the activities tend to come more naturally. I was surprised that the first level of the elevator required multi-modal communication. Before this lesson I would have assumed that skilled communication would focus first on communicating to a specific audience. While this is a crucial part to advancing up the ladder the multi-modal requirement precedes it. Teaching students to speak to a specific audience seems very natural to me, especially in writing activities. Conversely, collaboration and teaching students how to successfully collaborate seems like a mountain of a task to me! When reviewing the content for this week my thought process was "Collaboration. Working in pairs. Oh no." I feel slightly better after completing the sorting activity this week and I think I have a good understanding of the distinguishing characteristics of the elevator levels. Group work is only the beginning of collaborating and in order to be truly collaborative the work needs to be purposeful. The key defining difference that stuck out for me about collaboration was that the work needs to require a partner or partners; the task would be impossible without the multiple students. I also liked the idea that in successful collaborative work that students make decisions as a team about all aspects of the work: content, process, and product.

In my own classroom I would really like to focus on implementing higher levels of collaboration. Collaborating with peers is a crucial skill that plays an integral part even in our adult lives that if worked on as a young student everyone benefits. I feel as though creating activities that allow opportunities to collaborate isn't impossible but does require a good amount of thought and effort on the teacher's part however that doesn't scare me. The most challenging part of collaborating is going to be teaching students how to effectively work with one another, especially at certain grade levels. Developmentally, this is asking students to step outside of their comfort zone and really consider the thoughts and feelings of others as credible. I have a few projects in mind that I am going to look at elevating the levels of collaboration students could participate in.