Digital Badge C: Chapter 3

According to our textbook, "In education, feedback is another term for communication between a learner and an instructor. Feedback is one of the instructional practices that has been found to promote increased success for students." (p. 54) Feedback is very important for students to build their knowledge and critical thinking skills. Feedback is also equally important for teachers to receive from students in order to better accommodate the learners and a successful learning environment.  Technology makes it possible to communicate rapidly, and effectively. Through email, text messaging, blogs, live chats, and interactive websites teachers can now provide feedback to students, and students to teachers, even outside of school. Using technology tools as a means of correspondence with students (and parents) is something I fully intend on doing as a teacher.  I want my students and their parents to be able to acquire feedback from me as effectively as possible to promote a better learning experience for my students.  I also want to receive feedback regularly from my students.  I want to know what my students enjoyed most in class each day, what they liked least, what they would like to explore further, any questions they may have, and any suggestions they may have for me.  As a child, I remember multiple occasions when I would ask my parents to further explain my homework for me, and getting a response similar to this “I don’t know how to do that, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to ask your teacher what that means.” As a student I would feel embarrassed having to go to school and explain to my teacher, “I could not complete my homework and my parents could not help me either.”  It would have been wonderful if my parents or I had access to ask for help or further explanation via a live chat, or email. I look forward to having the ability to offer feedback to my students, outside of the classroom, using technology as an enhancement tool.

The textbook also discusses the importance of educators developing a sense of digital literacy in students.  The internet is a powerful tool for seeking new information and that is very useful in learning but the internet is also plagued with nonsense.  Educators are expected to teach students how to access information using technology and more importantly, how to assess the information they find.  Teachers need to provide lessons to grow the information literacy skills of students, guiding them to discover reliable sources and gain the ability to differentiate between persuasive, objective, and satirical information. As a future educator, I plan to stress the importance of internet literacy to my students.  I want to be sure that my students are enhancing their educations through technology, not being misinformed.  I also believe that the concept of internet literacy, is very closely related to the idea of overall internet safety, and therefore of extreme important in 21^st century learning.

This chapter also discusses using technology to enhance creativity.  ITCP- information technology and creative practices, are used for creative self-expression. (p.63) Technology can be used for writing, desktop publishing, design tools, photography, graphics, animation, movie making, podcast creating, etc. Having many different mediums readily available to assists students creative thinking is one of the greatest ways technology truly enhances the learning experience, at least in my opinion. I have witnessed firsthand in my own child how wonderfully inspirational creation through technology can be.  My son, Andrew, is ten years old now.  He has been working on creating graphic designs, using photo shop, and movie making aps for the last year now. While creating his digital art, he is engaged, he is learning, and best of all, he is having fun.  He is always very proud of his creations as well. He is building confidence, skills, and expressing his creativity with his new favorite art tool, his laptop.

Resources:


Maloy, R., O’Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2^nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.