Chapters 4 and 5
For the last nine weeks, our district has been figuring out how to deliver “emergency” distance learning. We were not prepared for this pandemic in any way, and we were thrown into this experience at the last minute. We learned how to fly the plane while we were building it, and in doing so, we had to just do the best we could with what we had. Our district was in much better shape than some others, I believe, because we had been using google classroom all the way along, for when we needed to have a substitute, or for when students were gone for periods of illness or vacation. We were beginning to talk about blizzard bags, so we would never miss school during a snowstorm, but we never expected the world to change like this.
Digital portfolios seem almost simple compared to what we have been trying to accomplish in the last nine weeks. These two chapters dig deeper into digital portfolios but the author wants to guarantee that the technology won’t take over the portfolio or its usefulness. It is essential to remember all of our best practices in education, such as backwards design of curriculum, authentic assessment, using formative assessments that support further learning, and finally choosing the correct tools for the portfolios that will best demonstrate progress, process and performance. Chapter 5 delves even deeper into the importance of leadership and shared leadership when creating digital portfolios. Money, time and energy focus are essential in this process, and it cannot be only a top down process nor can it remain a grass roots process. All of our best practices for educational leadership need to be involved to make it a successful endeavor.
Reading this book at this particular time has taught me how far I have come in my own digital learning as a teacher in the last few months. If you had told me a few months ago that I would have a flipped classroom, if you told me “you will be practicing notation on google hangouts each day” if you told me, “Google Classroom will now become the spine of your curriculum”, I never would have believed you. Every day I learn something new that can make me a better teacher online. I am studying ways to make my online and google classroom presence more stimulating and also organized for students who come to it every day. We don’t know what the future will look like, and my goal is to continue to keep google classroom as the spine of my curriculum, to create more curriculum that translates best in an online platform, and to practice daily how to teach my classes better and better through my google hangouts.
“People live through stories. They are their own protagonists in their personal endeavors. Using digital portfolios to capture student growth gives context to their best work. They attend to the processes they used to achieve success. This builds lifelong learners because students learn how to learn. The veil is lifted for everyone involved on how students arrived at essential learning outcomes.” I have chosen this quotation by Matt Remick from page 95 because it demonstrates both the positive outcomes from this experience of distance learning, and also the issues that arise because of it. Anything the students create right now can be saved, shared, archived, and improved, because every experience is an online experience. Students are sharing their “stories” with me musically, related to this unprecedented time. If students are mature enough, distance learning can work. If students have been prepared with protocols, with organizing tools, with discussions on how to be an online participant and how to act in online class, then distance learning can work. If students take ownership of their learning, total ownership, distance learning is amazing. The veil, as Remick said, has been lifted, as I see some students perform beautifully, stay ahead of the work, hand in their best work every time, and “attend” to their processes when they continue to refine their ideas. These students are focused and know how to act in an online class, and sit at a desk and wear clothes when they show up, ready to share or work or discuss the music that I assigned them to listen to on google classroom.
These students are not the majority, however. Fifth graders, as a group, are just too young to take complete ownership of an online experience. Half of the students don’t show up for my class. Some of the students who do show up, play with their animals while they are in my class. They are in their pajamas, and playing with their stuffed animals, jumping on their beds, these students are not aware of what a positive online learning environment really is.
If this continues into next year, our district and those like it, must transition from “emergency” distance learning to “quality” distance learning. We need to develop protocols for how students act in our classes on a google hangout. We need to continue to refine our ability to control a classroom in a google hangout. We need to learn how to teach younger students to attend to their processes of learning online. We need to bridge the gap between students who are prepared to take ownership daily of their learning at home, and those who just aren’t able to or don’t know how or even why it would be essential in their lives. One of the big questions addressed in chapter four is “what did you learn in school that matters in life today?” (page 99). I believe over the last few months the answers to that question have morphed into things that didn’t matter to any generation before this one. What will matter will be how you have learned to organize your time, what you decide to take seriously and how that might affect your world and your life, and what your online presence will look like now and for the rest of your life.
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