The teachers who seem to be the most adventurous and creative when it comes to using digital media are those who are new to teaching. The inexperienced teachers have first hand experience using digital media in their personnel lives and in the course of their under graduate studies. Some of my veteran teachers may be experienced in traditional teaching and online teaching but they have not grown up with the technology. The more experienced, more mature teachers are "digital immigrants" compared to the less experienced teachers who are "digital natives" I think this is a big factor in a teacher's desire and level of comfort in using digital media to instruct. Experienced teachers may be concerned with the possibility that they may not be able to master the media tools and they fear failure. The less experienced teacher is willing to be more adventurous with the media tools because they are less worried about their reputation should they fail. The older teachers may have the polished digital media examples in their course content, but that was created by expert curriculum writers. The teacher is not privy to the process or processes that were taken to achieve the finished product. They may even be intimidated by it. The less experienced teachers are more accustomed to researching new ideas and techniques on the Internet and they seek out expert advise on incorporating media into their instructional practices from experts on various web sites including YouTube, Google, Wikipedia and a myriad of others. The teachers who are less experienced at teaching are the first to volunteer to support their colleagues in learning new skills and techniques for using digital media.
I decided to do my Glog on "using digital media in the online classroom" to have a place where experienced and inexperienced teachers in my department could go to learn a little bit about digital media for education. One of the goals for my department is to expand the ways in which we instruct our students. I want to develop creating minds in my teachers. I plan to keep updating my Glog and adding pages as I add more digital media resources and my own videos and images of how to use the resources specifically in our online program. I also want to get my teachers to link their own Glogs to it so that they can share their resources as well as model how they are using those resources. I plan to encourage my teachers to share their successes as well as their failures.
I hope to nurture and develop the creating minds of my teachers by providing them with a venue where they can try new skills and feel comfortable sharing their experiences with digital media, both successful and unsuccessful. Being able to learn from teachers who are more adept at these skills and seeing successful models of these skills should also help to develop and nurture a creating mind in my department as a whole and in individuals. Collaboration will also foster creating minds as teachers work together to build on each others ideas on how to provide students with a digital media rich learning environment.
My Glog will itself serve as a model. Teachers will be able to use this media resource to share with other teachers, but hopefully they will also see the value of Glogs for their students. As I praise them and their colleagues praise them for their creative use of digital media, they will feel more empowered to explore other digital media resources. Gardner list all of these practices as factors that precipitate the development of a creating mind. My teachers will learn by example and experience how to nurture the creating mind in their students.
I should be able to assess my teachers' understanding of the importance of using digital media in their online courses by the frequency and intensity in which they participate in the creation of their Glogs. The Glog that I have created is very basic.My hope is that my teachers will surpass me in their knowledge of digital media based resources and uses and that they will continue to share and model new resources. I will also be able to compare the number and quality of the digital media resources they use to support their instruction in their online classrooms as part of their observations and evaluations.
Resources:
Cooper-Taylor, Carol. (2008, August 22). 50 ideas on using twitter for education [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://cooper-taylor.com/blog/2008/08/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-education/
Day, Bobby. (Artist). Rockin’ Robin. [Web]. Retrieved from http://klg.cps.com/mp3/swing/RockinRobin.mp3
Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Harvard Business Press.
McMillan, Don. (Artist). (2010). Life after death by PowerPoint. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvgfmEU2Ck
Pacha Films. (2010). Rescued: The Chilean Mine Story [Full Video]. Available from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants.
Time for kids? The Week in Rap - November 12. (2010, November 12). Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/16757566
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