My+Project+Page

I. What is my topic? I chose to take a closer look at the realm of personalization and ownership of lessons in a classroom. Although this topic seems fairly redundant at this point (as we have spent a lot of time working on this from many different angles), I am particularly more interested in how this topic is applied to individuals and how they have pursued this work in their real-life endeavors.

II. What are my goals? First and foremost, throughout our talks on ownership and personalization, I have wanted to learn more about the theories behind ownership. Many individuals have attempted to gain an understanding of ownership and personalization, and have their own theories on what it is, how it works and what it looks like. My first goal was to get some insight into these theories, and hear some atestment to what it is, and what it looks like in the classroom. I wanted to know how creating a sense of ownership would transform our thinking from past to future, outside to inside thinking and outer directed to inner directed thinking (empowering one’s control and identity). My second goal was to better understand the technology that has been put before me in this course, and how I can use it to help differential instruction. One of the best ways to do this is to investigate what others have done to implement it in their endeavors. I have chosen to include links and reactions to individuals who have chosen to do just this, and how it may be useful to me in my future teaching.

III. What have I learned? 1)Ownership: a) James Zull, __The Art of Changing the Brain__, pages 33, 195-6, 239-42. -Zull encourages the idea of ownership in one's work, telling us that personalization of work will enable an individual to fully grasp and process the extent of the information to be processed. He states that there is a portion of our brain that is associated with performance evaluation, which is where we "oversee what we are doing to decide if this it is satisfactory". One of the ways to [|test] this portion of the brain is with what is called the [|Stroop test]. Zull also states that "the learner must evaluate his work in order to own it. If it is truly his, it must be formed in a cycle of creating, evaluating, re-creating, and reevaluating". True ownership of work makes work a constant process, not necessarily a final product. When a student is able to get so involved with their work that they are happy with editing and re-editing, you know they have made a connection and taken ownership.

[|b) George Lucas Education Foundation]. - a WONDERFUL foundation that supports "non-conventional" appropriated education. For example, for students with significant visual impairments they have created a photography project that contrasts light with dark to illustrate the photo in a way they can enjoy. You can only imagine the connection these individuals made with this project!!

[|c)Emotional Intelligence] -[|Emotional Intelligence] is an approach to measuring "Intelligence" in a different way, not just necessarily book smarts. This fad has opened the book to the idea that individuals may be "smart" in different ways, and that just because an individual can read at a great level, doesn't mean that they are able to be empathetic at an appropriate level. To me, this speaks to the idea of social skills, and how individuals are able to function in a social world.

[|d)New Schools Project] - An $11 million dollar project granted by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. This organization went to the high schools of North Carolina who were not seeing much academic success in their students in the way of graduation from High School and beyond. The theory was that these largely populated high schools needed to be broken down into smaller, more manageable sizes for the students to be able to function. The results were phenomenal!! an unconventional, drastic yet seemingly effective way to personalize a large crowd.

e)Sensory instruction - Many schools (particularly Early Childhood and Early Elementary Educational centers) base their curriculum around using a "Multi-sensory" approach. Using as many senses as possible in a lesson will encourage the different types of learners who rely on different senses for their educations. Touch, smell, sight, sounds... as many as you can reasonably involve in a lesson, the better!

2)Technology: [|a)Marco Torres] - an AMAZING individual who has dedicated his life's teaching career to giving students ownership and control through technology. By enabling students to create flickrs, podcasts, videos and movies, he has helped them to create projects like "digital storytelling". The output students have given has been phenomonal, and shows how the use of technology can be effective in a classroom setting, as well as fun and "cool" :-).

b)[|Podcast] - podcasts are digital media files that are broadcast over the internet using RSS feeds. These are helpful when asking students to present information in an unconventional, technologically savvy way.

c)[|Flickr] - This is essential an online photo album. What is great about Flickr is that it enables you to make clear captions of the pictures (as well as including links and so on) even down to the point of being able to highlight a portion of the picture, label and include a link. What a great tool for science projects, history projects and so on!

d) [|Wikispaces] - I love the idea of a changeable, morph able website that everyone can contribute to! Using a wikispace in this class has helped me in visualizing how to use a wikispace, and how it can be beneficial in a classroom setting.

IV. How will this be useful to me? Since I do not yet have teaching endeavors to rely on, I think this was a great choice in topic for me. I wanted to choose something that I thought I would use, but I didn’t want to get too specific in what I was using in hopes it would be more applicable to me, particularly in the next year. For me, having one space where I can collect all of my thoughts and examples is extremely helpful. One thing this course has taught me was the necessity of differential instruction, and how important it is in planning lessons for a classroom. I know that there will be a lot of lesson planning in my future, and having this space to refer back to while I’m planning lessons (regardless of the topic) that forces me to keep DI and ownership in mind will be undoubtedly helpful. Being able to use this page as my "home" to refer back to and adapt will certainly come in handy down the road!

V. Final thoughts All in all, it's pretty amazing what technology can bring to a classroom. Technology and constantly evolving theories go hand in hand in how we differentiate our instruction, and enable individuals to "own" their work. Ownership creates a sense of pride in a student and their work, and helps the student to better use the lesson and information in a way that they will remember for a prolonged period of time. Although it can be difficult, it is important to create a sense of ownership in students whenever possible in your lessons. Giving control to the students better enables them to be in the driver's seat of their own education; a fascinating concept!