(Credit to http://www.pinterest.com/pin/73324300155312471/)
An admission: I don’t know much about blogging. I never felt a need to record my personal life or my experiences in an online forum before, but I’m very excited to get to share my outlooks and opinions on Education with whoever might be reading this. In many ways, blogging might very well have been designed by people like me, people who enjoy debates and sharing their perspectives. However, the goal of this specific blog is to review and consider the items presented both in the lecture section and the textbook readings of EDUC 4P19, a university Education course. I am also bringing my experiences as fourth year University student with a background in history and literature, interests which very much effect the way in which I view the world and particularly, how I view the evolution of education that we discussed in lecture this week.
As presented by our professor, there is currently a clear shift from what is considered “old story” teaching, to “new story teaching”. Although there is a clear push currently towards “new story” teaching, using integrated and multidisciplinary studies. This aims to create a learning environment to include a wider assortment of learners than the traditional lecture style of the classroom, which required a certain amount of apathy for the student, transforming it to an engaging global classroom, where students are encouraged to interact with their surroundings in a variety of ways. Having personally witnessed the transition to something closely resembling “new story” teaching in various classes during my high school career, it was fascinating to see which teachers, usually those who were younger, bringing in group work aspects, a global sense of learning (classes which began examining different cultures on a weekly basis were one such example). The use of new and emerging technologies in the classroom was also advocated by our librarian, who constantly worked to innovate and elevate presentations from plain Microsoft Powerpoint to Prezi presentations, allowing students to present information in a way that suited them and was not so traditional. The video below illustrates the mind mapping possible within Prezi which works to create a more engaging presentation format than the traditional, in many ways a solid comparison to the difference between “new story” and “old story” teaching.
The “new story” also began seeping into various aspects of the curriculum, but not in the way that one might think. Many teachers still used the standard lecture format and the idea of a singular knowledge, but it became less ubiquitous. Although classes were still predominantly traditionalist, there was the way in which assignments began changing, allowing students to express a wide variety of creative expression. Within this changing landscape, classes began offering multiple forms for assignment submission, building soundtracks for old gangster movies in Film classes OR writing newspaper reviews of a film, with these being but a couple of the possibilities for a single assignment. Personally, I worked on a soundtrack, working to connect the songs to the film and, although write-ups were still a required part of the assignment, I focused on a more creative way to present them, creating a booklet for the front of the CD’s jewel case with descriptions for suggested scene placement and the logic behind my song selections. As a result of the unique form of the assignment, it became one of the most memorable and enjoyable I completed throughout high school and, as the “new story” methods rose in popularity, it will be far from the only assignment to bred high levels of enthusiasm in students.
It is through the ability of the evolution of education to contain both elements of the “old story” teaching along with that of the “new story” that further struck me while studying the first chapter of Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st-Century Learner as it became clear that these are not mutually exclusive ideologies. As a student of history, I’m used to hanging onto bits and pieces of the past, allowing them to remain active to a certain extent, examining their influences, while building upon them, improving myself and my global outlook by considering the mistakes, as well as the accomplishments of the past. The realization that, at various points in my schooling, I have been exposed to the theories of personalization, differentiation and individualization discussed in the chapter, drives home the point that this is a changing world which is focused on altering the “old story” teaching to be more inclusive. The end of this first chapter also suggests that the teacher is a “change agent” and nothing could be more true to me. It was this ability of teachers to create change that inspired me to work towards becoming one, and I am excited to combine this with the new theories that are emerging from the “new story” learning, as the curriculum works to become empathetic towards the specific needs of students and catering to them in a wide variety of ways.
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