Weekly Tech Tips 29 November 2020

 Dear Friends,

Did you miss me? I missed you. I had intended to write an edition last week Sunday and take this one off, but just got buried in work last weekend and had to let it go. This week’s Tech Tips is more of a reflection on what education means to me and ways we can leverage technology in general to achieve goals that a lot of us have, but rarely get to work on. 

Reflections / Articles of Interest

Like many other teachers I am in the middle of a month-long online IB training course that the School signed me up for. Like some others in these courses, I do not really want to be in it. I don’t have time for it, and I don’t need to learn how to fill out the IB unit planner again. This is a perfect example of what is called extrinsic motivation. More specifically, Externally Regulated Extrinsic Motivation:

(From Contemporary  Educational  Psychology 2020   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101860  Intrinsic  and  extrinsic  motivation  from  a  self-determination  theory  perspective: Definitions,  theory,  practices,  and  future  directions: Richard M. Ryan  &  Edward L. Deci   Institute  for  Positive  Psychology  and  Education,  Australian  Catholic  University,  Australia University  of  Rochester,  United  States)

I don't think I'm alone in this characterization as none of my coursemates have replied to any of the “Coffee Corner” posts (there were 2 last I checked) that either I or the one other poster have made. This tells me that perhaps they don't have time, which is very understandable but also very unfortunate because it is the Coffee Corner that hosts the exchange of ideas which is really, for me, the most useful part of these workshops.

In stark contrast is the CK-12 Certified Educator Program that I have been taking since about the same time my IB workshop began. This is something I want to do and I can say I even enjoy it. I wrote last time about how much I admire the program, and I am happy to learn more about it. So for the past few weeks I have been viscerally experiencing the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. What a difference it makes! I am grateful for this experience because it is not often I get a chance to see the world so clearly from a student’s perspective. 

These reflections began from an assignment from the IB course where we had to fill in the Differentiated Instruction (DI) part of the MYP Unit Planner. As part of my assignment I referenced an article I read earlier this year about the ineffectiveness of DI, Differentiation Doesn’t Work. I reread the article and also the links in the introduction that disagreed with the author of the article. I was stimulated and several themes that I had been thinking about began to coalesce. It occurred to me that motivation and differentiation boiled down to choice and freedom, a major theme for me lately. I had that very satisfying sense (like an epiphany really) of everything falling into place. Differentiation can work. I can motivate my students; perhaps not intrinsically, but I can at least move the needle on the scale of internalization. I can do this by offering my students choices thereby increasing self determination. And you know what can help me do all this without sacrificing my entire life to lesson planning and grading? You guessed it my friend, TECHNOLOGY. I bet you were wondering when I’d finally get around to that.

I sometimes worry that we get overwhelmed with too much technology. I worry that I may be contributing to that with this very newsletter. On the other side though is the potential to use what you need, what you like and what works for you to craft meaningful lessons with options. I have been doing this in my 10th grade physics class for about a month now and I think it is really making a difference. For example I was teaching electric current and Ohm’s Law. I gave students the option to 

1. Read a short chapter and answer questions at the end of it. 

2. Watch a video that had been popped into EdPuzzle so that there were a few questions about it during playback. 

3. Do a Quizziz (Quizziz now has “Lessons” so it’s more than just an online quiz)

4. Come over to the benches and build some circuits with the components I had laid out.

Most of the students chose option number 4. I was a little surprised, but pleasantly so. Most importantly, it was their choice. I really think it made a big difference.

I could go on about this for quite a while. I am excited and invigorated by these thoughts and ideas and I invite any and all who would be interested in discussing them or ones like them to please do so. I will not go on about this any more here though. I want to respect your time. I am grateful to you if you have read this far. 

I conclude this week with a call to please consider helping build a Community of Practice here at GSIS. I lament the fact that we no longer talk about education amongst ourselves. I cannot remember the last time we had an actual professional development. Granted, I have a poor memory, but it seems like an awfully long time since we communicated about our craft rather than just being the recipients of comminques.  I know no one has time for anything. I really do. Technology once again can help us. Perhaps we can try a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). I remind you of a Google Group I made named GSIS 2020:

https://groups.google.com/g/gsis2020

I invite you again to write in with your opinions and experience with, let’s say, Differentiated Instruction. Don’t want to talk about DI and / or don’t want to use the group I made? OK, no problem, please tell me what you want to talk about and where. I would love to participate. I need to talk about teaching with other teachers.

Thank you for reading and have a great week.