As a Kindergarten teacher, I am always looking for ways to help children experience, elevate, and document the learning process. As they develop their schema about the world, and make connections in their learning, I am interested in finding ways to capture, assess, and develop their thinking.
Upon entering Kindergarten, there is a vast range of development and experience among children. As a teacher, one cannot assume that children have the same prior knowledge or are ready to take on the same academic tasks. There are children that do not yet know their letters mixed in with those who are beginning to read chapter books. The question then becomes, how do I make learning accessible to all students so that they can share ideas, work collaboratively and independently, and develop their knowledge in a way that is just right for each of them?
The Kindergarten environment is filled with a variety of learning materials. Children are surrounded by materials that allow them to manipulate, contemplate, explore, and experience. As the Kindergarten curriculum and expectations have become more demanding, many teachers are struggling to find a balance between academics and play. The question is how do we allow Kindergarten to be the safe, social, hands-on experience it originated as, while providing appropriate academic challenge and rigor for 21st century expectations?
Proposal:
Rather than looking back into the days of Kindergarten past, I propose that this is where technology can support the transition in thinking and learning. The right tools can make the difference between letting go of what we believe and resorting to paper/pencil tasks, and elevating learning to a new 21st century experience. This new experience is one in which children are able to engage learning and play while documenting the process in order to make meaning and adjust learning according to their developmental and academic needs. It is a process that allows for more interactive, collaborative, and personalized learning.
As part of Multimedia Montage Project, I will be creating a resource for teachers which allows them to see the ways in which Digital Learning Portfolios can have a profound impact on the learning experience for young children. In exploring the creative process through the lens of Kindergarten learning, Mitchel Resnick (2007) shares this observation
reflection is a critical part of the creative process, but all too often overlooked in the classroom. In recent years, schools have adopted more “hands-on” design activities, but the focus is usually on the creation of an artifact rather than critical reflection on the ideas that guided the design, or strategies for refining and improving the design, or connections to underlying scientific concepts and related real-world phenomena (p.5).
Resnick (2007) suggests that instead of giving into the pressures of changing Kindergarten to be like the rest of the school, we should actually be taking a look at the kind of learning that happens in Kindergarten, and making other classrooms based on that model. By introducing digital portfolios into the experience, we can create a format for learning that not only works in Kindergarten, but can be transferred to learning experiences in subsequent grades as well.
In Elizabeth Daley's article Expanding the Concept of Literacy (2003) she highlights the advantages of working with media forms. Among these advantages she notes "media forms are usually meant for public distribution and presentation. They are intended to be seen in environments beyond that of their creation" (p.36). When using digital portfolios to document work, students are not only given creative freedom o demonstrate and document their learning, they are also creating for a wider audience. Children move away from the mindset of creating to share with the teacher when using digital portfolios. Alternately, they now work with the knowledge that they will be sharing their learning experience with the teacher, family members, peers, and perhaps even a global audience.
Although there are a variety of digital portfolio platforms, I will be focusing on the use of Seesaw Digital Learning Portfolios in my project. The following share some examples of the ways in which I have used Seesaw as a format for documenting the process of learning and play.
Documentation of the pictorial process of mathematical development.
Making connections between art and math experiences, demonstrating learning, opportunity to practice at home with families.
Formative assessment on 1-1 correspondence for words.
Documentation and development of oral language through the process of play.
Educational Communities:
As Hodell (2011) explains, the ADDIE Model proposes that the first key to the success of an instructional design process, is the analysis stage. According to Holdell (2011), "instructional designers assemble all the information they can possibly gather about the project before they consider anything else" (p. 24).
As part of my data gathering, I have joined several communities to support background and data collection. The first is the Seesaw Ambassador Google Plus
Group. This is a private group in which Ambassadors from Seesaw from all over the world collaborate to share ideas and approaches for supporting other educators. Through my collaboration with this group I am able to gain insight into the experiences of other educators, not just in their classrooms, but in their work with colleagues as well. This information will support me as I put together a multimedia resource to be used by teachers in our district and beyond.
The second is GEG New Jersey . The community description includes this goal:
Google Education Groups (GEGs) are independently run communities of educators who inspire and empower each other to meet the needs of students through technology both in the classroom and beyond.
I use both iPads and Chromebooks in the classroom, therefore I am always looking for resources that encourage support for both Apple and Google platforms. As Seesaw is compatible with any number of devices, it is critical that I understand both platforms. I have been a member of this group for several months now, and have been introduced to great resources as I follow the journey of other teachers who value 21st century learning approaches. In addition to these two Google Plus groups, I also participate in a Professional Learning Network through Twitter. I have learned so much from bi-monthly Twitter Chats hosted by Christine Pinto through #GAFE4littles. For anyone that has not participated in a teacher Twitter chat, they are organized collaborations that run over the course of an hour using a specific hashtag to connect teachers. In the case of this chat, the moderator sends out a Google Sheet ahead of time, with the questions and topics that will be discussed during the chat. Participants can consider, research, and prepare their contributions. At the time of the chat, members are have the opportunity to introduce themselves, and then respond as questions are posted. The leader of the GAFE4littles PLN and Twitter chats has shared lots of exciting ways that she is using Chromebooks with her Kindergartners. Information on joining the PLN can be found at her site http://christinepinto.com/
Over the past year or so I have been working on developing connections to educators through social media communities. I have done some of my best learning, problem solving, and sharing by finding like-minded educators around the world. I am excited to continue on my journey by utilizing these communities to support development of my plan to implement a training program for teachers using digital portfolios in the classroom.
Sources:
Daley, E. (2003). Expanding the concept of literacy. EDUCAUSE (March/April), 33-40.
Hodell, Chuck. (2011). Chapter 3: Instructional systems development and the ADDIE model. In ISD From the Ground Up: A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional Design (3rd ed.). American Society for Training and Development: Alexandria, VA.
Resnick, M. (2007, June). All I really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in kindergarten. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition (pp. 1-6). ACM.
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