4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Artifact: Diversity Blog Post
Reflection:
This artifact is the Diversity and Global Learning blog that I posted. In this blog, I focused on the importance of encouraging cultural awareness through the activities that we do in our classrooms. In this day and age, many schools are seeing very diverse populations; and therefore, it is very important that this diversity is celebrated. There are a wide variety of digital tools and resources that can be used to build this awareness within a school. This artifact demonstrates mastery of Standard 4.3 - Diversity, Cultural Understanding and Global Awareness - which states that "candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness" because through this blog post, I demonstrated that I have the knowledge and ability to celebrate diversity within my school.
In this blog post, I demonstrated my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs. I discussed how technology has given us the option to personalize student learning so that all of our students' needs can be met. Technology promotes collaborative learning and problem solving geared toward the levels each student needs to be successful. Because of technology, the days of the teacher standing in front of the classroom teaching all day long are gone. In its place are incredible learning opportunities that are differentiated to meet students where they are instead of just focusing on the average student. Many times the gifted students and even the students receiving special education services slip through the cracks because the teacher is so busy focusing on the average students. Now all student needs can be met. Gifted students can be challenged and enriched with some innovative digital tools, and students receiving special education services can be remediated using certain tools as well.
Finally, I touched on my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to enhance cultural understanding and increase global awareness. Technology gives teachers the opportunity to extend their instruction outside the four walls of their classrooms. For example, classes can Skype with students in other states or even other countries - what an amazing way for students to gain understanding of the world around them! In doing the research for this blog post, I found an amazing program called iEARN that encourages collaboration among students worldwide. I want to explore the possibilities of beginning something like this at my school. I know of some teachers who would love to pilot this in their classrooms. In addition, I have always been a big supporter of student blogging. When I taught 4th grade, my students blogged, and I opened the blog up so that other teachers and administrators could reply to my students' blogs. The students absolutely loved that. This is something I want to expand even more so that students can collaborate with other students via blog posts. This is an incredible way for students to get a better understanding of the world around them.
I learned so much from the research that I did prior to writing this blog. I got so many great ideas for how to help my students achieve a greater cultural understanding and global awareness. It is amazing how much these types of activities can enhance education and student learning. Even the collaboration part alone can help students develop good social skills that they will be able to carry with them forever. If I could write this blog again, I would have researched some classrooms or schools that are interested in collaborating with students from different schools. This is an opportunity that I believe would be jumped on by teachers at my school, and it would be a great way for teachers to expand their instruction outside their classrooms.
This artifact is the Diversity and Global Learning blog that I posted. In this blog, I focused on the importance of encouraging cultural awareness through the activities that we do in our classrooms. In this day and age, many schools are seeing very diverse populations; and therefore, it is very important that this diversity is celebrated. There are a wide variety of digital tools and resources that can be used to build this awareness within a school. This artifact demonstrates mastery of Standard 4.3 - Diversity, Cultural Understanding and Global Awareness - which states that "candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness" because through this blog post, I demonstrated that I have the knowledge and ability to celebrate diversity within my school.
In this blog post, I demonstrated my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs. I discussed how technology has given us the option to personalize student learning so that all of our students' needs can be met. Technology promotes collaborative learning and problem solving geared toward the levels each student needs to be successful. Because of technology, the days of the teacher standing in front of the classroom teaching all day long are gone. In its place are incredible learning opportunities that are differentiated to meet students where they are instead of just focusing on the average student. Many times the gifted students and even the students receiving special education services slip through the cracks because the teacher is so busy focusing on the average students. Now all student needs can be met. Gifted students can be challenged and enriched with some innovative digital tools, and students receiving special education services can be remediated using certain tools as well.
Finally, I touched on my ability to model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to enhance cultural understanding and increase global awareness. Technology gives teachers the opportunity to extend their instruction outside the four walls of their classrooms. For example, classes can Skype with students in other states or even other countries - what an amazing way for students to gain understanding of the world around them! In doing the research for this blog post, I found an amazing program called iEARN that encourages collaboration among students worldwide. I want to explore the possibilities of beginning something like this at my school. I know of some teachers who would love to pilot this in their classrooms. In addition, I have always been a big supporter of student blogging. When I taught 4th grade, my students blogged, and I opened the blog up so that other teachers and administrators could reply to my students' blogs. The students absolutely loved that. This is something I want to expand even more so that students can collaborate with other students via blog posts. This is an incredible way for students to get a better understanding of the world around them.
I learned so much from the research that I did prior to writing this blog. I got so many great ideas for how to help my students achieve a greater cultural understanding and global awareness. It is amazing how much these types of activities can enhance education and student learning. Even the collaboration part alone can help students develop good social skills that they will be able to carry with them forever. If I could write this blog again, I would have researched some classrooms or schools that are interested in collaborating with students from different schools. This is an opportunity that I believe would be jumped on by teachers at my school, and it would be a great way for teachers to expand their instruction outside their classrooms.