Assignment 8-C-2: Reflection on Learning

This quote sums up my overall experience taking the PLS class, 21st Century Literacy:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

(Martin Luther King)

Changing teaching methods to incorporate digital media takes a major leap of faith. It requires teachers to become students, and many times we won't be learning at our instructional level, either. We will experience frustration, in spades. Learning to use, and teaching with, digital media, is at different times humbling and edifying . . . . it requires a great deal of stamina.

In the early 1980s, I had a friend who was attending college at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, a "school of great books." He told me then that the rate of technological advancement was "exponential," and that human beings would never be able to catch up, culturally. From an educational perspective in 2009, he would have been more correct to say, "our generation" would struggle to keep up. Our students, however, some think because of their differently and digitally wired brains, may not have this problem. My friend did not factor biology into the equation.

This is an example of some "old learning" I have had to modify to fit the true environment we live in. What my friend's quote, modified, means to me is that teachers and schools are living in fast-moving, technologically, and intellectually exciting times. In some ways, teachers are like Alice in Wonderland - the students are helping us learn technology. We are guiding them, allowing them more and more creative involvement in their learning, never sure quite where we will end up. Will our efforts make us feel big or small? Who and what will we encounter online? What sort of multimedia project can blossom from a simple piece of paper with an typewritten assignment on it? Might we see a generation before we pass who asks the question, "What is paper?"

Understanding digital media and using it heavily as a teaching tool will change my teaching, my school and my students. With digital media as a tool, students learn using so many of their learning styles and modalities. A functional MRI might show their brains lighting up all over, like Christmas trees. They become creators, architects, producers, thinkers using almost limitless resources and most of their senses to express their ideas. There has never been a more exciting time to be a teacher or a student than the present.

However. Learning to use the digital media was full of roadblocks. In no particular order: It was necessary for me sit in front of a computer while the summer weather outside was perfect. Picture perfect. Every day. I was not productive for this, and other reasons. I lost my mother in October, had my divorced finalized in April, and sold my mother's farm just a few days ago, which was like burying her again. The brain can only handle so much at one time. A functional MRI would show my brain not very lit up very often this summer. And technological problems have a way of making one feel very inept, not a nice feeling. But: having had experience now overcoming technical problems, I now learn to expect them, and have a few strategies in a once-empty bag of tricks to use when they happen. Learning to use technology in depth has taught me perseverence, resilience, tenacity . . . . all things my students need to succeed in life. I can model these now.

I was able to persevere, with the encouragement of classmates, teacher and prayer. I learned how to incorporate digital learning into teaching - a major accomplishment that will positively impact many lives, starting this fall. I learned other life lessons: Be patient. Try to troubleshoot on your own (take a risk). If you need technical help, ask for it (be resourceful). Think and use logic (problem solve). Calm down (emotional intelligence). When you can't calm down, call a friend and get advice (collaborate). Go back to the drawing board with a new plan (adapt).

And don't stop trying: that is, and always has been, the true key to success, no matter what is being learned, or who is learning it.