This week marks the beginning of this course. I have to admit that I was pretty excited about taking this class; it relates so much to my role as Head of Science and Information Technology at the school I teach at in the Halton District School Board (HDSB). I also just took “Foundations of Leadership” last semester with Bill Muirhead and I am looking forward to continuing my learning about leadership. I am still fairly new to my role as a department head; this is my second year and I’m finally feeling like I have a better grasp on what my job entails. One of my goals this year is to further build staff capacity around technology in the classroom so I’m hoping to gain a lot of great ideas and learn about various theories that I can implement in my practice. I am also continuing my work on motivating my staff to shift their practices towards more problem-based or project-based learning and I’m eager to learn more about leadership theories and active learning in general.
In setting up this learning log, it was rather easy for me to choose a format. I am a big fan of G Suite and I’ve fallen in love with using HyperDocs in the classroom. So I chose Google docs and Blogger as my platforms as I believe that it will serve its purpose for this assignment. It will allow me to add links as I progress throughout the course which will help me to build a fantastic resource for myself. A blog is great because I can make my learning visible to the public and hopefully receive comments and critical feedback from my peers. I truly believe that we learn best from each other - so if you’re reading this, please feel free to comment!
Now onto the course material itself… I felt a bit relieved when I saw the readings assigned for week 2. I’ve already read the article Robertson, L. & Muirhead, B. (2017). From war stories to critical reflection for Bill’s class last semester so I only needed to skim the article to refresh my memory. For that class, we also had to complete a case study as a group, so I’m feeling fairly confident in my ability to complete this assignment. I learned a lot from my group members through this process and I’m looking forward to deepening my learning about another leadership topic in the case study that we do for this course.
As I was reading the article Mazur, E. (2009). Farewell, Lecture? I felt as though I could have written this article myself. Several ideas within the article strongly resonated with me; for example, when I first started teaching, I lectured quite a bit as it was how I was taught. I knew that this wasn’t necessarily the best pedagogy but, as a new teacher, it was easy and comfortable. As the years have passed, I lecture less and less; as a science teacher, it is more important to focus on making connections between new and pre-existing knowledge and investigating scientific models. Mazur’s approach to using clickers would be good for larger classes; however, I would criticize this approach because there seems to be no variety of approach. Does clickers work for every possible type of problem and concept in physics (or any science)? I agree with him that it is “not the technology but the pedagogy that matters” (p. 51) but I question whether the pedagogy is actually being put first here? I now approach my lesson design based around what concept needs to be learned and put into practice and choose digital tools, if appropriate, that suit the task at hand.
Finally, for assignment 2, my group decided that we were going to each find an article this week that relates to our leadership theory and then share our findings with each other at the end of class next week. Our group is looking at Roger’s theory of diffusion of innovations. I have a bit of background knowledge about this theory already as it has come up in previous courses that I have taken in the M.Ed. program. This theory really reshaped my understanding of how to approach change and innovation in my department. It also helped me to realize that not everyone will agree or conform and that that is okay. It’s an important theory and one that I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge on so that I can use it further in my own practice. The article that I found was from Corrocher, N. (2011). The adoption of Web 2.0 services: An empirical investigation. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 78, 547-558. One of the ideas in this article that I found really interesting was that the process of adoption of new technology (such as Web 2.0 tools) depends on a number of characteristics of innovation. It’s interesting to see the variety of different conditions that need to be met in order to have a new change adopted.
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