As I get to the end of my Applied Digital Learning journey I can not help but reflect on the words of John Dewey. “You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow.” This quote means much more today than it did a year ago.
About a year ago, when I first started the ADL program at Lamar University, I felt anxious, worried, and a bit lost, to be honest. I had never had a course that let us have so much choice and freedom. I was used to the traditional information transfer through lectures and regurgitation of information with standardized tests. This learning anxiety lasted a couple of weeks, then suddenly, out of nowhere, I began to understand that I was not lost, I was engaging in guided discovery. My AHA! moment happened right around the time of our first literature review. Since my core team, Ileana Reyna, Veronica Balli, and I, work at the same school and share a vision of change for our organization, we met for several days in a row to review literature and engage in powerful discussions about blended learning. It was through our discussions and our collaborative work that I realized we were not only LEARNING, but also internalizing our new knowledge, and it was all self-directed. We chose our innovation project topic, the literature that we wanted to review, the presentation of our information in our e-Portfolios, and so much more. That is when I realized what CSLE and COVA are all about. This realization and collaboration caused a mind shift. I not only realized the impact of collaboration, but I also realized that I had to adjust my inherited views of learning and I had to LEARN how to learn.
Disruptive Innovation 5305 was the foundation of my mind shift and every course that followed increased my understanding of CSLE plus COVA, tenfold. My learning philosophy began to change from being the “sage on the stage” to being more of the “guide on the side” as mentioned in my Learning Philosophy blog post. This new knowledge and empowerment led my core team and me to focus our energy on changing our organization. We collaboratively created our innovation project, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, and fully embraced promoting change in our organization, so much so, that we quickly began implementing elements of COVA within our teaching, as we were learning about it, improving our learning and teaching along the way.
As I engaged with CSLE and COVA as a learner throughout the ADL program, I quickly understood the importance of also creating a significant learning environment for my students that gives them choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. This is where my learning manifesto and my shared innovation project, Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education comes into play. Our project gives students a significant blended learning environment that allows every student the opportunity to learn at a personalized level while harnessing the power of technology. My blended learning station rotations not only allow my students to collaborate with their peers so they can learn from each other, but they also allow them the ability to engage in learning at their own pace while giving them choice on which rotations they complete and when, while I lead small group instruction at a personalized level. This type of significant learning environment allows students to take ownership of their learning while teaching them how to become self-directed learners.
Both CSLE and COVA have not only impacted me as a learner but also as an educator. Now I feel more confident to prepare students for tomorrow just as Dewey states.
Reference
Harapnuik, D. (2018). It’s About Learning |COVA.Harapnuik.org.https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6991
Harapnuik, D., Thibodeaux, T., Cummings, C. (2018). Choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning [eBook]. Creative Commons License. http://tilisathibodeaux.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/COVA_eBook_Jan_2018.pdf
Comments