EDU 510: Inquiry into Teaching, Technology and Research

Welcome to our first page of notes for the semester!

Here are the important notes from this week's class:

There was one community builder that we used in class this week. It was called New and Good and it provided a way for us to meet the members of our class. We also used a snowball activity and this provided an interactive way for students to move about and get to know others a bit more. I used this strategy to break students into pairs so they could introduce each other to our class. We spent some time reflecting on this activity to determine a grade level that this strategy could be effectively implemented. Thinking about activities carefully helps us as teachers to complete a task-analysis of the necessary skills needed for students to be successful. It is so important to utilize community builders in classrooms. A community builder is a preplanned activity specifically used to have students learn something new about each other. Teachers who understand and believe in social learning theory often utilize community builders as a way for students to begin to build trust, open communication and safety in their classrooms because students can then feel more comfortable learning and working together on class curricula content. We'll talk more about social learning theory at various times throughout the semester.

For our first inquiry, students considered and answered the following question: What qualities do effective teachers have? It is important to consider the components necessary for being an effective teacher. There were many components discussed in class; Some that are critical to note are: (1) an effective teacher has a positive attitude and positive expectations for students, (2) an effective teacher is an extremely good classroom manager, (3) an effective teacher knows how to design and implement lessons that facilitate students' learning (outcomes). It is essential that we work to find ways to maximize ALL students' learning in our classrooms. Unfortunately, there may be many instances when teachers do not consider HOW to maximize students' learning. This is a critical component necessary for being an effective teacher. For more information on this topic, you may want to refer to the text, The First Days of School by Wong, 1991.

In class, I began to briefly discuss educational research. As teachers, research on teaching and on learning provides important information that can guide our instruction. Without considering findings from research, teachers often rely too heavily on "trail-and-error" in their classrooms and valuable teaching time is often wasted. Knowing and understanding how to locate and utilize educational research on teaching and learning is an essential component to becoming an effective teacher. We use educational research to predict, explain and/or control educational phenomena. We'll continue this conversation in two weeks.

We spent some time reviewing our course syllabus and assignments. For your reference, assignment descriptions have been uploaded to this website.

I hope that you enjoyed our class discussions! Keep reading, keep learning, and keep coming to class! See you in two weeks! Please remember to meet in the library next week!
 ~Kim