Prompt: Roblyer & Hughes (2019) discuss the impact of curriculum standards on students and educators in the Chapter 1 reading. Jonassen (2007) discusses a variety of instructional strategies designed to differentiate and personalize instruction in Chapter 24. How does the effective teacher balance the demand of a standards-based curriculum catered to the individual needs of each student? What tools do we have at our disposal to help us comply with both demands? What best-practices regarding technology in your instruction do you incorporate into your lessons?
Introduction
Balancing the demand of a standards-based curriculum catered to the individual needs of each student is certainly an extraordinary burden and, in some ways, seems like an educational system’s red herring away from the science of learning. For a tiny example, the student standard for this assignment suggested a maximum video length of ninety seconds. Unfortunately, in the video below, I have barely spoken an introduction too quickly and sketchily toward adequately addressing the assignment prompt’s strategic systemic implications, and my discussion has already broken that soft standard. My hope is that the short video essay below will push into that strategy challenging zone of revolutionary learning excellence.
Video Transcript
Hey family,
As a point of clarification to this assignment’s prompt, in my opinion, our Roblyer and Hughes (2019) textbook briefly introduced various educational standards regarding technology integration but did not sufficiently discuss the systemic impact of those standards. The American education system appears as a misplanned set of oppressive institutional monopolies that produce graduates without regard to restoring the imago dei in human communities (Schall, 2009). Instead, if human learning could be oversimplified to like programming a robot, the standards and efficacy of a fruit factory are inconsequential to the endeavor. Stated plainly but with hyperbole, because today’s academic factories need revolutionary change in purposes, I do not effectively attempt to balance the demand of a standards-based curriculum catered to the individual needs of each student. The systemic feedback loops represented by student standards versus teacher standards and their corresponding assessment metrics are distinct and often at odds by asking for one thing while measuring another. I feel I must lean forward in unbalanced and cognitively dissonant ways to continue to learn to learn to help others learn. As a tool, the science behind educational standards informs pedagogy while supporting learning first and propelling curriculum standard policies secondarily. For my lessons, that means applying a framework of learning theory and technology-integrated practices kind of like playing a Bingo game of technological pedagogical content knowledge, and that heuristic certainly considers differentiation of learning outputs and supports. In this way, I would like to simply invite dialogue and encourage elders to keep learning and acting as wise managers of learners and communities (Wilson et al., 2014). Therefore, I want to encourage the American educational system’s change agents to keep learning to learn, not just teach. Thanks!
References
Roblyer, M. D., & Hughes, J. E. (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching: Transforming learning across disciplines (8th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.
Schall, J. V. (2009). Foreword. In A. Dru (Trans.), Leisure: The basis of culture (including the philosophical act). Ignatius Press.
Wilson, D. S., Hayes, S. C., Biglan, A., & Embry, D. D. (2014). Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(04), 395–416. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13001593