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A Journey in Progress...

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The Beginning Blogging is not a practice I had previously engaged in prior to participating in the course “Reflective-Reflexive Practices in Technology-Enabled Environments”. As I read the assignment guidelines, there was a sense of trepidation but, at the same time, I was very open to the possibilities of what the activity would unearth. Throughout the semester, I had to keep my focus on what I was learning in a particular module and how this influenced my thinking, how I felt about my practice and any adjustments I thought I needed to make to improve my practice. I was also encouraged to reflect on what was effective and how I could maintain consistency with each new group of students.My journey through the modules, the readings and the various activities was truly enlightening as well as inspiring. I was exposed to various reflective models but what was most significant was that I was using a digital tool, the online blog, to record my learning every step of the way. ...
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My Lesson

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           Introduction In my immediate context, I teach first year undergraduate students in a mandatory writing course. In this course, students are required to complete two reflective essays: one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end of teaching. Typically students are asked to reflect on a certain aspect of the course that has been emphasized throughout the semester. The lesson planning assignment was based on the requirements for the final reflection with emphasis on getting students to engage in reflections using online technological tools; the tools selected were discussion forums and a graded wiki. Planning the lesson As I prepared to plan the lesson, I was guided by Karunanayaka, Naidu, Rajendra and Ratnayake (2017) who asserted that meaningful reflective practice "should be carefully designed, with appropriate structure and guidance" (p. 143). They identified online discussions and reflective journal writing as "authentic lea...
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Planning for Reflection in Class

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                                                                      Preamble As a teacher I have the responsibility of ensuring that the learners who enter my classroom have the best possible learning experiences.  Typically the lessons I prepare have to be determined prior to the beginning of the semester and there is usually an opportunity for students to reflect. They have to do an initial reflection which recalls their previous writing experiences and asks them to project what they think they will learn throughout the 13-week semester. The interesting thing is that prior to doing this EDD course I never really thought about using a model of reflection for their first reflection even though I do incorporate the DIEP Reflective Model into the course I teach. The incorporation of this model prepares stu...
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Digitizing Reflection

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                                                                  Source of  image:  https://medium.com As I perused the reading materials for Module 3 of my course, it became very clear to me that I was entering brand new reflective writing territory. This is because even though I had been engaging my students in reflective writing for several years, I had done so only in a face-to-face setting. My state of mind reflected the image above; a sort of venturing into the unknown. I teach a writing course and  realistically, it should be easy to think about my students writing reflectively about concepts they had learned and how learning these concepts helped them to improve their writing. Simple. It would certainly seem that way but as I  read I realized there were more many more options I cou...
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The Constructed Self

“ Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results .” John Dewey Thinking, specifically critical thinking, has been widely acknowledged as an essential twenty-first century skill and technology has revolutionized the teaching, learning and thinking space in the 21st century. Technology has also had a significant impact on the ways in which we communicate with each other. Learners, today, will openly admit that they are "lost" without their cell phones and, as a teacher, one of my constant challenges  is trying to figure out how I can engage these digital natives and empower them to take ownership for their learning, even as I grapple with the rapid technological changes.  My own reflective practice has lead me to various researchers on the subject of reflection and a major take away over the past two weeks has been the concept of self-construction through reflection. The Difference...
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Getting to Know Me

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Recently, as part of my course in reflective-reflexive practice I completed two activities related to my learning style and my personality traits.The first activity was the VARK Test. See my results below: Based on these results, my learning preference is multimodal, which wasn't surprising to me. I know that I have very strong sensory perceptions and have always been told I'm good with my hands; hence the high kinesthetic score. I like to make things; I like to putter around in the garden and I love to cook! I also love to doodle. I am constantly doing things with my hands. So, as far as my preferences go, the results seemed to be spot on. Ironically though, my read/write score, being the lowest was very surprising to me. I love to read and make my living teaching students to read and write. Could this score be sending me some subliminal message? I'm still wondering about that... The other activity was the Big 5: Again, no major surprises here. My scores for Op...
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