Portfolio

I set up this page on my personal website where I will collect all the stuff regarding this and the following courses.
Please don’t pay too much attention to the rest of my site, its in desperate need of a revamp. But I haven’t found the time yet… Said missing time is also the reason I setup the portfolio on my site. I would love to try other e-portfolios, but this was the easiest and quickest in my current situation. 

While it wasn’t THE main focus of the article the Passagepreises questioning the Staus Quo spoke to me the most. It’s something im working on and am also challenged with. My situation at my school is quite good regarding these things. I and some other of my colleagues made a course about cooperative and open learning (COOL) in Austria, our administration want to implement this (think: Dalton Plan) more into the school. Also our district is thinking about a new building or at least renovation of our school which also led to some discussion of how we see our school, our methods, our teaching styles, … 
For me its clear that I don‘t want instruction and classical seating in the classroom. I want students that can choose freely between different rooms/spaces and seating options and that they are the ones leading Goethe’s are learning. I don‘t want to be the main focus in class. The students and their projects should be the focus – for everyone involved. 

The first thing where I realised I have potential to do much more for and with my students was the “Self-regulated learning”. 

With most of the other competences I marked the B2-, sometimes B1-level for myself, but using e-portfolios, blogs or something similar for my students is something I don’t really do so far. 

The secons competence I need to get better in is “Assessment strategies”. But, here will be a problem as digital assessment are not always allowed… So I will defnitely think about this one but it’s not my main focus in the near future, because I would need to discuss it with other people in my school. 

But using portfolios or sth. similar is an option that I can just do in my lessons! So that’s definitely my main goal for the near future!

Reading the framework also made me realize that I may be using to little interactive elements… While I use a lot of digital tools and encourage my students to work digital, I don’t feel like it’s that much interactive and not everything fits together well… So that’s probably a second goal for myself!

Oh, I also did this test from europass: https://europa.eu/europass/digitalskills
This one said I’m on level 6 for all subjects but the datasecurity, where I got a level 5. So I should probably work on that as well…

Regarding the question, if both concepts could be applied: We feel as if school usually starts as Community of Inquiry with the teacher prompting a question, presenting a problem or sth. similar. After that the whole class (as a community!) hopefully makes the shift to a Community of Prcatice as they are intrigued to work on said question or problem. 

4C vs. Connectivism

I see both theories as crucial in our current time. While connectivism is more of a framework that sets the individual in the middle, the 4C’s are the competences this individual needs to have. The 4C are competences that interlock with each other while connectivism is more open to more and more connections while leaving the person in its middle. 

Connectivism is important as it visualizes how our world today works: Everyone of us is involved in network(s) and of course is everyone of us as well as our students using these networks. But to navigate succesful through these networks we’re involeved in we need the 4C. 

Especially if you look at the example from the last video: Bob was, besides other things, using facebook, a social network, as well as comments under an article. Both are known to not be free of mistakes / fake news and so on. So he definitely needs some Critical Thinking to check which statements he should trust and which not. 

Of course one would also definitely need the skill / competence of Communication as we’re never alone in our learning and our networks. We can only learn from each other and with each other if we’re communicating well. 

Proceeding from this (learning and/or working with and from each other) the next natural thing is Collaboration and probably also Creativity and Innovation as this naturally occurs if people are working together. 

I think that we, as teachers, should and need to boost the 4C in our students and we can do so by using a lot of group work and recoursing to the networks our students alsready have as well as initiating a new network in our class (the class as a network). 

My additions to the glossary:

(Quiz, finished with 100%.)

Regarding social differences I deliberately choose to ignore some of them, while others are important for my work in school.

I stuck with the Gardenswartz & Rowe model, although I’m not really satisfied with it. But I also couldn’t find another one that I liked better. For me it#s obviuos to ignore differences in terms of seuxual orientation or religion. They are not relevant to what I’m teaching (even not in the subject religion!). 

The one difference I DO focus on is language. I have a lot of students who have a different mother tongue than German. But I don’t give these students extra tasks (some get additional language courses though), but I include task regarding technical terms and terminology into my lessons for everyone. By doing so the students get a chance to help each other and work together. 

Now, after re-reading I think I don’t really ignore other social differences. That’s the wrong word. I do see them and acknowledge them – and the different problems that are a result of them (e.g. racism…). But I don’t see the need to incorporate them into my teaching. I accept everyone the way they are coming and they are all welcome. 

I’m looking onto the social presence in online communities from two perspectives:

1. I’m a teacher so I create(d) online teaching. Although we’re now back full time in school, the pandemic definitely was a point where also I learned a lot.
2. I’m part of different online communities in which I’m engaged. 

I realize that I’m better integrated into communities and am more present if I’m connected to the other peoples. This means I need a personal relationship (maybe friendship, but not always this deep) and time to engage aboout private/personal topics and more that just the professional tasks.

But being in a network means to engage in it. The more I am giving into it, the more I get out of it! I understand that it’s sometimes easier to just consume and I’m definitely guilty of it myself, but if I’m honest that’s not the main goal of acommunity. A community or network can only grow with people, who are willing to help it grow. 

During our phases of distance teaching in the last two years I always made room for this and sent the students in smaller breakout rooms so that they could maintain their friendships even during class. 

• What did you learn within this course? 
• Could you tick the boxes of all your goals for this course?
• Did you gain digital competences?
• Can you implement some of your new competences within your professional context? If you use some of them within your work area already, can you imagine what impact it will have on your environment (colleagues, students or even society)? 
• Which topic do you still want to work on? Do you have any further goals?