Digital Media, Tools, & Tech
My name is Nancy Mosley and I live in Durham, NC. I have taught high school Social Studies for over 15 years. I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BA in Journalism-Mass Communication and Sociology, and I earned my MA in Education from Wake Forest University. I am taking this course from professional reasons, because I want to move from classroom teaching to something like teacher coaching/training or online course development. Through my journalism program in college, my specialization was Graphic Design and my first jobs were in that field. I have been using those skills as a teacher and volunteer ever since, so I am very confident using and learning new technology for instructional purposes. By the end of this course, I would like to add a number of new technology tools/skills to my resume and have high-quality examples to add to my porfolio.
Personal Learning Experiences
How do personal learning experiences in your life relate to learning theory?
Elementary School Example
In elementary school, the AG students spent one day a week at a special site for enrichment. We were learning about historical artifacts and archaeology from an AG specialist teacher who worked full-time teaching a certain age group at this site. We had some introductory instruction in the classroom, but the majority of the unit was an actual archaeological dig outside with an inspection/reflection of the artifacts we found. The site was in an older downtown area, so she did have to “plant” artifacts making it authentic. We did this not to learn about the specific history of this site, but to experience how social scientists gather artifacts/data/evidence and draw conclusions about the culture/past from them.
University Example
In my graduate school course on teaching methods, my professor/mentor would always design the lesson using some of the methods he wanted us to learn. So if we read an article on pedagogy for homework, he would have us come in and use carousel brainstorming in small groups to analyze and present conclusions/questions to the whole class. Afterwards, we would have a post-mortem about the method we had just used as learners to reflect on the strengths/weaknesses of the methods and how we might use it as teachers. Then, we would come back to the larger topic of pedagogy and write an exit-slip to summarize the big take-away. We were learning this skill in preparation for our student teaching experience the following semester; therefore, we were highly motivated because the stakes were very high and our “test” with real students was coming soon.
Professional Setting Example
I was part of a three-year training program that focused on four teachers from each school who could then lead PD sessions for the teachers at their school. The leader was a representative of Discovery Ed hired by our school district, who also used to be a teacher and administrator. We met about 6 days a year for 3 years. We learned the information through demonstrations, group discussions, and being given time to create something for our class while asking for help from the instructor. Though she was always incorporating the Discovery Ed product, the overall focus ended up being integrated teaching methods using a wide variety of products and techniques. The goal was for us to learn these new methods, test them out in our classrooms, redeliver the training to our faculty, and give feedback to the district.
