PHILOSOHPY OF EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY

Technology is the new addition to the educational environment that made a huge dramatic change. Technology and 21st-century teaching strategies have taken the learning process to a different level. Learners now a day are capable of doing a lot with technology that the previous generation couldn’t do. Technology helped the 21st-century learners to conquer different fields such as science, engineering, mathematics, and arts. It helped them to experience different fields, find their patient and discover their interest. Technology is the 21st-century weapon that is going to prepare the generation for the unexpected future. Technology allows learners to be more creative, critical thinkers and innovators. Technology is a dynamic tool that provides students with access to extensive amounts of information and helps them develop the skills required to transform this information into useful knowledge. Moreover, it is an essential tool for 21st-century learners as it helps them to develop essential learning skills and become lifelong learners. It improves learners’ achievements in different disciplines such as reading, writing, and imagination. Technology also improves essential skills such as decision making, problem-solving, communication, and interpersonal skills. It also helps us, educators, to create personalized learning environments to meet the needs of the diverse learners which promotes equality.

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Students learn in different ways, so it is educators’ job to find out the best way their students learn from. As an educator, I start by considering prior knowledge of my learners because they will be bringing it to the learning environment. As an educator or coach, it is a good strategy to encourage learners to construct new knowledge on their previous knowledge and reflect it on their learning. To measure learner’s prior knowledge and skills I give brief assessment or questions or group discussion at the beginning of the class. This kind of assessment shouldn’t have any formal grading, it must be a way to help the educators identify the type of learners they have, such as auditory, visual, kinesthetic or reading & writing learners. After assessing learner’s prior knowledge and addressing any misconceptions, I use the result from assessing learners in informing them future instruction. Learning Styles refer to the idea that students learn best when the course content is pitched in a way that matches the students’ self-reported media preferences. Also, for students to learn they must go through the metacognition process which is thinking about thinking, which gives the students a chance to reflect on their personal habits and knowledge. The metacognition process charges and motivate students with self-regulation of their own learning and helps to the transference of the skills and content through reflections and abstract. I get the chance to support learners through the metacognition in various active learning techniques, learning framework, and opening class exercise to encourage them to reflect and mentor on their learning. 

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My teaching goals revolve around making the learning process enjoyable and engaging. Education is not a hard path but a lot of us has resented some subjects because of the traditional methods. My goal is to integrate technology into the curriculum to build an interactive and easily accessed knowledge that can benefit everyone. For example, learners who hate math, why do they hate math? Because the way it was explained made no sense to them, those learners all they saw were numbers that are related but they have no idea how. Those learners are not stupid or don’t have the skills to solve a math problem, in the other hand they only lack imagination and understanding of how math is related to their life and this weakness shouldn’t set those learners to failure. Using any of the math game in the play store that teaches multiplication, subtraction and addition will encourage students and make them interested, involved and excited to learn more about mathematics. Also teaching students in an interactive approach instead of the traditional way will help them to develop the 21st-century skills. For example, asking students to divide the number of an objects between their siblings equally or asking students to do math problem when they go to grocery shopping or asking the female students if they have a certain amount of pocket money and they want to buy makeup from a shop that is having sales and they have to make the percentage calculation or asking the male students to calculate the probability of their favorite football team winning the champions such approaches can go long way in making math an interesting field.  My aim is to help learners find their own voice, to say what they want and how to say it. Training learners the skills of communicating effectively and with confidence will go a long way with them in building their character. Another goal of mine is to take the course material outside the context of the classroom and give learners space to experiment, try and fail. I will assist them in their failure and support them in their success. Learners need to know that this is the best way they can learn to improve the world. The goal is to help them figure out who they are, how they can use their strength to serve their community and how they can develop their weaknesses. In addition to spreading awareness of social responsibilities and social impact. Learners must be aware that anything out in the social media is out forever and no taking it back, which will lead to their personalities growth, being passion, kind and caution about how their words can impact and influence others, even if what they say is not face to face.

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I would like to develop and improve my teaching abilities toward adult learning. In adult learning, each student has their own background of knowledge and belief that build up their character and attitude toward education. As per Knowles, there are four principles toward adult learning first, adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their knowledge. Second, they should experience making mistakes which will provide them with the basis for the learning activities. Third, the knowledge being delivered to learners need to be immediately relevant and has an impact on their personal life or job. Lastly, the learning process must be problem-centered rather the content oriented. My goal is to teach or develop the skills to deal with adults, so am focusing on furthering my engagement in designing more of problem and project content for students so that they would transform their previous knowledge and use it to create and solve current experiment or project. My interest is drawn more on project and problem based learning to develop the 21st-century skills for adult learners such as critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. I believe that adults learning occurs when they take responsibility for what they want to learn. Adults learn best from both experience and feedback instead of just reading and reflecting on books.

One day I might be coach of instructional technology, my role would be to support the school educators for successful digital transitions. My philosophy is to guide and be a fount of trust to build relationships with other educators. Setting clear expectations and outcomes while I am sharing my strategies for technology integration and lesson design will help educators to expect what is coming. Simple things like keeping the door open for my office will promote open communication and collaboration between me and the educators. In addition to engaging the administration and stakeholders of the school in the development process of digital initiative and involving them in the process to notice the changes will get them more invested in implementing new technologies and experimenting to figure out the best technologies that suit the school. As a coach of instructional technology listening to what educators think of the new technologies I am implementing will give me feedback to identify their struggle and barriers. Active listening followed by deep reflection will reflect my interest to help educators improve and develop their teaching skills in their own learning environment and it will show that I am interested in their professional growth not only implementing new approach on them.