Michaela's Designing Digital Learning Journey

There once was a man named Vygotsky Whose thoughts were outside of the box-y  Knowing knowledge will stay When kids get to play Away on his horse he did trotsky Everything about the poem activity above embodies Vygotsky (well, maybe not everything). We collaborated, socialized, and used our independent tools to come up with a product that represents our understanding. Vygotsky believes that the development of processing information is due to understanding the tools that surround us and how to use them in processing the information. That’s a vague overview as he also goes into ZPD and other elements; Vygotsky breaks it down a lot more. I’d like to focus on two smaller topics that Vygotsky presented: language and socializing.  Language is a tool to communicate and collaborate with others, but it’s also a tool that we can use independently to organize our own thoughts. Vygotsky saw that children’s “speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychol...

Last Thursday, Dawn had us complete an activity where we were given a topic that is not related to our content area (I had Economics), and she asked us to identify the SPD’s and ABCS. The activity was incredibly impactful for me as I reflected a lot about how I learn and how I design. Below, I’ve shared those reflections with all of you:  I need a visual outline to help me think . I always thought I could make sense of my stream-of-consciousness notes that I take, but in completing this activity, I realized that I need structure - specifically in the way information is presented visually. My partner and I created a table ; the left side included the topic and the right side included elements that belonged to that topic. It’s nothing fancy, but I needed the organization for my brain to process the activity and information.  You can create a design even if you’re not the SME (Subject Matter Expert) . This was my...

One of my favorite classes to teach was AP Language and Composition (I can seriously never stop talking about it). The reason I loved it so much is because we actually talked about the world and learned skills that would help us all navigate the world (yes, I included myself in there as well). Our content included topics such as racism, the environment, #metoo movement, gender inequality, how to “argue” properly, etc. We also had a bit of writing and reading thrown in there, too ;) I loved all of the content because students would learn skills to apply to current life – they were learning how to connect with the events; how to critically think about them; how to react; etc. Now, teaching AP Lang may sound like everything the Sabertooth Curriculum strives for, but it wasn’t. I still had to teach to three tests (AP, SOL Writing, and SOL Reading) – I had to teach my students information that they most likely wouldn’t need to know (gerunds, anyone?). My 9T class was m...

Being in the program for a year already, Dawn has reviewed what “designing” means. It’s taken me a bit of time to shift my thinking of “planning” to “designing”, but reading Teachers are Designers really helped my understanding.  Looking back at last semester where we focused on community, I thought it was the perfect segue into a semester where we study design. Community is an abstract idea - it’s not tangible or concrete like the placement of a desk or an application used to enhance reading comprehension. Connecting the abstract idea of community and how to incorporate it into a design plan helped me understand the abstract concept of design.  During our first week in 780, Dawn asked us to create a list that defines the purpose of 21st-century education . As I was creating that list, I realized that’s where the foundation of design comes from. We have to take a step back from our tests, quizzes, worksheets, Google Classrooms, and/or structured lesson ...