Reflecting on my Professional Journey in the 21st Century

Introduction

       As the course enters module five I have been looking at the ideas offered for the application of current and emerging practices for cultivating student reflection. I noted the importance of wikis, blogs, e-portfolios and social media, As I went about this I drew on my professional experience over the past 3 decades but I was focused particularly on the period 2009-present.

       Over the last decade I have been fortunate to work in two well resourced international schools. I worked in a 1:1 mac laptop school from 2009-2016 and then from 2016-present I have been working at a 1:1 ipad school. During this time I completed a Professional Certificate in Online Teaching and I led many workshops on teaching with technology. Given this background I decided to approach the learning in this module by looking back at some of the activities and projects that I created and facilitated for my students and relating them to the module 5 objectives. I will structure this critical reflection on my practice by making reference to the well known model presented by Gibbs (1988). Figure 1 below shows the Gibbs reflective cycle using an image from the University of Edinburgh.

    

 

Figure 1 

Reflecting on Video Lessons, Flipped Classroom Blogging and Reflective e-Portfolios.

       I made my first online video lesson in 2010 and over the past 10 years I  have been reflecting on how to improve. In 2012, I started posting my videos on a YouTube channel and my initial focus was on sharing what I usually present in a short face to face lecture as a video. I asked students to watch this at home and then when they come to class they would be engaged in discussions on the topic or be allowed to ask questions. I soon realized that this was being labeled as the flipped classroom. I was very skeptical about whether this would be successful and I decided to engage in some simple data collection and to make some qualitative observations. Ultimately I complied a video presentation to share with my supervisor. Today I returned to YouTube to look at this and I could see my initial reflections shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2

Action Research on the Flipped Classroom (Dubay, 2013)

I am now reflecting on how useful this was and several thoughts come to mind. I will list some of them below:

1.Was this a complete reflection? Did I go through all of the stages of the Gibbs model? Perhaps, but it is certainly not documented in Figure 2. Following this research I started making shorter videos and this action when implemented allowed me to complete the reflective cycle.

2. This vlog or video blog that I created to document my work allows me to look back 7 years after the fact and to reflect on whether I agree with earlier conclusions and it creates a flood of memories. I am thinking that this must be a powerful tool for learners and if students used this then it would be a meaningful way of demonstrating understanding, identifying misconceptions and facilitating ongoing reflection. The likely concern would be the time it takes to produce a media presentation.

3. While the time required to post a video might limit this  kind of project it can be included occasionally but I realize that reflection could be continuous and meaningful but it need not be very media rich. I am thinking about an observation I made recently. In September 2018, I worked through a challenging problem on this video lesson with students completing a 2 year program in chemistry. Now 16 months later when I gave them the very same question I observed that the students struggled just as much as they did the first time. This observation led me to reflect on ways to avoid this occurrence in the future and I am currently thinking about asking students to create a digital portfolio of all the work they do but I feel that they should add reflective notes to themselves to go with each post or artifact.  Getting teenagers to buy in to this when it would not be for a grade is also a challenge but that leads me on to another reflection about how we assess.  Finally I want to relate all of this to the Gibbs model and I can say that I have described a problem and analyzed it finally I must now move to an action plan.

A Social Media Experiment

     In 2015-16 I challenged a cohort of 53 advanced high school biology students to join in a great social media experiment. We were all based in Shanghai, China. The air quality was an issue that we all faced and the students and I came from many countries including the USA, Canada, South Korea, India, Singapore, Denmark, Romania, Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia and Trinidad & Tobago. It was a time when Facebook was at its most popular with teenagers and the iPhone was the phone to have for these privileged young people. Given this context I wanted to engage students in a unique kind of field study that would allow them to search for the correlation between lichens and air quality. Lichens are abundant in Trinidad but I was struck by their absence in Shanghai and China as a whole. The story of the Global Lichen Project (GLP) is told here by a student in a article for the schools quarterly publication. A photo of this included in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3
Featured Article from The Eagle Review (2016)

      As I implemented and managed the project we posted data to a Facebook page. We engaged past students and students from other schools. Students followed a protocol to study tree trunks. They used phones to capture images and the GPS app to get data on latitude and longitude. Data on local air quality was gathered from relevant websites. With each step I learnt and reflected in action. I received feedback from colleagues at my school and from others who reached out via social media and I started formulating plans for improvement. Now 4 years later I have reflected critically on the strengths and weaknesses of the project. These are too numerous to discuss here in detail but as far as using social media for engaging students the project was a success. Since 2016 many schools have become very strict about child safeguarding and there are strict policies that limit the use of Facebook in this way. I certainly do not agree with these policies because I am of the opinion that social media is a great tool and like a car or a knife it must be used responsibly.
      My reflection on action led me to conclude that there is great merit to using social media in 21st century learning and I have no reason to change the objectives I presented in this video in 2015. The use of social media in the GLP fostered collaboration in a very broad way and student data and conversations provided opportunities for me and other colleagues to identify and correct misconceptions. I did note some areas for improvement with regard to the scientific validity of the methodology. Since 2016 other social media platforms have become more popular with young people and when I launch a similar initiative in the future I will certainly keep this in mind because there is an attraction in novelty that appeals to all people and more so the youth. The possibility of having a cross subject collaboration with computer science to create a GLP app is also under consideration.

References

Gibbs' reflective cycle. (1988). Retrieved from https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit
        /reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle 

Hung, V (2016). The Eagle Review-Spring 2016. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/
        shanghaiamericanschool/docs/eagle_review_spring_2016

Young People must Reflect on Social Distancing.

I have been listening to the news that suggests that young people are not taking heed of the calls for social distancing in the wake of efforts to control the spread of COVID 19.

I reflected on this and on my practice. I teach a course called the Theory of Knowledge to 17 year olds at high school and we discuss issues like this in class but with my students out of class I reflected on what I could do to engage them.  At the same time I was reflecting on the positive feedback I received from the course coordinator on my last lesson (my post just prior to this). I also took heed of the areas I needed to improve on. In response to this I created the lesson below to engage my students in this very relevant issue. I also paid attention to linking my lesson objectives explicitly to the questions and I ensured that the lesson could be used by students with hearing and visual impairment.

I spent much time reflecting on how I would get students engaged and on how I would get them thinking, analyzing and reflecting.

I also reflected on action and I am seeing the need to ask on or two questions during my 2 minute presentation to allow for students to reflect in action.

My full lesson is available on Ted Ed. Please feel free to flip it to suit your needs or to use as is.
See link below:
https://ed.ted.com/on/3CXzQfp1
The graphics were from Piktochart and here is a link to my piktochart

Lesson Plan: Reflective-Reflective Practices in a Blended or Online High School Chemistry Class

Here I present a transcript of a lesson that was designed to promote reflection in action and on action by students in a grade 11 Chemistry course. Links to the video are included below.

TRANSCRIPT OF LESSON PRESENTATION

          Hello and welcome,

   In this video I’m going to explain to you how I design a lesson to promote reflection by my students in action and on action. As I outline this lesson I am reflecting on how I would typically begin and often I would find myself asking students about exothermic and endothermic reactions, how to convert litres to kilograms and what specific heat capacity-C to use. Very often when I ask these questions it might be directed at one particular student or students or it might just be me saying remember when we did this and remember when we did that. Often these statements and questions are met with perplexed and confused looks. Without thinking too much about it the teacher goes into the lesson for the day. 

    What I propose to do in this presentation is to create tools for my students to reflect and to find out whether they’ve understood some of the concepts needed to be successful in this lesson. I’m going to create more tools to allow them to reflect in action. Typically when such a lesson is completed the teacher might give a few questions again, a quiz and students typically may not score a hundred percent. What happens next to those three of four questions out of ten or twenty that the students missed? Obviously they represent certain gaps in knowledge. So what happens next? Should the teacher move to the next topic and begin the cycle all over again? Are the students given opportunities to reflect on what they missed and to find ways to fix those problems.

Here is a look at the actual lesson it’s for grade 11 (age 16 to 17) the subject is chemistry the unit is energetics and the title is calculating energy changes. The lesson itself requires students to apply prior knowledge to a new situation. The lesson is structured to identify and correct student misconceptions so the specific learning target or objective is to allow all students to analyse data and apply mathematics to make predictions about heat or enthalpy changes in chemical reactions. The lesson seeks to promote higher order thinking.

  The teacher will introduce the lesson with an image of a truck adding calcium chloride to a road. Calcium chloride is used for de-icing roads as it dissolves and gives off heat and it makes the ice melt faster. The teacher is then going to ask students if this type of reaction is exothermic or endothermic. This is intended to draw upon the students’ prior knowledge. This is a very important point in this lesson design because the teacher is not going to ask this question of the entire class or of a particular student but all students would be required to enter the LMS. The learning management system-moodle and select their response to this question. When they select their response they will receive feedback and they can reflect on this feedback and then move forward. The lesson would also include multiple means of representation and multiple means of engagement to enable reflection in action because as students make choices whether right or wrong. (This) would be met with feedback associated with the choice. Extension activities are included for students who finish ahead of time and finally and most importantly the students will be encouraged to make a reflective entry or a note into a journal about errors made and new insights and then they would be expected to return to this when they do their review for final examinations at the end of the term, the semester or the year. This reflective journal would be a very useful way of them going back and reminding themselves of the pitfalls and the errors that they would of had when they were learning this topic for the first time.

PRESENTATION LINK

REFERENCES:

 Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2018). Learning and leading with habits of mind: 16 essential
     characteristics for success. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Leading-
     Habits-Mind-Characteristics/dp/1416607412

Kira, E., Komba, S., Kafanabo, E., & Tilya, F. (2013). Teachers’ Questioning       Techniques in 
     Advanced Level Chemistry Lessons: A Tanzanian Perspective. Australian Journal of Teacher 
    Education, 38(12). doi: 10.14221/ajte.2013v38n12.7

Reflection-in-Action Teaching Strategies Used by Faculty ... (n.d.). Retrieved from    https://
     newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=networks

Schön, D. A. (2017). Reflective Practitioner. Taylor and Francis

Strategies for Reflection. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.calacademy.org/educators /science-
    notebooks-for-reflection

Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/
    vandycft/29428436431

Online Teaching and the COVID 19 Pandemic

COVID 19 has come to Bangalore and last night all schools in our state were required to close by government mandate. As a 1:1 ipad school and India's first Apple Distinguished school our administrators expect a quick shift to online teaching by all. As an Ed.D TLET student and a very experienced online teacher and learner I decided to share this lesson with my administrators. I believe it shows how this  course on Reflective Practice has been influencing my thinking and planning of lessons.
See below:

For IB 1 Classes on Monday March 16

LESSON OUTLINE.

Watch my video and study pages 170 and 171 of your text. Make some notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzngnfzDL9c

At 4:57 in the video I present a question. STOP at that point and do the question. Then play the video until the end. You will see the mark-scheme from the IB. Give yourself a mark and note your errors. I want you to reflect on what you missed and watch the video again or read the text as needed. 

If you have burning questions and you prefer to speak with me live, we will be in contact by google hangouts using our CIS email accounts.

Finally, I want you to upload a document to show your initial attempt, corrections and reflections on what you missed.

I also plan to try a live Kahoot soon and a YouTube livestream. Online school is different but we can do this. 

I will let you know about the lab projects that we left hanging soon. Meanwhile start organizing your report with what you have.

Mr. Dubay

SBL to Scaffold Teacher Reflection

After reading the recommended paper by Naidu et al. (2017) I gave some thought to designing ways to convince educators to engage in reflection for its own sake and not because it is deemed essential by administrators. Naidu et al (2017) suggest that SBL or scenario based learning is effective in helping to reflect both in action and on action. This team presented the teachers in their research sample with a scenario set around the planning of a workshop. Participants were required to use discussion forum and concept maps and other tools to structure reflection. 

I certainly agree that reflection can be taught in this way and more significantly it allows educators to reflect on the reflective process and how it should be structured. I believe that it would be best to get away from a contrived scenario and to have educators reflect on real issues.  I will illustrate this with an example. Over the last 4 years I have taught the same chemistry course to 9 cohorts and have reflected in action and on action on a wide range of issues. It is true to say that I sometimes take mental notes about a particular question or concept and if I do not act on this in some way by documenting it then the next time I recall it is when it shows up again one year later with a new group of students. The reason that this happens is because reflection is valuable but if it is documented and shared with colleagues, administrators and students then there is the potential for what is observed in action to be connected to other areas upon the completion of action. Reflective conversation sometimes happen incidentally. Consider the science teacher who hears a conversation between two maths teachers about students challenges with understanding significant figures. This insight will allow the science teacher to better understand how to guide students with this topic. 

Documenting reflections on an active forum on a weekly basis could prove very useful but it is essential that administrators empower teachers to reflect in a meaningful way. When teachers reflect on issues that have meaning to them they are likely to be more engaged in follow up conversations with colleagues that will lead to further reflection. The lesson below was created in response to my observations in action as I worked through a problem with my students. I then reflected post-lesson to create this video which I can share with colleagues and students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q4od5qfY8s&t=34s

Conclusion:

The SBL approach to reflection in a structured way is indeed very useful but if real scenarios exist then colleagues with similar cohorts and common course or topics should network and reflect using an online forum. Social media could be utilised to create reflective groups for educators.

Reference:
Karunanayaka, S. P., Naidu, S., Rajendra, J. C. N., & Ratnayake, H. U. W. (2017). Designing Reflective 
      Practice in the Context of OER-based e-Learning. Retrieved from:  https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext
     /EJ1149180.pdf