For this weeks habit, my class is going to watch a Ted Talk on listening. One of the points that we will talk about before the video starts is how easy is should be to communicate in today's world. I'll be very hyperbolic about what it was like to send a letter by the Pony Express, hope the train car wasn't robbed, and wait a few weeks to hear back from the other side. Flash forward to today and we can communicate face to face with practically anyone in the world in an instant, even on a mobile phone.
What se should see is the power of communication, and yet what most of our students see is quite the opposite. Sure, they message each other all the time, but online communication is still very limited in its depth. Comments on videos and social media are all about posting something insane to spark a controversy, and nobody is listening to what anyone else has to say. I will push the students to respond to why they think our communication is so one sided. After this short discussion, we will watch the video above. Some parts of the video are better than others, but as long as the students see that they should think a little more about what is going on around them, they will benefit.
My commitment for the week will be to build time into my classroom for feedback, and to check in more often with my students so that I can understand where they are at in our learning process. A lot of the time, we get so caught up in covering all of the material, that we forget the purpose of the material in the first place. If students are not learning, then there is no use. I will seek to understand my students, to make sure that they can understand me when I continue teaching the next lesson.
What se should see is the power of communication, and yet what most of our students see is quite the opposite. Sure, they message each other all the time, but online communication is still very limited in its depth. Comments on videos and social media are all about posting something insane to spark a controversy, and nobody is listening to what anyone else has to say. I will push the students to respond to why they think our communication is so one sided. After this short discussion, we will watch the video above. Some parts of the video are better than others, but as long as the students see that they should think a little more about what is going on around them, they will benefit.
My commitment for the week will be to build time into my classroom for feedback, and to check in more often with my students so that I can understand where they are at in our learning process. A lot of the time, we get so caught up in covering all of the material, that we forget the purpose of the material in the first place. If students are not learning, then there is no use. I will seek to understand my students, to make sure that they can understand me when I continue teaching the next lesson.