Reflection - Cynthia Forte & Kathleen Jackson
This has been a very engaging, fun, growth-filled learning experience for me. We created to learn, and learned a lot. We are fortunate enough to live near each other, so we have spent some quality time together over the past three weekends.
On the first Sunday we talked a lot about ourselves, our jobs, what we hoped to accomplish through this project and our strengths. We brainstormed a lot, looking for ways that our project could assist us in working with our unique groups of students, my high school math classes, and Kathleen’s college career classes. We were challenged in terms of the intersection, but honed in on the Create to Learn theory, and how it might apply to our unique and collective work.
While brainstorming ideas I said something like, how about a before and after lesson? Kathleen then thought of a BCTL and a WCTL Lesson Plan theme. (Before Create to Learn and With Create to Learn, of course). Somehow she envisioned a dinosaur coming across the page during the BCTL, that would feature the traditional objective, PowerPoint, actual lesson, and the test. Students would learn by memorizing and regurgitating information. The WCTL plan would still begin with the same objective, but then move to some engaging hands on project, followed by a review with students sharing what they learned and the instructor reinforcing important concepts. I mentioned about a create to learn project I wanted to have my student do which involved taking selfie pictures with shapes of functions on the background. We left each other with many more questions than answers, but it was a stimulating start.
The second time we got together we brought some of our respective strengths together. Kathleen had been to the Flower Show in Providence and was thinking thoughts of spring. The BCTL/WCTL was replaced by the image of a growth, and how utilizing Create to Learn was much like planting a seed and watching it grow. I dug into some of the platforms that we could use, exploring Powtoon, and had worked through some of the five steps needed to create a video. We focused on Create to Learn as a concept and plotted out our audience, how to capture attention, defined our problem, insinuated our expertise and solutions, and backed up our claim. It was a productive session, and we left knowing we had overcome our first hurdle, defining our project, and then needed to implement. We knew we needed to engage further in the first two steps of the AACRA Model of Digital and Media Literacy: access and analyze.
This past Sunday we met. We had accessed resources, analyzed our materials and goals, and continued to create. I had created some slides in Powtoon and Kathleen had gathered resources that matched the key points we wanted to make. We finished the slides and did the voice overs, and finished feeling accomplished with our work. Our video is quirky and meaningful to us, and hopefully to all educators and career professionals. We shared our strengths, Kathleen’s creativity and ease with recording and my technical and classroom expertise. I loved that I could create with another person.
This document is our reflection, and when we push the button and publish, we will be acting on our work. The collegiality, the brainstorming, the laughter, and the hair pulling brought the concept of Create to Learn alive. I look forward to creating these opportunities for my students.