4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Artifact: Diversity Blog Post
Reflection:
As I have gone through my course of studies at Kennesaw State University, I have been exposed to and have sought out information to enhance my knowledge in the field of education. I have learned best practices to enrich my knowledge as an educator and enhance the learning experiences of my students. Not only have I learned how to integrate technology into my teaching, but I have expanded my horizon on differentiating the educational content, process, and product of students. I have researched and modeled ways to use digital tools to support the needs of the diverse learners I have the pleasure of teaching each day. This artifact was a blog post created in ITEC7430 and it required me to critically evaluate my promotion of cultural understanding, diversity, and global awareness in my classroom. It required me to think about these topics and how they apply to technology enhanced classrooms as we move forward in the 21st Century.
The Diversity Blog Posting demonstrates mastery of Standard 4.3 because it incorporated the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. The post reflects on the fact that I encourage the student use of digital tools to expand horizons and gain exposure to the global world. Being that a vast majority of students at my school receive free and reduced lunch, they are considered to be living in poverty. Their real world experiences are lacking. By granting exposure to the world around them through accessible digital tools, students are able to have access to an infinite amount of knowledge. This enhances their cultural understanding/perspective and increases global awareness.
The creation of this artifact showed me how students should use technology as a component to gather vast amounts of information and share knowledge. It taught me the importance of providing students with tools to allow them access to the world in their very own hands. It also made me think about how I could enhance learning and communication in meaningful ways. One way to improve the quality of the artifact and improve my own promotion of the standard in my classroom is to give students opportunities to communicate with the global world. By granting my classroom full of diverse students additional ways to communicate with others outside of the classroom, global awareness would be enhanced. This awareness can be increased through the use of teacher-supervised discussion and collaboration. Granting this access to students would allow them to gain valuable communication skills and help them see themselves as a member of a much larger community.
This artifact impacted school improvement. As a result of this posting, I saw a need to enhance the communication to students and families in my classroom and that of the school. As noted in the artifact, blog postings should do more than just give a recap of curriculum or current events. It should provide an opportunity for communication and collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. I suggested opportunities for increased digital communication within my school community through blogs and through online learning management systems like Edmodo. This helped promote a school culture of collaboration and communication beyond paper and blog postings. There is a lot of growth that still needs to be done, but this is a great starting point to foster an environment that promotes diversity and cultural awareness.
As I have gone through my course of studies at Kennesaw State University, I have been exposed to and have sought out information to enhance my knowledge in the field of education. I have learned best practices to enrich my knowledge as an educator and enhance the learning experiences of my students. Not only have I learned how to integrate technology into my teaching, but I have expanded my horizon on differentiating the educational content, process, and product of students. I have researched and modeled ways to use digital tools to support the needs of the diverse learners I have the pleasure of teaching each day. This artifact was a blog post created in ITEC7430 and it required me to critically evaluate my promotion of cultural understanding, diversity, and global awareness in my classroom. It required me to think about these topics and how they apply to technology enhanced classrooms as we move forward in the 21st Century.
The Diversity Blog Posting demonstrates mastery of Standard 4.3 because it incorporated the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. The post reflects on the fact that I encourage the student use of digital tools to expand horizons and gain exposure to the global world. Being that a vast majority of students at my school receive free and reduced lunch, they are considered to be living in poverty. Their real world experiences are lacking. By granting exposure to the world around them through accessible digital tools, students are able to have access to an infinite amount of knowledge. This enhances their cultural understanding/perspective and increases global awareness.
The creation of this artifact showed me how students should use technology as a component to gather vast amounts of information and share knowledge. It taught me the importance of providing students with tools to allow them access to the world in their very own hands. It also made me think about how I could enhance learning and communication in meaningful ways. One way to improve the quality of the artifact and improve my own promotion of the standard in my classroom is to give students opportunities to communicate with the global world. By granting my classroom full of diverse students additional ways to communicate with others outside of the classroom, global awareness would be enhanced. This awareness can be increased through the use of teacher-supervised discussion and collaboration. Granting this access to students would allow them to gain valuable communication skills and help them see themselves as a member of a much larger community.
This artifact impacted school improvement. As a result of this posting, I saw a need to enhance the communication to students and families in my classroom and that of the school. As noted in the artifact, blog postings should do more than just give a recap of curriculum or current events. It should provide an opportunity for communication and collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. I suggested opportunities for increased digital communication within my school community through blogs and through online learning management systems like Edmodo. This helped promote a school culture of collaboration and communication beyond paper and blog postings. There is a lot of growth that still needs to be done, but this is a great starting point to foster an environment that promotes diversity and cultural awareness.