TPE E: Creating and maintaining effective environments for student learning

E. Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for student learning
TPE 10: Instructional Time

• Allocating instructional time
• Managing instructional time
  

TPE 11: Social Environment

• Understanding the importance of the social environment
• Establishing a positive environment for learning
• Maintaining a positive environment for learning
  

How can you structure your instructional time effectively while using technology? How can using technology provide a positive, motivating, and supportive environment?

Links:

• Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that represents more than 175,000 educators from 119 countries and nearly 60 affiliates. Their September, 2003 issue of Educational Leadership is an in depth look at developing relationships within the classroom.
• For me, the jury is still out on this one - I've seen the 60 minutes interviews, and I'm not quite sure how to respond to Jason Ryan Dorsey's ideas about Generation Y and the evolution of school culture. You can judge for yourself at his website, schoolculture.com.
  

Reflection:

As students get older, I think it becomes even more important to understand the role that technology is playing in the lives of our students. Whereas I spent hours listening to music and talking on the phone with my classmates, students today spend that time texting, on myspace, and yes, listening to music (downloaded now, of course). Teachers are finding ways to incorporate technology into the classroom to increase the interest of students, but it seems to me that there should also be some time when they are doing that old fashioned "grunt work." Not every thing that they do in their lives will be fun, feel good, and technologically driven.

This is probably the biggest problem that I have with the interviews I have seen with Jason Ryan Dorsey (above). You will have times when you don't enjoy what you are doing. You will have times when you fail. It is important to learn how to handle that. In my classrooms, my goal is to teach students how to interact with everyone - not just their buddies, to handle frustrations appropriately, and to hold their chins up high even in the face of failure -knowing they worked hard and did their best. I want my students to experience both the thrill of victory and the disappointment of defeat, and know that both are OK.