(REFLECTIONS ON YOUR EXPERIENCES VISITING SCHOOLS)
This semester in ED100, we will engage in a digital comic strip project | To synthesize field observations, course readings, and classroom learning experiences, three posts to your FieldBlog will each include a ~4-6 panel digital comic strip and a ~250 word essay. These posts are very important and should be completed patiently and thoughtfully as reflective practice is enhanced by the records made of your in-school observations of teaching and learning and the culture of the classroom.
Assignment Due | project is due at the time of the final exam.
This assignment will be assessed using the field blog and digital comic strip assessment rubric.
Once during the semester, then again during final exams | You are required to share your FieldBlog and digital comic strips with our ED100 class community. (Let’s review the digital comic strip presentation schedule).
PROJECT OBJECTIVE & RATIONALE
Your FieldBlog is your opportunity to examine and insightfully question your school observations, as well as to enhance your understanding and discernment about the different teacher licensure areas in the state of Ohio.
The objective of this project is for you to weave self-reflections on your field observations with your critical commentary on political, economic, and socio-cultural challenges and/or reasons for hope currently in the field of education.
The intention of the FieldBlog project is to document and describe what you recognize as meaningful and relevant to the education and the social and emotional wellbeing of the children that you are preparing to work with in the future! This is accomplished by reviewing your field notes of your initial observations and continues as you identify for focused consideration those events that were most memorable and significant for you.
Journal writing is critical to the development of self-reflective practice. Self-reflection is an attribute of professional practice. Indeed, we do not learn and develop from experience as much as we learn from reflecting on that experience. In this context, self-reflection is the process of constructing meaning by thinking about and interpreting the significance of lived experiences. Your digital comic strip affords an opportunity to write about and illustrate your lived experiences in the field, to question and analyze your lived experiences, both as a student growing up and now as a preservice teacher, and to transform your beliefs and assumptions about teaching, learning and education into understanding and professional knowledge.
THE COMIC STRIP PROJECT
Your digital comic strip will feature you (well, your avatar) and a first person self-reflective narrative response to your field observations.
For each post to your FieldBlog, use the digital comic strip tool Pixton to produce a four (4) to six (6) panel digital comic strip. (We have a class subscription to Pixton and workshops are scheduled during class). Informed by your thoughtful synthesis of field observations, course readings and classroom learning experiences, your comic strip tells a story about your lived experiences making classroom observations. The comic strip can be serial or each strip can stand alone. As represented by your digital avatar, produce your comic strip in the first person.
While your comic strip features you and is based on your ED100 field observations, through your comic strip, you can be in dialogue with anyone, not limited to the cooperating teacher, a former teacher of yours, students you are observing, ED100 classmates, myself, authors we are reading, or other important people in the field of education.
A first step for this project is to familiarize yourself with the digital comic strip application, Pixton. This semester, we have a classroom subscription to Pixton. It’s a powerful and relatively user-friendly app for creating simple or complex comics using characters, scenes, and things (all provided). Everything is highly editable and characters can be moved into almost any pose.
FOLLOW THIS LINK TO GET REGISTERED AND ALL SET UP –> ED100 PIXTON CLASSROOM JOIN CODE F22
EMBED YOUR AVATAR IN YOUR COMIC
We’ll take some time during class to create avatars — digital images of ourselves. This will help us produce comics in the first person. We’ll also explore other aspects of the app.
DURING CLASS
Beginning in the middle of the semester, every LC will have about thirty minutes (~30 minutes) to share and discuss the comic strips they are producing. (The Learning Circle schedule for these discussions can be found with the LX and CC schedule).
During the designated class period, each LC member will:
- Share their individual comic strip,
- Synthesize their field observations, course readings and classroom learning experiences informing their comic strip, and
- Generate discussion. (Encourage classmates to connect to their comic strip by sharing relevant stories about their lived experiences in the field of education).
AFTER CLASS
Following class discussion of your comic strip, each LC member writes a brief essay (~250 words or about one page). In your essay:
- Explain your comic strip and how it connects with your field observations
- Directly and explicitly, connect your field observations to course readings or current connections.
- Include in your discussion the relevance of elements in your comic strip such as setting, characters, and props.
By Friday at midnight, after sharing and discussing your comic strip in class, post your comic strip along with your accompanying essay to your ED100 FieldBlog.
Distinguish each fieldblog post to your WebBlog with an appropriate title that includes FieldPost1 or FP2, etc.
Prior to each school visit, formulate a question to guide your observations
Develop each question as you review and reflect on concepts and ideas considered in course readings, classroom learning experiences, current connections and your previous classroom observations that you’ve made for ED100. When in the field I encourage you to employ observation techniques we practiced in class. As you produce your FieldBlog, be intentional by making specific references to course readings and discussions to facilitate your synthesize of field observations with what we have been exploring in class. In some instances these concepts may inform or guide your thinking about education and in other instances they may challenge or interrupt your thinking.
Reviewing your FieldBlog about your experiences visiting schools
You should notice changes and growth in your own learning about teaching. In particular, your FieldBlog should reveal new ways you have learned for noticing, thinking about, and analyzing schooling as not only about teaching and learning but also as a political and cultural experience for teachers and their students. Through reflective practice you can transform information and raw experience into personal understandings about teaching and professional knowledge about the field of education.
RESOURCES
Pixton Create simple or complex comics using characters, scenes, objects. All objects are highly editable, and characters can be moved into almost any pose. ED100 PIXTON CLASSROOM JOIN CODE F22
Pixton EDU: Intro for Educators
Welcome to the World of Education | David Shutkin 