[Week1]
Greetings.
I am Peter Hogaboam, a master's student in the on-campus program at IU. I have been a trainer/educator for nine years in the classical music field, training students aged 12-18 in instrumental music performance. In this respect I was a school band and orchestra conductor and teacher. My primary interest (from a training/pedagogy perspective) in music was sequentially building intersections of intellectual and fine-motor skills. As a teacher, my philosophy was based upon building layers of skills, using what teachers call a spiral based curriculum. Professionally, and in addition to providing classical training, I have also trained marching bands, taught music history, piano lessons, and group guitar classes.
In a non-professional capacity, I have taught rock climbing and high angle safety procedures, as well as a great number of informal music lessons. In the long ago past I also taught water skiing, specifically knee-boarding and barefoot skiing. I am a teacher not only by trade, but also in personality, and tend to teach most things that I learn.
On a personal note, I am from the mid-west, but have lived in many places, including Michigan (Detroit area), Cincinnati, Chicago, Urbana, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, and, most recently, Southern Indiana. My interests have included travel, rock climbing, outdoor recreation of many kinds, woodworking, songwriting, music composition, blues harmonica, piano, guitar, etc...my primary interest right now, however, is IST!
My academic interests are currently very broad, but include Project-Based Learning, and adult learners, particularly pre-service and in-service teacher training; I am also interested in opening the door to military and corporate training. Content wise, I am currently interested in designing instruction that teaches instructional theory and methods.
Greetings Peter,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to R541!
I also have a background in music. I played piano for 12 years and lots of instruments (percussion, flute, oboe, bassoon, trombone, guitar). I was the drum major in high school and played trombone in my college marching band. I decided to pursue Elementary Education because I wanted to work with all content areas.
You certainly sound like you have a teaching personality! I'm interested in what made you come back for an advanced degree in IST and what you plan on doing once you complete the degree.
Wow, another multi-instrumentalist! In addition to the two of us, I know there is at least one more in the class.
ReplyDeleteI truly loved directing, but it is the kind of job that is intensely stressful even when (maybe even especially when) things are going right! So, for several years I have been searching for an avenue that will build upon my experience in pedagogy. Educational Administration appealed to me for some time, as I was greatly inspired by two great principals I had in Floyd County, but I was also curious about the implementation of educational technology.
I have extensively used technology for my own learning (both professional and personal), lesson planning, music arranging and research. In this respect I am a strong advocate of the power of technology. Still, I found most technology tools actually designed to be a part of the teaching process (for band classrooms) to be rather lacking, either because they were difficult to use, too expensive, or impractical. This is a problem that I do not think is limited to k-12 settings, I feel that useful tech integration requires a great deal more time and thought than teachers have to spare. After seeing a number of fellow teachers happily move into educational technology, instructional design, and corporate training, I decided that IST was the field for me.
My plans for the future are still quite flexible. My initial plan in coming back to school was to prepare for a second career in instructional design. Now that I am here, and see there are so many different aspect of the field, my normally rigid plans for the future have become rather flexible. Once I complete my degree I hope to design instruction for adult learners, specifically in the art (science?) of teaching. I eventually hope to manage a team of such designers, or build my own educational consulting company. I am also interested in research, and am considering pursuing a Ph.d - First though, I must find a question that is worth the years it will take to find the answer!
Hi, peter. It is great to be your first Hoosier Buddy! Exactly I have learnt more about you after reading this post about your previous amazing experience of teaching! You are just versatile like water skiing, rock climbing...You know the meaning of life!
ReplyDeleteMy experience of instruction was in the age group of(16-18) as well as several weeks of (7-12) in a primary school for internship.I found young learners are so impressive in memorizing, quick-reaction, creative thoughts, though they are lacking in logical thinking, patience and stable/reasonable motivation, so I always have the preference for K-12.
One thing I found among K-12 instructor is they are more likely to be reluctant to employ electronic devices in the classroom as they believe students, as they are naive and simple-minded most of time, would be distracted from routines, assignments and etc. English teachers in China complain a lot about electronic dictionary, as they said"Electronic dictionary would not give you full explaination and good examples.Please bring your hard-cover dictionary to the class.", though nowadays electronic dictionary can be advanced enough. What do you think?
Speaking for myself, I did often have students do research for various projects using the internet. However, not all students have access at home, so class time is often used to give access to the information. In many respects this is fantastic, since the students have access to internet connected computers at school, and thus have access to very large amounts of information. However, over time I found that using computers in the classroom was problematic in a number of ways. The biggest reason is that some degree of control is required when you want to use the internet with students.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, keeping students on task (instead of surfing facebook, etc...) requires that computer use guidelines be built into the classroom rules. Unless the computers are used often, this is problematic, because students won't have practice operating under those rules. Consequently, there is usually some battle to be fought (particularly with high school students) over what they can/should be spending their time doing.
Secondly, the network must be controlled in some way because there is a significant amount of material that is not age appropriate for any age whatsoever, much less school aged children. In one school where I worked, a middle school health teacher had students research STD's using Google search. Students naturally searched for their terms, and clicked on 'images.' The teacher was subsequently reprimanded not only privately, but also at the next faculty meeting. Said teacher's professionalism was called into question, etc... I do not think the teacher was fired, but was certainly given a harsh correction. This is one instance where a teacher was doing what they are encouraged to do (use tech at every chance) resulting in very negative unintended consequences.
Third, cultural attitudes must be considered. While in academic circles there is a lot of talk about using facebook as an educational tool, in many communities, this is seen as a questionable activity. I happened to notice that the last nationwide teacher of the year (Rebecca Mieliwocki), who was awarded by the president himself, extensively used facebook as a part of her class. Believing this to be a signal that community fears of social networking sites was a thing of the past, I developed a facebook page for the band of a school district I was interviewing for. When the interview committee asked about use of technology, I chimed in that I had developed a facebook page for the band, and intended to use it to communicate with parents and students, hoping to attain the ever-desirable label of 'tech savvy.' To say this backfired would be a drastic understatement. The previously upbeat tone of the room turned cold and silent. The remainder of the interview was awkward and needless to say, I was not hired.
So, while there it may be sometimes true that the tech-driven solutions simply don't do the job as well (the opposite is just as often true), the largest barriers are not educational. From a teacher's perspective, the most important barriers (political and logistic) must be addressed just as strongly as educational barriers. I feel that tech-integration can only succeed beyond the push of outside forces if, and only if, the technology can integrate politically, socially, and logistically. If it cannot do these things, then adopting them into a classroom is not only an educational risk, but also a risk to a teacher's reputation and career. I do not know about tech-integration politics in China, but here, it is difficult to navigate. On one hand, you want integrate technology to increase the effectiveness of your class. On the other hand, the politics (read: fears) of communities, and the logistics of implementation can drive teachers quickly away from using the best technology.