Standard 4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global AwarenessCandidates 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)
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This artifact is a report I created in February of 2016. The report is a summary of my experience working with an ELL student at our school. The purpose of my interaction with this student and his teachers was to consult on the use of digital tools and resources which might be utilized to facilitate increased success in his academic classes. The report summarizes several observations and meetings that took place over a period of about a month. The experience was one of those rare times when I get a chance to really get to know a student and experience the school through their eyes for a change.
Standard 4.3 covers modeling and facilitating digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. This artifact mentions tools such as Google Cardboard which can be utilized to enhance cultural understanding and increase global awareness. It also addresses other elements of Standard 4.3 including the use of digital tools to support diverse student needs. For example, the report covers how our department came to “loan” the student a Nexus 7 to use a pocket translator and class resource. This has worked out very well for the student in his language arts classes. I also shared several online resources with his teachers since not all of the difficulties we discovered were the student’s alone.
Learning how to utilize technology to help students with problems outside of the norm is has been such an important aspect of my time at Kennesaw State University. In my daily work I rarely get the opportunity to spend so much time with a single student. In doing the observations and research that this report represents, I have come to understand the importance of embracing, understanding and appreciating diverse cultures and languages. In fact, after completing this experience, I added a unit to the online staff development course I teach for all staff on the importance of developing facility with a second language and several tools to aid them in that quest. In the future I hope to look at ways to help students bring and share their culture in a more meaningful way with classmates.
We must strive to find a way teach all students. However, we often mistakenly think that the reason for this inclusion is purely benevolent when, in actuality, it can be self-serving. Every student is an opportunity and technology can offer ways to help integrate these students into our classrooms. My hope is that our ELL students will be even better served going forward. We will, of course, be able to use achievement data as an objective metric. However, I am equally interested in the smile quotient. I define that as how often students and parents from other countries and cultures smile during their interactions with our teachers and staff.
Standard 4.3 covers modeling and facilitating digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. This artifact mentions tools such as Google Cardboard which can be utilized to enhance cultural understanding and increase global awareness. It also addresses other elements of Standard 4.3 including the use of digital tools to support diverse student needs. For example, the report covers how our department came to “loan” the student a Nexus 7 to use a pocket translator and class resource. This has worked out very well for the student in his language arts classes. I also shared several online resources with his teachers since not all of the difficulties we discovered were the student’s alone.
Learning how to utilize technology to help students with problems outside of the norm is has been such an important aspect of my time at Kennesaw State University. In my daily work I rarely get the opportunity to spend so much time with a single student. In doing the observations and research that this report represents, I have come to understand the importance of embracing, understanding and appreciating diverse cultures and languages. In fact, after completing this experience, I added a unit to the online staff development course I teach for all staff on the importance of developing facility with a second language and several tools to aid them in that quest. In the future I hope to look at ways to help students bring and share their culture in a more meaningful way with classmates.
We must strive to find a way teach all students. However, we often mistakenly think that the reason for this inclusion is purely benevolent when, in actuality, it can be self-serving. Every student is an opportunity and technology can offer ways to help integrate these students into our classrooms. My hope is that our ELL students will be even better served going forward. We will, of course, be able to use achievement data as an objective metric. However, I am equally interested in the smile quotient. I define that as how often students and parents from other countries and cultures smile during their interactions with our teachers and staff.