How do I see the growth mindset, failing forward strategies, and the COVA learning approach impacting my learning as I continue in the program?
Concepts of Educational Technology is one of my first two courses that just scrapes the surface of the multitude of information to come forth on this journey of obtaining my Master's degree in Applied Digital Learning. In this short time, I have acquired new knowledge that is a key component to instilling success within my students each year. These concepts will also contribute to my life beyond this program.
Throughout this course, I have been able to reflect on my teaching practices. I was able to identify that there were methods I had already been doing in my classroom without knowing the correct terminology for them. Some of the concepts that have impacted my learning thus far include the growth mindset, COVA Framework, and failing forward strategies.
Being introduced to the growth mindset opened my eyes in more ways than I could imagine when it came to impacting my learning. In studies presented through Carol Dweck's "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," we learned that there are two types of mindsets. Some people have a fixed mindset and others have a growth mindset. In using her self-assessment tool, I was able to determine the mindset I withheld at the beginning of this course. I was an individual who fell in between the two mindsets. As the course continued, I believe to have transitioned to an individual who lies within a growth mindset. Completing assignments and receiving feedforward helped me to expand my thought process. I understood that even when you may think it's your best work, there's always room for growth. Sometimes it takes failing before you succeed the way you want to. This ultimately leads to personal development! I became very receptive in understanding that once I received feedforward, I was ready to grapple with the challenge to make the necessary changes for the betterment of my work.
The COVA learning approach was also an intriguing method to me. Giving learners choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning experiences had me inquiring how I could implement this framework more often in my fourth-grade classroom. On the other hand, realizing how challenging adopting this framework in my personal learning experience could be. I have always been so used to having more structure and specific assignment requirements to meet when previously in school. However, being enrolled in a program where we have full ownership over our learning and the output of our work with minimum required criteria initially was a challenge for me. Now, I enjoy having endless opportunities to utilize the COVA framework to create amazing work and curate this e-portfolio that reflects my style, personality, and learning manifesto.
We were also graced with the opportunity to build collaborative groups (learning community) to help us succeed throughout this journey. I enjoyed being able to bounce ideas off of each other and provide positive feedforward. Initially, this was a challenging idea for someone like me who typically takes charge of completing everything on their own without any input at work. Always thinking that only I'm going to do this right. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with my learning community and being able to embrace the feedforward from others while making new friends to communicate with throughout the remainder of the program.
In turn, this helped me become more open-minded regarding the endless opportunities there are to professionally develop within education. Therefore, as the course came to an end, I joined a few professional learning networks that will help me continue to grow and learn new things as the world continues to change and old methods of teaching are starting to be questioned. All in all, I will continue forth applying these concepts introduced in Concepts of Educational Technology for myself and my students throughout the remainder of the ADL program and beyond graduation.
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