Facilitator
ISTE-E Standard Text
Facilitator - Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement of the ISTE Standards for Students. Educators:
Foster a culture where students take ownership of their learning goals and outcomes in both independent and group settings.
Foster a culture: Creating shared values, social norms and goals around the purpose and approach to learning by, for example, bringing students into the process of and maintaining culture; setting up space and time for students to fail and try again; establishing space and time for student reflection and goal setting; allowing students voice and choise in demonstration and evaluation of competency
Independent and group settings: individual or collaborative group work. conducted online, face to face, or hybrid.
Manage the use of technology and student learning strategies in digital platforms, virtual environments, hands-on makerspaces or in the field.
Use of technology and student learning strategies: Keep students supported, on task and learning in a variety of face-to-face, digital or hybrid environments
Create learning opportunities that challenge students to use a design process and computational thinking to innovate and solve problems.
Design process: A methodology for problem-selving; a series of steps used to solve a problem and design a solution. For example, human-centered design process, project-based learning, engineering design processese and scientific method.
Computational thinking: A problem-solving process that includes, but is not limited to, the following characteristics: formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to solve them; logically organizing and analyzing data; representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations; automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps); identifying, analyzing and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources; and generalizing and transferring this problem-solving process to a wide variety of problems.
Model and nurture creativity and creative expression to communicate ideas, knowledge or connections.
Reflection
Traditionally, schools promote the idea of teachers as being the head of the classroom and that all learning goes and comes from them. As we move away from that factory-inspired mindset and utilize technology more inside of the classroom, educators transform into facilitators that promote and encourage students to learn on their own. True learning occurs when students are in charge of their own education and educators are present to simply help steer them in the right direction. The impact of this is twofold: 1) students value learning more because they created it themselves and are invested in seeing it succeed and 2) learning goes beyond the classroom because skills are built into students and seeing its usefulness, they can apply it to other aspects of their lives. The saying, "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime", applies here. Our role as educators isn't to give students all the information, it is to provide the means and drive for the students to do so on their own. Only then will the next generation be equipped to solve tomorrow's problems through innovative thinking.
Artifact 1
In my tenure as a summer debate instructor, part of my duties was to prepare students for a tournament against other students at the end of the camp. Despite having the most novice and youngest group that had never debated before, we encouraged them to do tournament preparation. Traditionally my group would not participate in the tournament so as not to discourage them from the activity. While I was an instructor, our students were so motivated that they developed an argument block file, which prepares them with responses to common arguments on a topic. They worked together amongst themselves to generate multiple diverse responses and then we complied all of their responses into one file that was used for quick reference during debate speeches.
Artifact 2
During the covid-19 pandemic, my job as an Attendance Counselor required more than just recognizing attendance trends and reporting truant students to SST. Children were home alone, their parents were off at work, and they had all of the freedom at home to do what it is that they pleased. Many students chose to do stay focused on their school and logged in every day but some students took advantage of the opportunity to either oversleep or play video games while they should have been in class. Especially with older students, this required conversations where I explained to them the importance of taking ownership of their own education. I created a Google Voice number and with parent permission, required students to check in with me directly if they were having technical issues or any other event that prevented them from getting online. I was one counselor looking after 700+ students that were working from home. Communication with students was sufficient enough for attendance and they were receptive. On a daily basis I received dozens of messages from students if they had technical issues as well as the steps they took to solve the problem.