Eb's Comm Reflection Blog

18. Australian Catholic University, Bachelor of Education.

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Critical Reflection 4

REWRITE OF CRITICAL REFLECTION 2- Why do I need to become a reflective practitioner? Please see blog post “Critical Reflection 2″ for original post. 

Below is a screenshot of my feedback I received from my two peers:

Here is my Critical Reflection 4, enjoy! 

I hold the belief that everyone, no matter their chosen field, should reflect on their work to develop themselves and to constantly try new things in their career. As my chosen career is education, I stand firm on the idea that Reflecting on your teaching styles or habits are a good idea to continuously develop your skills as this is a major part of becoming a teacher as Regan (2012) agrees, “teachers need to focus on their own professional development” and “teachers need to spend time outside the classroom with other dedicated individuals”. Children cannot always be engaged by the same things or tactics and their engagement levels and interests change every year, term and day. Constantly reflecting upon our classroom ways allows us to reflect on our decisions and actions, share them with our colleagues to ensure we are all developing professionally and decide what works and what does not. I am a strong believer that once you reflect on a topic, you then have a greater understanding and truly know where you stand on a particular topic. Reflecting is the best tool to aid professional development as it ensures that knowledge and experiences are transferred from short term memory to long term memory. Consistence reflection ensures that we create goals that help to motivate our careers. We may not reflect as much as we should as many assume that reflecting involves journal writing that comes across as quite lengthy and boring, however as FlindersAU (2016) explains there are many different sources of reflections, these include “include reflective learning journals, autobiographies, portfolios, critical group audience and mentoring.” I believe that every single practitioner no matter your area, should be reflecting regularly to continue to develop their skills and better themselves. In saying this I also hold the opinion that you should not only reflect on your career but also reflect on your life and actions outside of your work. To me, reflection should be a part of everyone’s daily life as a type of debriefing after your day in order to relax.

 References:

Margaret regan. (2012). Edutopia. Retrieved 31 August, 2016, fromhttp://www.edutopia.org/blog/master-teaching-margaret-regan

Flinderseduau. (2016). Flinderseduau. Retrieved 31 August, 2016, fromhttp://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/reflectivepractice/reflect/Tools for reflective practice.pdf

IMAGE- Wordpresscom. (2015). NUWG. Retrieved 8 September, 2016, fromhttps://nuwritersguild.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/reflection-is-a-mirror-of-teachers-daily-work/

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Critical Reflection 3

How changes in technology impact on the way humans communicate, and the ethical issues that surround these changes. 

Technology is one of those things that are ever-changing, it will never be the same, evolving every day, every week, every year. Therefore the way we communicate is also changing and ever will be. For example, My mum keeps mentioning how much I text and how I never return a missed call but I just text the person to follow up. Mum then compares this to when she was younger and would have limited communication with her friends when at home as phone calls were expensive and it was easier to make plans and talk in person. The advancement in technology has given the younger generation lesser communication skills, most of the people I know who are my age will prefer to order take away or book appointments online than physically call up the provider. Wi-fi, Smartphones, Facebook and other sources of social media have made it to easy to be lazy when it comes to face to face communication with another individual.

(Magdum, V, 2015)

The two biggest ethical issues of the changing technology is privacy and confidentiality as mentioned in Eye On Ethics (Reamer, 2001). These are major issues as with today's advanced technology you do know for sure who is on the other end of the device, who is receiving what you are sending and who can view your personal life. Any breaches of any of your information is a huge ethical issue. However, due to technology and the way we communicate forever changing “we haven’t come to grips with what is ethical…In relation to technologies such as social media” (Wadhwa, 2014). I believe that the way we communicate is changing too quick as my 12-year-old brother and I already communicate and use technology in completely different ways to each other. Not to mention our values are also quite different so what is ethical to me may not be to him.

 (Manila Speak, 2015)

References:

Reamer, F. (2001, October 1 2001). Social Work Today. [Weblog]. Retrieved 14 September 2016, from http://www.socialworktoday.com/news/eoe_100101.shtml

Vivek wadhwa. (2014, April 15). Laws and Ethics Can’t Keep Pace with Technology.[Weblog]. Retrieved 14 September 2016, from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/526401/laws-and-ethics-cant-keep-pace-with-technology/

IMAGE 1-Magdum, V. (2015). Wordpresscom. Retrieved 14 September, 2016, from https://vijaymagdum.wordpress.com/tag/mobile-technology

IMAGE 2-Manilaspeakcom. (2015). Manila Speak. Retrieved 14 September, 2016, from http://www.manilaspeak.com/cool/iphone-poem

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Critical Reflection Two

Why do I need to become a reflective practitioner?

I believe that everyone should reflect on their chosen career as it a way to continuously develop yourself and try new things in your workplace. Reflecting on your teaching styles or habits are a good idea to continuously develop your skills as this is a major part of becoming a teacher as Regan (2012) agrees, “teachers need to focus on their own professional development” and “teachers need to spend time outside the classroom with other dedicated individuals”. This allows us as teachers to reflect on our decisions and actions, share them with others and decide what works and what does not, as well as helping us learn more about ourselves. I am a strong believer that once you reflect on a topic, you then have a greater understanding and truly know what works and what doesn’t. From reflecting we also learn what we can do again next time and what we need to improve, it is a good tool to improve yourself and your career. We should also become reflective practitioners as reflecting helps move knowledge and experiences from short term memory to long term memory helping you to remember what happened and what to do next time. Reflecting also helps create goals that further motivate you as a teacher or in your career, having goals in your head become quite easy to ignore as you can forget them or think they are not important as no one knows them, however if you have reflected on a situation or yourself, created some goals and written them down in your reflection you are more likely to stick to and achieve these goals as there is more pressure on you to remember them and complete your goal. We may not reflect as much as we should as many assume that reflecting involves journal writing that comes across as quite lengthy and boring, however as FlindersAU (2016) explains there are many different sources of reflections, these include “include reflective learning journals, autobiographies, portfolios, critical group audience and mentoring.” I believe that every single practitioner no matter your area, should be reflecting regulary to continue to develop their skills and better themselves.

(NUWG, Wordpress 2015)

References:

Margaret regan. (2012). Edutopia. Retrieved 31 August, 2016, fromhttp://www.edutopia.org/blog/master-teaching-margaret-regan

Flinderseduau. (2016). Flinderseduau. Retrieved 31 August, 2016, fromhttp://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/reflectivepractice/reflect/Tools for reflective practice.pdf

IMAGE- Wordpresscom. (2015). NUWG. Retrieved 8 September, 2016, from https://nuwritersguild.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/reflection-is-a-mirror-of-teachers-daily-work/

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Critical Reflection One

Do digital natives really exist?

The term ‘Digital Native’ is defined as “an individual who was born after the widespread adoption of digital technology” (Techopedia, 2016) and as Murat (2016) explains a digital native is “an individual born after 1980” and are considered as the “immigrant generation”. However this places a stereotypical outlook onto digital natives as we are made to assume that anybody 36 and younger is a digital native, which may not be true as some countries are a lot more heavily influenced by technology than others. When you go into a classroom these days all the children understand the computerised systems and regularly use them. Children now are being brought up in the technological era and are faced with technology and computers on a daily basis as well as video games and online learning games that children use. These children have grown up with a lot of their schooling being computerised compared to adults who were born before 1980 who had traditional schooling with books and minimal schooling assistance from technology. I think that this generation finds it hard to believe that a digital native really exists as such a big change in technology and the way we use it has occurred in their lifetime. This then may be hard for them to fathom how and why the current young generation use technology and how we are in fact digital natives. For example if the older generation were doing an assessment and needed to gather information they would spend hours at the local library looking information up in encyclopaedias. They now think it is absurd that it takes a student a minute these days on the computer to have all the information required at our fingertips and our public library usage has dramatically reduced since technology has become more prominent in society. I am aware that not every person believes that digital natives exist and I am also aware that a lot of this is the older generation who may be in denial. However, I personally believe that digital natives exist as I am one myself and it is evident that I use technology different to my mother my grandmother.  

References:

Murat, A., Hakan, D. & Gökçe, A. (2016). What makes you a digital native? Is it enough to be born after 1980?. Computers in Human Behaviour, 60(1), 435-440. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.089 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2932894

What is a Digital Native?. (2016). Retrieved fromhttps://www.techopedia.com/definition/28094/digital-native

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. Retrieved fromhttp://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.acu.edu.au/docview/214629645?accountid=8194