2c. Real-world problems

Evidence of competence in ISTE-CS

Authentic experiences

Throughout this program, I have been interested in finding ways that we can capitalize on students’ authentic experiences - things that really do come up in the students’ lives - to address the “real-world problem” aspects of the ISTE Student, Teaching, and Coaching standards. I believe that utilizing the experiences that naturally come up in students’ lives, and giving a name to those experiences through reflection (e.g., naming a certain situation “a time when math was relevant in the real world”) can help students create truly authentic stories about the things they are learning.

In my Global Collaborative Project, “Tell me about a time you used math,” I used to technology to collaborate with others to make a small database of stories where people describe times when math was useful in real life. (You can still submit stories here.) These stories could be useful for addressing the common student lament that math isn’t useful in real life.

In my blog post, What does it mean for “technology to work for you”?, I reflect on how my understanding of the phrase “making technology work for you” has developed over the course of this program. To illustrate my understanding, I discuss how I have learned to make text-to-speech technologies work for me, and a time when my mom asked me to help her decide on a set of digital tools to organize her pottery designs. While neither of these are examples of assuming professional roles to produce products that are useful to a wide audience, the understanding that I’m describing lends itself to that purpose because they are examples of real needs being met. By understanding how I can make technology work for individuals (i.e., myself and my mom), I am better able to imagine products that could be meaningful to a wide audience. This makes me believe that having students reflect on their natural experiences as examples of the things they are learning, as I have discussed above, would benefit them in tackling real-world problems.

Peer coaching question(s)

Peer coaching question(s) I developed for this indicator in Compatibility between peer coaching and the ISTE-CS: Are there local or global communities that your students could interact with during the learning experience? Is there a way they could assume a professional role and research real-world problems? Could they collaborate with anyone outside the classroom? Could they produce a meaningful and useful product?