High Tech Reflection Strategies Make Learning Stick

                When I think about the relationship between an experience and an educative experience, the word reflection comes up to my mind. Sometimes, as educators, is hard to distinguish when we are proposing educative experience to our student and when it is just an experience. In my opinion when the student is able to reflect about what she or he did, the experience becomes educative.

                It is interesting how this teacher encourage their student to reflect and also find a way to do it interesting for them. “The goal of highlighting reflection in the classroom is to encourage students to begin to reflect more frequently and naturally in their day-to-day lives.” I do not believe that there is a single teacher who does not think how important the reflection is. But I do believe that there are a lot of teacher who do not think in the best way to develop this important skill.

                If teacher cannot find a way to encourage their student to do this, they can start asking what they do when something important happen in their lives. The answer probably will be “change my face book status”.   The idea to reflect is present in everyday life and the idea of writing that experience or leting other people know about it, is also something that even I do very often. Teacher need to understand that the best way to discover what motivate their student, is probably ask and observe them.  

                But, what can an early childhood teacher do? Probably reflection would take a different shape in an early childhood classroom and in a high school classroom. The important thing is that it has to be present in both. A six year old is probably more interested in draw his experiences than write it on a blog, but how interesting would be if that child started blogging as soon as he is ready  and then have the possibility to review it 10 years later.  At the age of 4 and 5 children verbally reflect about their new learning, how about if we record them in videos and we create a blog with their videos reflections? They will be able to review it at any time and see a couple of years later, how much their change or not their thoughts.

                The Internet is a surface without limit. It can be used as a resource for teachers and for student. I deeply believe that if we are encouraging our student to reflect it is important, as a teacher, to do it also. Imagine have the possibility to review some reflection of your teaching that you did 5 years ago. Starting to write or video record our experiences as a teacher, can be a good way to show and model our student. We can use this tool not just because we can review it 5 years later, but also because we can use it to encourage our student to do it too