self-determination theory - edci 5065

Vicki Davis believes in allowing students to teach themselves unfamiliar concepts or technology. She said in the video that the teacher does not have to be in front of the classroom lecturing all the time. Davis believes in a collaborative effort, where students help each other learn new technology and work in groups to complete tasks. Her students are autonomous because they are self-directed and complete work without a large amount of help from the teacher. There is no hand-holding in Vicki Davis's classroom; the students are independent learners. They can decide what interests them and explore it further by teaching the class about an unfamiliar topic. This may even motivate her students to do better work because they are doing something that interests them and relates to their lives, since technology is omnipresent in every aspect of life nowadays. They develop competence by assisting each other in learning a technology and teaching the class about it, as the video showed a young man directing others in the Sims program they were using.

Davis's students used relatedness since they used wikis, blogs, videos, and other technologies to connect to other classrooms around the world to share ideas and collaborate on projects. In the video, one girl noted she wrote a blog post on digital citizenship while working with students from other classrooms around the world. The students in Vicki Davis's classroom live in rural Georgia, but they can work with people from around the globe using the power of technology. This demonstrates relatedness because they are connecting and discussing ideas with others and meeting people they might otherwise never meet.

One question I have for Vicki is how she deals with not knowing a concept/technology but she teaches it anyway. I would feel unsure of myself as a teacher if I did not have at least a vague understanding of what I was teaching. What if a student has a question you can't answer? I know it's fine not to know everything. However, if you always tell students that you don't know the answer and they should look it up, doesn't that reflect poorly on you as a teacher? Teachers don't have to be endless sources of knowledge and wisdom, and students do need to seek the answers for themselves. However, if I were a student and the teacher often said they did not know or understand something, I would start to think of them as incompetent. Thanks for reading!