I chose to play around on EduTopia, which I poked at before, but never with much depth; I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content. This time I had a specific focus so it wasn't so bad. I narrowed in on the Tech2Learn section, further focusing on differentiating instruction through technology. It has long been one of my ideas that I would like to be able to figure out how to effectively use tech to differentiate my instruction, both for students who learn at different paces, as well as Special Pops (SpEd, EL's, Gifted students, ect).)
~ Collaborative Digital Presentations Enrich Projects
I often feel like many case studies/examples are elementary, so I was excited to see a PBL video that focused on secondary grades (even if it was a science content rather than my own English.) I really liked the framework that Kate Summers (the teacher) laid out for her students. Students were given instructions to create lesson plans to teach their concept to their classmates. They were given three requirements for their presentations in order to support multiple learning categories. According to Summers the instructions were, "So the first category was to have some type of visual for our visual learners, so that could be a PowerPoint, a video, a poster...The second category was to be some type of handout for our students that like to take notes and write along...And then the final category was to do some type of engaging activity, such as a crossword puzzle or a word search." Most of the students were focused on using google docs in some way, many of them were using google slides to build their visual, and google docs to build their handout.
This is really useful in my world because it reinforces the idea that if given some autonomy students are more engaged in their work. I also really liked how Summers had her students focusing on supporting multiple types of learning. This applies to my style of teaching as well, I like to assign concepts to students to teach to each other. Several years ago I did a Grammar Wednesday unit where students were each assigned a grammar concept to teach. We had shortened classes on Wednesdays so it was just enough time for students to give a mini lesson. I allowed students to pick their own topics, and then randomly assigned them days. I required the students to have some sort of visual presentation and some sort of handout to give to the class (it couldn't just be a copy of their visual.) I think I want to resurrect this project and build a specific technology requirement in. Perhaps I might make this part of the 'engaging activity' category, which is currently missing from my unit.
~Elyse Eidman-Aadahl on Writing in the Digital Age (Big Thinkers Series)
I chose this video because it focused on writing and storytelling, and as an English teacher that really spoke to me. I was excited to see how technology could really be leveraged for student writing. One of Eidmman-Aadahl's points was that, "human communication is gone in an instant," and that we should be using technology as a tool to make that communication last. She further points out that, " Anybody can circulate content to any other person if they're connected via the internet, point to point, one computer to one computer, anywhere. So, we don’t have to go through controlled channels anymore. We can share with and learn from anybody else connected to the internet." This seems to me to be the biggest leap forward in terms of the way that teaching has changed. We as educators now, more than ever before, are capable of being bridges between our students and the content.
Being a bridge between students and content is one of the things that I still struggle with. In many ways my pedagogical education as a teacher was skewed towards the past, in terms of more traditional teaching styles. New ideas and technologies were starting to filter in, but it was just the beginning. Now things are so different I often feel like I'm relearning my credential program every day. So it was really exciting for me to listen to Eidman-Aandahl talk about digital writing tools. It was also important to me that she still focused on the craft of writing. She said that, "Well, just because, of course, the tools that we use to write and publish might be getting ever-easier to use doesn't mean writing itself is any easier. To write well really means to really think about purpose and audience, to be able to really have credibility, to study, to prepare, to be able to put something out there that really represents something significant that you want to say. And that's no easier just because the tools we use to make it might be getting easier to use." This was particularly important to me in the fact that it tends to be what I experience as a teacher. The directions that filter down from The Powers That Be often seems to be focused on the idea that students will be more successful if we just have them using technology. Eidman-Aandalh really focused on the idea that being a digital native is all well and good, and that we should certainly leverage that, but the digital tool actually makes the importance of actually preaching the written communication skills even more important. My content partner and I saw this with a unit we did the year before last where students wrote their own personal narrative and then published them in a book. To be frank; many were terrible. We realized that although we'd spent some time working on the craft of writing , we hadn't spent enough. These stories that the students published weren't actually any better pieces of written communication just for having been published. So the following year we actually scrapped the publishing component and spent more time on writing and revising.
~John Seely Brown on Motivating Learners (Big Thinkers Series)
I chose this video because the question of motivation has always frustrated me. One of the big points that Brown makes early on in his video is that, "If you look at the disposition of hardcore gamers such as World of Warcraft, massive multi-player games, the surprising thing that you find, contrary to what people think, is these kids, first of all, are incredibly bottom-line-oriented. They want to be measured, because they want to see how much they're improving." He goes on further to describe how upcoming surfers on Maui are collaborating and competing with each other in order to get better. They are watching film of themselves to study and get better. He talks about how this collaboration is similar to what can be seen between collaborative gamers.
Misconceptions about students drive me crazy, particularly when people say, students don't care about their grades/scores. This is total bupkis. The first thing out of almost every student's mouth after being given an assignment is, "How many points is this worth." They want to assign a value to their efforts. I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing either. In fact I think that it might be something that I can try to tap into. The biggest problem is that I simply don't have the time to grade everything (anything really if we actually look at my contract hours) with fidelity. So I guess my biggest question here is; how can I give my students the points value feedback they crave in a way that is actually meaningful and supportive of their continued learning?
One of the things that Brown said that resonated with me the most was, "...what you have is kids that are turned on. And when they get really turned on in the right context there's almost no stopping them." This is exactly what I want to be able to tap into as a teacher. I want to know what motivates my students so that I can really push them to be turned on and tuned in to their work. This is one of the things that frustrated me so much with one of my classes last year; I just couldn't figure out what motivated them, so I had no idea how to target my instruction to get them to buy-in. What worked on one day wouldn't necessarily work the next. Things that had worked for me as a students didn't work for them at all.
Tags: 701, HW, case studies