I thought I was going to spend the long weekend reading my book for our book club, but I had a Whole New challenge instead: Putting together a million piece puzzle for my kids to play on in our back yard…. swings, monkey bars, slide, fort, climbing wall, and picnic bench all neatly packed in boxes Ikea style… ‘some’ assembly required!
Today I was back at school and boy has reality hit! Tomorrow morning our Grade 8 team has to get the ball rolling for our yearly Renaissance Fair (coming in May); Tomorrow at lunch I start training a Leadership Crew to run a Grade 5 leadership retreat/afternoon at our feeder schools; Some time in the next two weeks I have to set up an afternoon to introduce this program to other middle school leadership teachers/admin; I am running a Pro-D session on ‘Starting Your Own Blog’ a week from Saturday and I still have a number of hours work to do to set things up; I have a sleepover fundraiser at the school in just over two weeks; and my kids are in musical theatre plays (playing at alternating performances) this Thursday & Friday night as well as two shows Saturday… yikes!
And then there is my class Science Alive! wiki. As I said in a comment earlier this week, “I think that I am guilty of seeing the value of using technology in guiding learning, but not effectively guiding learning in my technology use.”
I have done a pretty good job of getting my students going… but now as momentum builds I have come to the realization that I don’t have a marking rubric to guide me, or my students, as we move towards a final product.
My class is assembling a lego model without the instructions, or even the image of the final product on the front of the box. This isn’t a problem for the creative/motivated students; they will assembly a better model in ways that I could never have ‘instructed‘ them… but some students need structure, they have been fed it for years and expect it (even from yours truly – this isn’t finger pointing, it is observation).
I let technology supersede pedagogy.
On the bright side, I am a teacher in my 9th year and I’m loving the vitality and enthusiasm my attempts at a 2.0 Classroom have given me. So what if I am out of my comfort zone, as are some of my students. So what if learning is messy. Of course my approach will be more pedagogically sound next time... but as I start putting all the pieces together, I have come to the realization that some things are worth doing… even if some assembly is required!
Feedback and suggestions for the wiki are invited…
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Images: 050724006lego05 & 050724007lego06 by quadrapop on flickr.
Originally posted: April 11th, 2007Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: This is the power of a blog… I won’t reflect here, instead I will let the two comments on my original post do that for me. Thanks to Gabriela and Claudia for being so insightful and contributing to my learning! – – – Comments
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Claudia Ceraso on Sunday, 22 April 2007, 22:50 CEST