I had the opportunity to join a team from November Learning last week in Louisiana. Our fearless leader Jim Wenzloff, with GPS in hand, brought together Seth Bowers, Lainie Rowell, Howie DeBlasi and I, and set us up to present the world of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, PLN’s and other Web2.0 tools to groups of teachers divided up by grade groupings.
The teachers were great! Their school year just ended and there they were all ready to continue their learning, challenging themselves in a way that, for many of them, was still fairly new and very challenging.
Megan, a teacher in my group, wrote this on a VoiceThread:
“One of the challenges I face is mastering one piece of technology before a newer one is introduced. I feel as though as soon as I become comfortable with one method of technology, I am asked to learn another and incorporate it into my teaching.”
This really coincided with something that Elaan Bauder wrote as a guest blogger here on Pairadimes. Elaan ends the post:
There is amazing & inspiring work going on around the world, in your own country and in your own district. It is important to not only make it accessible, but also realistic and digestible for teachers. When we support growth amongst ourselves as professionals, we are better prepared to nurture growth for our students – because after all, we are all students in this journey together!
There was a lot of learning that went on in Louisiana, but just as in my 2 Point Oh Yeah presentation, the learning created more questions than answers… at least for me.
When introducing ‘new’ tools to teachers what’s the right mix of breadth and depth? How much should we expose teachers to at one time? And how deep should we get with a single tool, a tool that may or may not interest all of the participants?
How do we differentiate instruction for our learners?
What kind of incremental successes should we build in? (For example, I wanted all of my participants to contribute to the VoiceThread, and to edit and practice working on our wiki).
How important is the process?
Perhaps it is just me, but I wonder sometimes if we don’t drown people with our good intentions? We send wave after wave of information ‘at’ them hoping something floats. This doesn’t work with our students, what makes us think it will work for adults?
Don’t get me wrong, I think there was an incredible amount of learning that went on. In talking to teachers it seemed that they were genuinely excited about what they learned. The goal for this training was that every teacher would take one thing back to their classrooms and to their schools to share… my sense was that the teachers we worked with were excited about doing this!
My questions are about my own practice and my own learning. How can I be more effective and have greater influence when introducing learning tools?
Or is it really the tools that even matter?
In my presentation on Thursday morning to the whole group, I spent a bit of time talking about how as adults we let fear hold us back. Perhaps this is where we need to spend more time. Carolyn Foote talks about having a Beginner’s Mind:
Teachers are often accustomed to being considered the “expert mind,” so it is not just that we are asking teachers to see the uses of a particular tool in the classroom–what we are really asking is for is an entire paradigm shift–for teachers to approach their classrooms with a beginner’s mind, a child’s mind.
I’m trying to bring that beginner’s mind to what I do as a presenter. What can I tinker with and try in order to help teachers play and learn more meaningfully?
Another thing that I’m still trying to figure out is how to effectively ’show’ teachers the value of a PLN?
If you fail to connect to the network of learners, you miss out on a global conversation about what you are passionate about. And missing out is a darn shame because it can save you time, energy, and increase your reach, no matter how brilliant (or not) you are. That’s a powerful idea. Smart people get smarter because they have access to the network of learners. People who are just starting out are able to learn as fast as they can to accomplish what they need to do.
Something interesting happened at the dinner table with our team on Tuesday night, (we were joined by Thomas Daccord and Brian Mull who were working locally with another group). The waiter asked, “Where Y’all from?” And we had to go one-by-one around the table naming different cities across North America, and yet we were there as a team. And now miles away from them, I am hyper-linking to them and inviting them, and inviting you, to help me look at my own growth and learning. This sharing, linking and conversing is hard to quantify to someone who doesn’t live it.
It is finally done! I had planned on first showing my video version of A Brave New World-Wide-Web Slideshow in Boston at BLC08. I did it on Mac Powerpoint and it did not convert easily to video… it wouldn’t even convert to PC Powerpoint without the timing messing up! I spent hours on this! I ended up showing the powerpoint version and had a number of people ask me for the video version. Well, this weekend I converted it to pc Powerpoint, then with some $45 software, it is FINALLY done! This is a personally ’story’ that I tell, but I think it can speak to others and I hope it speaks to you! Be brave! Do not go quietly into your classroom!
I plan to offer a downloadable version that is of a better quality here, but I’m off to spend some family time on the beach while the weather is still good. It is coming soon!
Yesterday I had coffee with Heidi Hass Gable, our new District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) President, and blogger at “I was thinking…“. I suggested to her that she watch Lost Generation while we were discussing some well thought out ideas she shared with me about nothing less than the purpose of education. Here is the video:
This morning I thought about a post that I wrote, which keeps coming back to mind.
This post looks at the responsibility of the learner to be an active and engaged participant in the class and in the learning process.
What excites me about web2.0 tools is not the tools themselves, but the ability of these tools to actively engage students in their learning. Students are often far more capable of leading their own learning than we give them credit for. Should students come up with their own manifesto? Or a class manifesto?
Also, it is important to remember that the adults in the building are participants too! What are we going to do this year to model and share our learning journey with our students?
The answers will vary from staff member to staff member… there is no cookie-cutter answer. However, regardless of the path we choose, we owe it to our students to have high expectations.
With the start of the school year coming next Tuesday, I am excited about the possibilities before me. Many wonderful opportunities await myself, my staff, and our students. I believe that if we enter our schools as active, engaged learners, then we can have great expectations, and we can create an environment where we meet those expectations too!
I spent Friday morning with 22 student teachers and a couple teachers from my school. My goal was to introduce them to the world of web2.0, wikis, and del.icio.us. Well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad- I didn’t really get into delicious beyond an introduction. That aside, I think this group of future teachers really understood my point that education is changing and our teaching needs to change too!
The slideshare was my main introduction, and here is the wiki we used. I gave them each a page to play with and used video’s to convey many of the ideas I wanted to get across. I’d like to thank SFU Faculty Advisor and friend John Stockdale for the opportunity.
I’d love to be able to give this message to every student teacher!
Originally posted: January 28th, 2008
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
I haven’t gone to the slideshare version of this slide show in a while. I just went there to get the embed code to repost and saw the stats since uploading this presentation four months ago:
The stat that surprises me the most is the number of downloads. I would love to see some of the adaptations made to those downloads and I’d also love to know how they have been used?
After my last post I went to hear Alan November speak at an afternoon Pro-D session. I then read Brian Kuhn’s blog post and added a comment, which I have edited slightly and included below. In the process of writing this comment I realized a valuable lesson, which I will discuss below the comment:
The afternoon session With Alan November was great!
It was wonderful to hear Alan November again. His webcast for the district was one of the things that lit a fire under me and encouraged my to explore technology as a means for students to learn ‘new things in new ways’.
This weekend I was listening to some of his podcasts and I wrote a blog post about them : Looking back at it, my reflections were somewhat sarcastic and negative… A product of feeling like things just haven’t been moving fast enough.
Tuesday afternoon changed that for me. There are a lot of great teachers out there doing wonderful things, and there are many more teachers out there feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to learn, who are still willing to take the next step forward. On a more personal note, the world of web2.0 has given me wings , but I realized that I too have a long way to go before I am doing all the things that I can to give my students wings too!
Thanks to Jill Reid for the invitation, to all the leaders who helped make a day like today possible, and to Alan November… I am refueled and ready to continue my journey of learning along with my students.
Here are some notes about today e-mailed to me from Joni, a true leader in our school. She may not be tech savvy (yet), but teachers like her who offer their leadership, guidance and support are what will help ‘us’ move forward using technology ‘for learning’ rather than just using technology to teach!
1) Answer questions from class. This kid needs to answer all questions, if he can’t, he needs to find the answer on the web, then post the answer.
2) Continuous researcher through class
3) Official scribe: takes notes for the class every day. Post them to the site.
4) Create a Wiki site. Allows children make a contribution to the world. wikipedia, or your own space like www.wikispaces.com [My attempt - ScienceAlive.]
5) Contributing any source that they find on he web to the class: use a social networking site. eg. www.diigo.com create a diigo account for the class or every student has their own account and then “share to group”. [I used delicious and am now moving to diigo]
Reflect and Learn
Here is the sentence from above that has hit home with me over the past few days, “the world of web2.0 has given me wings , but I realized that I too have a long way to go before I am doing all the things that I can to give my students wings too!”
I currently have a private Ning network for my students, but it is really driven by me! The blog posts, the groups, the forums… all initiated by me! Yesterday I read a post by Konrad Glogowski. The post, “Conversation with Pre-Service Teachers – The Set Curriculum“, was about just that, ‘the set curriculum’ (something I have written about a few times) but a specific section struck a chord with me:
“It seemed logical to me that my responsibility as an educator was to prepare a collection of texts, resources, diagnostic and assessment/evaluation tools in order to achieve specific learning outcomes. I saw myself as a subject expert whose primary responsibility in the classroom was to teach a very specific set of skills and competencies. I saw myself as someone who possessed knowledge and perceived my students as individuals who needed to acquire it.”
I am new to teaching planning 10, and I am trying to launch a specific program, YPI , that I am learning about with the students. So, I did what many teachers do when they are unfamiliar with the curriculum… I teach to it.
In the last little while my posts have been peppered with negative undertones about things not moving fast enough and technology limitations that I have found frustrating. Well, although those things are legitimate concerns, they are things that are for the most part beyond my control. What I can do is create an engaging classroom environment that actually gives my students wings.
Another thoughtful lesson inspired by Alan November , and realized through my blogging/web2.0 experience.
Originally posted: November 23rd, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
After reading Konrad’s post, I went into my classroom and wrote a forum post for my ning networks titled, “You lead the way“, and this is what it said:
Here is your chance to be the teacher today.
What do you want to learn more about? What questions do you have? What interests you?
This can be about Planning 10 or anything else. It can be questions that you often wonder about or just a thought in your head.
You have 2 choices.
1. Respond to this forum
2. Create your own forum discussion
Then I would like you to read what others have written and join in the conversation.
Some of the student discussion choices were (in my opinion) silly. Others good, and still others were heated, including a thoughtful discussion on the Death Penalty, where I had to bite my digital tongue…and sure enough a student came up with a perspective that I thought needed to be shared. These ‘free’ conversations gave the students some ownership of the site and encouraged a greater amount of online conversations afterwards.
I think this post should be mandatory for every student teacher to read before they graduate.
I can hear the rebuttals, and yes there are some sweeping generalizations made… but rather than being defensive, I think it is our duty as educators to make things better… in EVERY classroom. We have the tools, and the understanding of pedagogy to make things better even though logistics, economics and circumstance can impede us. What we need are the exemplars, the role models, and the educational leaders to help us get where we need to be.
Today I went to a Learning Team Celebration where everyone on learning teams shared their successes with regards to action based research, done with colleagues, to explore areas of interest. Learning teams (as described here) promote dialogue among peers looking at areas such as the use of reading strategies, social responsibility programs, numeracy initiatives, and integrating technology to engage students in more meaningful ways. I have realized over the past few months that it isn’t technology per se that will change education. Instead, it is collaboration of teachers using best practice, and of students interacting with us and each other, that will truly and meaningfully change education. Technology, such as web2.0 tools, will help make the process easier, and speed the process up.
Consider this: I have had the honour of teaching with some truly amazing teachers, and yet I have spent little or no time observing them teach. I have not been able to tap into some ‘masterful’ resources just a few classroom doors away from me. Collaboration is key! Is it ironic or apropos that a post about da Vinci, a recluse that hid his work, is a post that highlights the value of collaborating?
This is how we kill each trait that may yield another Da Vinci:1. Curiosita (fromHow to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day) What: Intense and insatiable curiosity; constantly learning due to a desire to ask and answer questions The Murder: In schools, for the most part, students learn only what the teacher decides they will learn. Student questions will often go unanswered if they lead away from the material (go off-topic), or if there are time constraints on what must be learned that leave no time for these questions in class.
7. Connessione (from “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci”) What? Acceptance and appreciation for the interconnectedness of everything in life; interdisciplinary approaches and thinking The Murder: Facts and concepts are taught in specific classes that are independent of each other, and students are moved from individual class to individual class without knowledge of how the two might be connected. Boundaries like that between art and science are rarely crossed or their connectedness even explained. Facts and ideas might be taught with no explanation of the links between them (ie, learning individual details and facts but not the big picture).
Read the whole post! If you are an educator, then I challenge you to do two things:
Congratulate yourself! Recognize that your are a good teacher, and that you do things within your classroom that do not hinder your students as some of these generalizations do. See the positive. Noticing the good that we do, and acknowledging it as such, encourages us to continue and improve.
Challenge yourself! Recognize that you have the opportunity to challenge students in new ways, and know that you too are learning… share your challenges with your peers, seek out opportunities to collaborate, with your colleague across the hall or your web friend across the world. WE will make education better than it ever has been!
Originally posted: May 30th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Kris is not just a former student, she is a current teacher… my teacher. I would not have this blog up-and-running if it were not for her tech support. Also, her del.icio.us links are fodder for many of my posts.
Learning is a journey best shared, not led. We are nodes in each other’s learning networks…
Two weeks ago I bought a Wii Remote to create a Tim Wang Multi-touch Whiteboard. I’ve been talking with our computer teacher, Stan, about getting this going and then on Tuesday a student, Raj, caught wind of what we were planning to do. Wednesday morning Raj was downloading software from his phone to Stan’s computer, he also created two infra-red pens out of highlighters and push-button switches. Thursday morning before lunch I walked into Stan’s class to find Raj demonstrating the multi-touch whiteboard to his class. This morning he perfected an adjustable stand to hold the Wii Remote, (it was his second prototype).
I’m going to make a very harsh statement here and I’m going to stand behind it:
STUDENTS ARE CAPABLE OF FAR MORE THAN WE GIVE THEM CREDIT: SCHOOLS WILL BETTER MEET THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS WHEN EDUCATORS DO A BETTER JOB COLLABORATING WITH STUDENTS TO CREATE MEANINGFUL LEARNING EXPERIENCES.
Here is Carolyn Foote’s comment on my original post. I love the line: “I think with enthusiasm, innovation, and collaboration that we can make a difference for students.” See Carolyn’s recent post: Empowering ourselves to empower our students.
Thank you for sharing that incredible post. I’ve already emailed it to several people at my own campus.
I also appreciate your response.
A group of us read Whole New Mind this year, and I think more than anything I’ve read in a long time, it really conveyed to me the “boat” that we too often miss as educators, in terms of supporting the creative thinking of our students.
And on a site visit that my campus made to schools in California, we visited High Tech High and saw the power of cross curricular connections. We’ve sent a team of our teachers there for a summer workshop on interdisciplinary connections, and I can’t wait until they get back (wish I was going too, but it’s during NECC).
I think with enthusiasm, innovation, and collaboration that we can make a difference for students.
And I agree that the web 2.0 tools can make that process so much easier. And we as educators, like this student, need support and encouragement, and the community that many of our interactions over the blogs or on sites like Ning offer, help us “keep the faith” as well.
Well, I decided to go ahead anyway! I can’t use our useless communal teacher lab, but I got to spend the 2nd half of the first class in the library using the computers there, and the next 2 days in our Computer Teacher’s lab. Although I won’t be able to use any lab again until next Wednesday, my students (who all have computers at home) have all started blogging.
In fact, it is 12:15am and a peek at my Meebo chat box I put on the site tells me that there are at least 2 students on the site right now!
Here is a very interesting dialogue that has started on one of my student’s blog posts:
Christina K
Mona Lisa?
here are two pictures.
One of a guy named John (i’m not sure who he is though)
And the other of the Mona Lisa
I was reading something on a website and it was talking about how they look alike. I noticed this too.
So I’m wondering whether they are brother and sister, or if they are the same person.
They have similar noses, forehead, similar bone structure, similar smile or smirk and if you look closely they have similar eyes. I’m not sure if they are siblings, but they might be the same person.
ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 02:22 BST # |
Wow, their facial features look almost identical! I researched about the painting on the left and found out that it’s called the “John Gesture” and is a portrait of John the Baptist. As for why he’s raising his index finger, many historians think that it’s because Jesus was always shown raising two fingers while he blessed people. Therefore, John wanted to show people that he was superior to Jesus as one comes before two. I don’t really see any connection between John and Mona Lisa but I guess Da Vinci must have had some reason for placing these two paintings within sight beside his deathbed before he died.Viola C on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 02:47 BST # |
But why would Da Vinci make John the Baptist look like Mona Lisa? Da Vinci couldn’t have actually seen John the Baptist…
ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 03:19 BST # |
They really do look identical. So if one was John the Baptist, and the other the Mona Lisa…what’s the connection that could possibly relate to the two paintings being of the same person in a different form? Was John the Baptist in a different time than Da Vinci? If he was then that’s just crazy that these two people look identical. Again the two ideas were that they could be siblings or they could be the same person. I just don’t understand why they would be the same person..
Christina K on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 04:52 BST # |
I can’t believe how John the Baptist and Mona Lisa, two people from totally different worlds, could look identical. I think it’s more than a coincidence that Da Vinci painted them so similar. I guess it’s just one more secret that Da Vinci didn’t want to share with the world.
Viola C on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 05:29 BST # |
Well, this is what I think. As a humanist, he opposed the church in telling how other people should live their life. Could it be that he wanted to show his dislike for the church secretly through many little things he did. Could it be that by drawing John the Baptist with similar facial features as Mona Lisa, he is showing that he may have seen John, therefore completly going against what the church and the Bible says. But then again, my ideas are crazy….
Jessica N on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 08:03 BST # |
Da Vinci was a very mysterious man, so it’s not very surprising that he made Mona Lisa and the John the Baptist look the same. No one would understand his geinus mind and like Viola said, this would be one more secret that Da Vinci wouldn’t share with us and the world.
ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:17 BST # |
Take a look at Mona Lisa’s shoulders, compared to to other picture. They are practically the same in every way! Mona Lisa’s shoulders are large and manly (no offence Mona Lisa). Now look at the other picture. Can you spot a dramatic difference?
Sara on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:18 BST # |
Woah thats pretty interesting Christina!The picture of the guy, is probably another painting byDaVinci. He probably didn’t want to show it to others, and hid it somewhere
where he thought no one would find it.
It also can be a painting of him when he was younger!
Yeah thats all. Good Job!
Tijana M on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:20 BST # |
also if you look in the picture of the last supper
there is a man holding up one finger like
the picture of John the Baptist
JessicaT on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:26 BST # |
I was just looking at the picture of Mona Lisa.http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/leonardo_ext.htmlI observed her close up at 200% and I noticed a really weird line going across her forehead… the line seemed really out of place. From my discovery I looked a her hair on the left side and I noticed that there was a veil type thing, maybe she was getting married, or she was getting married to John the baptist Any other Ideas?
Katie Z on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:32 BST # |
This is amazing. If I was to first see these pictures I’d think they were twins. There smile is identical. Also there noses look exactly the same. Only if there hair was the same I would think that it was the same person.
Amrit C. on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:33 BST # |
There are some great observations here. My emphasis in the class is on Da Vinci the inventor and scientist, but look at the student generated interest in his artwork! Would this kind of [off topic?] interaction happen in a classroom? Would it happen if this was a paper assignment
Now here is the challenge for me… LET THE ‘CONVERSATION’ HAPPEN!
When I read, “…maybe she was getting married, or she was getting married to John the baptist…” I really wanted to post a little timeline. Earlier I actually started typing a comment suggesting that perhaps Da Vinci used the same model for both paintings, then erased it rather than posting it… I forced myself to ‘bite my tongue’.
The fact is that I am not used to letting students take ownership of their learning in this way. I want to ‘teach’ them… isn’t that my job?
But if I had put that “perhaps Da Vinci used the same model” post in after the 5th or 6th comment, would the other comments have followed?
If I chose now to comment on the century-and-a-half millennium-and-a-half chasm in time preventing John the Baptist from marrying Mona Lisa, then who will I be taking this away from? Whose voice will I be stealing? Who will I prevent from asking ‘Exactly who is John the Baptist?’ Who will I be stopping from researching and answering that question?
Would JessicaT have been inspired to write this post?
In Christina K’s blog is the picture of John the Baptist and how he
is pointing his finger, I did some research and in the picture of the
Last Supper, there is one of the 12 deciples on the right side to Jesus
is pointing one of his fingers out. Also in another picture by Da Vinci
two versions. One was rejected by nuns, and one wasn’t (the picture
above was the rejected one)
Posted by JessicaT
Comments
Interesting research you have done! Thanks for putting all these together to compare! Are you going to look into the meaning behind the ‘pointing finger’?
Mr. Truss on Friday, 18 May 2007, 04:54 BST #
As you can see, I did comment here. Perhaps when the conversation lulls on Christina’s blog, I may ask ‘who was John the Baptist?’
I am hoping to promote inquiry.
It is the classic ‘guide on the side’ rather than ’sage on the stage’ issue. However, it isn’t easy to stand back and let all this learning happen without me. But, in a web2.0 world, where students are meaningfully engaging in Learning Conversations, we really must bite our [digital] tongues.
Originally posted: May 18th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Konrad’s post, Learning to be Myself, mentioned in comment #9 below, is well worth the read!
My thoughts on this post are very scattered and commenting on them would detract from what this post is about. This quote from the post puts a lot into perspective:
The fact is that I am not used to letting students take ownership of their learning in this way. I want to ‘teach’ them… isn’t that my job?
While reposting this Chris Lehmann announced his newest post on Twitter… it is Brilliant!
It gets to the heart of what our real job is… challenging our own practice and doing what’s best for our students!
Comments from the original post:
Lots of things accomplished by biting your tongue:
Your students thought, guessed, were amazed, asked questions, made up stories, drew conclusions, doubted, did research, were surprised, connected things, made deductions, analysed, observed…
And all this about Da Vinci’s work!
Have you considered falling in love with your lousy computer lab?
Thanks for the great post. This is a prime example of the role that we as teachers need to remember to play as we move our students into classrooms of the 21st century. Whatever we call it-coach, mentor, “guide-on-the-side”-it represents a shift from the role of teacher as purveyor of knowledge, a skill you describe above.I am teaching a class about blogging this summer, and I would love to use this post as an example of the interaction between students on blogs. Would you be opposed?
What a wonderful conversation that is taking place. It demonstrates what can happen when students begin to converse about topics and take them beyond what would ever happen in class. Now, one thing you might suggest to the person who is blogging is to look at a timeline to see when things are happening and hopefully the student might make some connections with that and the comments. Given the person you are studying, what is part of his art could indeed be part of the science – a study in body/facial similarities that turns into Mona Lisa and John the Baptist. Very interesting stuff.
Thanks for the great comments! Gabriela, a working lab would actually make things better, but the forced adversity has not hindered my enthusiasm, (or the students’ and that is wonderful to see)! The good news it that the lab is one of the next in line in the district to be replaced… this summer.
Patrick, no need to ask, go right ahead and use it. I am working on a ‘presentation’, (one of the tools on this blog), to put together a ‘My Web2.0′ presentation… It is a work in progress and may look very different from day to day until I figure out how best to use it, but it has links to all my wiki and blogging experiences as well as on-line resources that you are welcome to tap into. [Link removed due to spam issues, this will be rebuilt on DavidTruss.com soon.]
Kelly, you are always so encouraging, and insightful. Connecting Art to Science is a mini-lesson that I give during this course, (Arte/Scienza – The development of the balance between science, art, logic and imagination. “Whole-brain” thinking- remind you of some reading we have done recently?), and I will be sure to make the connection to the highlighted post- thanks!
Diane Hammond said…Very interesting! As hard as it is to let silence reign long enough to push thinking in this online environment, it’s still do-able. I find it much harder in a f2f class situation to stop long enough for processing time. In f2f the silence feels uncomfortable, like the point at which you lose control. I know I’m guilty of too quickly supplying the “answer” or pushing the next step. Excellent interaction here!
Skip Zilla said…Diane got at the heart of the matter of inquiry. It suspends time which is usually clocked by classroom structure; it contemplates connections in what is observed which is suppressed in the give and take of predetermined answers. Seven students engaged in a timeless conversation. –Skip
Carolyn Foote said…I do think when we give students opportunities to teach one another, they will come forward and have conversations like these! Kudos to you for giving them that space!We tried a research project where students shared topics across class periods and used a wiki to collect their information. In addition to being a great learning experience, it was a fascinating social experiment to see how some students emerged more as guides, some as the comics, some as the organizers, some as the designers…but it was nice because they could all play to their own strengths.Again, kudos for creating a space for students to guide one another!
- – - – -
It never occurred to me before that the reason it was so hard to ‘bite my tongue’ is that this is actually harder to do face-to-face, and that asynchronous contributions by students permits and promotes more meaningful dialogue than what would be forced within the limited time-frame of a classroom.
Thanks to all of you for your great contributions!
David Truss on Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 08:01 CEST
how is this wonderful or good learning? their speculations are inane and so completely off course, yet they are trying to “solidify” these concepts into some sort of working model. These are college students? Have they lived in remote caves their whole lives? I would think by their age they would at least have a cursory idea of history and religion, if for no other reason than being aware of the world around them.Oh, and nice call, teach, on the “century and a half” discrepancy. I rather hope you meant millenium and a half…
Dave Thomas on Monday, 20 August 2007, 02:24 CEST
To Dave Thomas,These are 13-14 year old Grade 8 students. After I asked the question in class, “Who was John the Baptist and why is he famous?”… my young students’ answers (the next day) helped them to clarify a small aspect of their ‘working knowledge’ in both history and religion.
My gut instinct was to return your cheeky tone here, but you were commenting to someone who allows ‘inane’ and ‘off course’ conversations to happen in his college class. It is my belief that your assumption of the age of my students led to that line of thinking. My students were making assumptions too… however these assumptions led to learning opportunities far beyond what they learn from day-to-day in many classes (including my own). I cannot apologize for their lack of knowledge, and will not apologize for allowing this online ‘conversation’ to happen. I think our adherence to the Prescribed Learning Outcomes can, all too often, do a disservice to our students’ child-like inquiry, and can squash Socratic questioning/thinking. Is it not conversations such as this that allow us to provide students with the opportunity to develop more than just a ‘cursory idea of history and religion’?
Oh, and as for the “century and a half” error – thanks for pointing it out! I should have realized my error before submitting my post. The correction is now duly noted (above). Thanks again!
David Truss on Monday, 20 August 2007, 08:52 CEST
Dave Thomas,
I hope you took the time to read Mr. Truss’ response to your comment. For from error comes learning and without error there would be no need for learning. I take solace in the fact that you took the time to read the comments made by the students and furthermore you took the time to comment on them. I hope that his students will read your critiques and find a lesson in them.
As a principal, I covet teachers who help students to delve into domains that are new to them. These students had never used digital conversations before and regardless of what was being said, they were taking risks using a new communication medium. I say good on Mr. Truss and way to go Teach!
And as a bonus, his retort to your comment modeled self-effacing class. Something all grade 8 students need to see.
Dave MacLean on Thursday, 30 August 2007, 07:25 CEST
David,This is a fascinating post. I agree that biting our tongue is a challenge. I’ve been struggling with this ever since I started building blogging communities with my students. On one hand, I want to be part of their conversations and direct them. On the other hand, I want to see what happens when I remove myself from these interactions. I find that once the students see themselves as bloggers, once they start commenting on the work of their peers, it is very difficult (and not always wise) to enter the conversation by using my teacherly voice. That’s whhy I’ve been writing about the process of losing my teacherly voice on my blog. Recently, however, I’ve discovered that, in my class blogging community, I am present in two different modes – as a subject expert and as an individual learner. Both, I believe are important. Here’s a more detailed explanation (a response to your comment on my blog) and another comment on Leigh Blackall’s blog.
I really enjoyed reading this and I hope that you will continue to address this on your blog.
Hi Dave,On the “John Gesture” your students might enjoy an interesting art history alternative:
“The intellectual influence of Renaissance Hermeticism on art, rather than a depiction of Mary Magdalene at the Last Supper, is the basis for A Different da Vinci Code. This is an alternative explanation of Leonardo’s symbolism, which proposes the typical use of transgender figures in various artworks of the period as a veiled reference to the alchemical androgyne (cf. Sophia/Baphomet), representing the keenly anticipated rebirth of classical knowledge and culture. Similarly, Leonardo’s use of the up-pointed finger of Mercury/Hermes, also referred to as the John Gesture, is proposed to denote the universal Hermetic motto, “As above; so below.”
After an incident delayed getting feedback from my students until last Monday, things got extremely busy with preparation for the Renaissance Fair and my Grade 5 Transition Retreats [the subject of a future post]. All this included 3 afternoons out of my classroom at other functions… I blinked and it was Friday afternoon. And only now have I noticed that not everyone has given me feedback yet. What I do see there is very encouraging.
I have just given my students the opportunity to study any topic they choose in Science for their wiki pages we just started. Short of one pair of overachievers (that I mentioned in my blog), the group seems very apathetic.
However I think “choose your own topic” can be very difficult for students who have spent years being fed criteria checklist style assignments. I am constructing a post now (in my mind- & hopefully on my blog this long weekend) that looks at the pedagogy involved in such assignments. As Carolyn says (above), “it’s easier if the content comes first and then they are using the technology to communicate the content.” …But I think it is more than that, it is setting clear objectives, ‘ownership’ of the criteria, and clear expectations around expected outcomes… So much to consider!
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.
Carolyn Foote, mentioned above also added this comment after mine:
These situations are ones I see frequently as a librarian as I mentioned.
But I think most of us, if told we can research anything we want, might be stumped for a little while if it was that open ended. I think that you’re right about setting clear objectives.
And I think it is more than just the fact that kids are used to having defined assignments. Even the assignment to “do whatever you want” is still an assignment–it’s not their own motivation driving them, it’s ours.
I think somewhere in there, we all know what we’d like to know more about, but it’s hard to start that “cold”. I think any kind of prompts, strategies, and discussion we can use to help students start thinking about their own interests is helpful.
Having them clip newspaper or magazine articles on some topics ahead of time—having them bookmark three websites that interest them ahead of time–brainstorming with the whole class–all these are strategies that help them get started on realizing they do have interests.
Carol Kuhlthau has some interesting work on the research process, and part of what she talks about are the emotional stages students/all of us go through during the research process. The anxiety at the beginning of a project and inability to think of something is one of the normal stages she defines. We all get more confident as we catch on to an idea and then start researching it, and our motivation gets stronger to do more. I think her work is really helpful in helping understand how students feel and why they don’t perform the way we might expect, especially in the beginning stages, and why they need some scaffolding to internalize the process.
This is brilliant feedback. It isn’t rocket science for a seasoned teacher that really should know this, but scaffolding that is student directed is something we should all be reminded of from time-to-time. I think that in my excitement to get things started, and my desire to have students choose their own topic, I let technology supersede pedagogy.
Reading the Science Alive feedback now I realize that the comments above are fuel to make a good project great. The students loved Science Alive, and choosing their own topic was a huge highlight. Add a healthy dose of scaffolding, a little better structure with respect to time lines and expectations, and a few experts to help us out along the way, and we have a delicious recipe for one heck-of-a project pie.
I intended to put some student feedback highlights here, but I won’t. If you are interested, READ THEIR WORDS.
Here is a very short summary:
• Students really liked this project. Some of them considered it the best ever!
• They loved that they got to choose their own topics.
• They felt challenged.
• They hated the issues we had dealing with crappy computers, and yet they were willing work through the frustration.
• They thought this was a valuable experience… so much so that many of them wanted to do another similar project and/or suggested that I should do this again next year.
• And finally, using their words: They enjoyed being able to share their ideas, “What I am most proud of the most from the page is when I was how I typed out information to let others read it and learn from what I learned,” and being able to see what others did, “I thought this was a great project because it was always fun, and when you needed inspiration, it was easy to just click on someone else’s page, and see all the neat stuff that they’ve done, and then it makes you want to make your page just as good (or, it did for me).” Also another student commented about how a different group’s project touched him, “I learned a lot of stuff over the period of time that was given. I especially enjoyed learning about the diabetes because my aunt has diabetes so it was interesting to see what she goes through and how she’s affected”.
I’m proud of my students and I am very happy with our first attempt at creating wikis. I believe that for many of my students we truly did bring Science Alive!
What I will focus on now are the comments that can give me perspective on my teaching, and on doing a project such as this in the future. Three key things come to mind, the first of which has already been discussed.
1. Scaffolding
Here are some comments: [Their words/spelling/grammar, no editing on my part. Students can't edit a Discussion topic like they can their wiki page.]
“Next time I would give us students not necessarily more time, but more of a guideline of what you want our final project to be. Rather then it being ‘we become experts’, a guideline that would help us in seeing our destination of a final product.”
“For some groups, I don’t think they knew what to do first and how, so maybe there could be more guidence on the Scientific Method.”
“The advice I would give you to improve this project would probably be to have more criteria and guidelines and really help people on what experiment they have chosen.”
“Next time it’ll be a bit better if you gave us an idea of how the “final product” should be like”
“I would suggest doing a little less conferencing, but just maybe asking people how they’re doing informally, and maybe narrowing the topic you can choose just a little (there are so many options that it’s a little overwhelming, in my opinion).”
“The only thing that I would change about this project is as much as I did love the freedom I would have helped a little bit if you had givin us a brief overview of what you wanted to finished product to be. I think this would be good because some people did not even know what to start with on there page. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this project.”
Since Carolyn made some great topic development suggestions above, I will look more at some other ideas.
I realize now that I didn’t really give them enough of an outline. This is a challenge for topics like this… especially in a middle school where the students are still young. So many times in my teaching career I have shown a creative exemplar to students and then had a dozen photocopy-like replicas handed in. Also, in all honesty, I didn’t really know what to expect from my students and so it was hard to tell them what it was I expecting! I think that if I spent more time getting them involved with their topic and exploring possibilities early on, some of this stress would have been alleviated.
I did a lot of conferencing with groups and discussing ideas, but often I didn’t relate this back to specific things I wanted to see on their page. [Notice the control-freak teacher in me said "specific things I wanted to see" rather than suggestions that would enhance their learning. This is a learning curve for me as well as them.]
One frustration for me was that I taught Science for just 40 min. classes (a first for me this year having taught 80 min. classes in previous years). Take away login and log out times and sometimes it seemed that I would have just 2 or 3 really good conversations about projects and the class would be over.
Here is a very interesting comment:
“We faced a few challenges like the one that really affected us mentally, this was when we found out that Mr. Truss didn’t like our ideas but it turned out that; that comment fueled our fire to prove him wrong. It was rather difficult figuring out what exactly Mr. Truss wanted out of us for this project but in the same way it made us interested even more in the project because he left us hanging he let us figure most of it out on our own. “
The specific thing that I didn’t like in this case was that the experiment that they wanted to do had way too much variability and opportunity for chance to influence their results… this group did the experiment they wanted to do it anyway. Although I don’t think it was a great decision, I am glad they realized that I really did give them a choice.
The task at hand is to offer support to those that need it, and challenge those that don’t – not much different than any other project. The difference from other projects is that criteria is very hard to offer when you open up a project and allow everyone to demonstrate their learning in different ways. (Note Gabriela Sellart’s and Claudia Ceraso’s comments on my Some Assembly Required post- found in the reflection section.)
More from my students:
“Another thing that I really liked about this project was that there were very few guid lines and know that we have finished the project it feels like we did everything with almost no help at all.”
“This one has definitely been different from the other projects I have done because, the other projects I have done in the past were ‘assigned’, and very directed, you had a topic chosen by the teacher and that’s what you did. This one had more choice and a sense of freedom, even if you chose the topic, you were still responsible for completion. But having chosen something you’re interested in, it makes the project more fun to do.”
Scaffolding not instructions and criteria lists.
2. Time Line
“I think we should have gotten a due date, so we know when to get the project done in time.”
“I would tell the classes the timeline for the experiment, if they have a rough timeline, maybe they’d know how to space out their experiments and project idea’s making everything more even.”
I had no idea how long this project would take. It went longer than it should, but I wanted to give ample notice when I finally did choose a date. Looking back, I gave the students notice on a Monday that it was due the following week Friday, then gave them until the following Monday… a lot of time! Yet, the lack of a stated completion date really seemed to bother students. I would love to see students keep updating their projects even now- why can’t they continue to pursue their interests? However, in the future I will start with a specific due date. Will this light the fire under students’ seats and get many of them on task, and/or more focussed, sooner? I don’t really know?
3. Experts
“I think it was better to have a chance to meet experts really, so we can learn more and be interested in things we are researching.”
I had students research who were experts in their fields and intended to have them contact some of these people. Reality sunk in when I realized that I didn’t know these adults and I would have Grade 8 students contacting strangers directly. In the future, I would want to create a specific contact page for field experts to use to contact us. Then I could route initial contact through me. I would also notify parents that this would be happening well in advance of doing it. I think that this could happen in a safe way if it is well thought out, not flying by the seat of my pants as I was doing in this first attempt.
I could also have used some experts of my own. I’ll point again to Brian Crosby’s Learning is Messy post, Working, Breathing, Reproducible, Intriguing Models and once again beg for a Web2.0 service like Fieldfindr. (I created this mock site in February and it has had over 1,200 visits since the middle of March… who can make this a reality?
Grades
So being neglectful and completely guilty of not creating any rubric or marking scheme for this project, you might wonder how will I mark this project?
I plan on sitting down with each group over the next little while and coming to an agreed upon mark with them. I will ask them, “How have you shown me higher order thinking skills?” and then we will have a discussion. Their written feedback (or lack of it) will play into this as well. In the end, I am starting to believe more and more that we should abolish marks altogether.
Imagine giving a ‘C’ to a student who writes:
“What I enjoyed right away was the fact that we could pick virtually what ever topic that we wanted to. This to me put a whole new spin on things. All of the sudden you are interested in what you are researching and you are excited to start your experiment and find out what your results are going to be. Another thing that I really liked about this project was that there were very few guid lines and know that we have finished the project it feels like we did everything with almost no help at all.”
Is a ‘C’ meaningful feedback? What are you telling that student about lifelong learning? What does the mark accomplish?
A Sad Note
The Renaissance Fair starts this week. Early last year I saw an Alan November webcast and decided to take the plunge with my Renaissance project… I had the students blogging! I spent hours learning how to set everything up, and more hours again developing blogging rules and lessons on using tools such as del.icio.us. The experience was wonderful! It opened my eyes to the potential of web2.0. To start off this school year I went to the computer lab and couldn’t get things going again with our out-dated computers, (Mac OS9 and web browsers that need OSX). I resorted to this wiki project after two blogging experiences failed with my students due to our lack of tools. And so, after yet another success with my wiki, here I am about to abandon the blogging aspect of my project… sad indeed
…And a Happy Note
I can’t get myself to end this post on a sad note, so I will end with a very positive observation:
This year has been cathartic for me.
• I have fully embraced using this blog as a learning tool since about November.
• I have read more and thought more about education in the last 6 months than in any given 5 years of my life.
• I am embracing technology like never before.
• I am engaging students in their learning like never before.
• I believe that we will see some (very exciting) fundamental shifts in education over the next few years.
…And Back to the Science Alive Wiki
If you have any observations that I may have missed, then feel free to be my teacher. Thanks!
Originally posted: Mary 14th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
I did get to blog with my students again for the Renaissance Fair! I negotiated with the other project teachers getting them to use the horrible computer lab for research, along with a trolley of books from the library, and I got to use the PC computer lab in the library. You will see some more reflections on this in my next post.
This post evolved into a short presentation that I did with 1-1 laptop teachers at a pro-d session recently. It is evolving into what will be the 2nd half of my 2nd presentation at BLC08, titled ‘Learning Conversations’ (named after this post).
Part 2. It is the questions we ask ourselves and our students that help make Project 2.0h’s great. This take-it-with-you powerpoint presentation will help you provide the scaffolding for engaging digital projects.
The thoughtful/reflective effort it took to write this has made this one of the most powerful things I’ve done for professional development as a teacher.
Comments on the original post:
Observations? Being your teacher? Sorry, not right now. Too busy learning from you.Thank you so much for sharing these reflections on your experiences. I am still amazed -perhaps I should not be by now- to see how similar our issues can be when integrating technology in spite of teaching different subjects with different objectives.
Your reflection goes beyond teaching science, no doubt. Perhaps that is a result from blogging to an audience of teachers at large. You have learnt how to spot the core edu-issues to be discussed.
Perhaps this happens to you as well. I find that when I am thinking, reflecting, my inner voice is talking to someone other than myself. Blog readers and commenters become part of the network of your thoughts. They help us to refine ideas, express them in a precise manner and direct them to the people who may continue developing them.
Enough. I’m afraid I am going a bit away from the post with my comment. Or perhaps we could consider this another bullet in your final Happy Note.
Wow, what an incredibly reflective post, and how lucky your students are to have you as a teacher. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on what did and didn’t work well. Your mindfulness about trying to approach this project differently and trying not to “steer” students too much was fascinating. Glad to have helped in some small way!
Dave, I really enjoyed your authentic reflection and willingness to share your learning with all of us. It is this that is probably your greatest success with this project.In terms of student learning, I agree with your conclusion around scaffolding student learning to a greater degree. you may consider presenting or exposing students to a specific concept in science like “gravity” and then encourage them to “connect” gravity with something meaningful to them (which probably will not be hard, e.g. skateboarding). This way, they will be able to narrow their focus much easier and their Wikis and/or Blogs will have a common element for which they can interact and build knowledge around the concept (gravity) across topics. Just a thought
I think you make some obvious comments around timelines, expectations and grading that are often overlooked when utilizing a new process – “I let technology supersede pedagogy”. Remember it only takes a conversation and a someone taking notes:)
Overall, from the students comments, it appeared that you made a great leap and had a very successful start to facilitating some “authentic learning” for students.
BTW, do we really need to give a grade – why can’t we just comment and question so the learning never stops!
Here is the write-up for the 2 hour Professional Development seminar that I ran today for 9 dedicated teachers who showed up on a sunny Saturday, after a full day of Pro-D on Friday.
Start Your Own Blog A practical session that will introduce you to blogging.
You will see how others use their blogs and you will get a chance to create your own blog.
You will also learn just how easy it is to create links, add pictures and even movies to your blog.
Also, you will learn a bit about web2.0 and very easy to use tools that make your time on the web faster and friendlier.
I did my best to make these resources that could be: a) used by others to structure their own Pro-D sessions; and b) used as a self help tutorial.
… any feedback would be appreciated.
The session went very well with the teacher participants asking great questions and showing enthusiasm. Overall, I spent too much time talking about the tools, and didn’t get onto creating their blogs until we were rushing against time. Feedback from one participant was that we should build the blog first, then talk about the tools- an excellent idea, and I will change the wiki sometime soon (well, not too soon, I’ve spent enough of my life collecting resources and building these tools over the last couple weeks!)
The power of WE: Special thanks goes to a few people who saved me hours of time by helping me out, and by having great resources already built, so that I didn’t have to create them myself.
• Kris (Wandering Ink) for helping me find worthy links for my example page: A variety of bloggers, blogging mostly about blogs and blogging. Kris also edited my ‘Making a Splash‘ post. I hadn’t published it yet so I threw it into a Google Document, where she edited it. We chatted on MSN throughout and then I cut-and-pasted the edited sections back into my post. It was easy to do – especially with our dialogue via chat. A teacher and a former student collaborating, (late on a Friday night), to create a tool for teachers, in a way that was impossible not too long ago… very cool!
• Mike Temple for his blog Edublog Tutorials. This blog linked to another great resource: MSU (Michigan State University) video tutorial. Mike has done a great job with this blog!
Thank you to these people, and all the wonderful people that I linked to in on the wiki.
Personal Reflections:
-This was the first time I tried to do technology based professional development, beyond introducing a few tools to my staff, and I am happy with how things went.
-We only had about 1:45 minutes and this would be a great 3 hour Pro-D. A typical teacher blunder when trying something out of your comfort zone… pack too much in!
-As a mac user, I need to be a little more familiar with a pc lab.
-I really should have them make their blogs first, as was suggested.
-I only got the e-mail address of 4 of the participants and none of their new blog addresses- I’ll have to hunt these down for a feed I created. I think this is a good idea to offer support and community for new bloggers, and I should make the collection of this information more formal.
* I invite feedback on the Start Your Own Blog tools… and I hope that others will find them useful!
Thanks,
Dave.
Originally posted: April 22nd, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Why on earth did I do a Pro-D on ’start your own blog’ instead of on ’start blogging with your students’? Of the participants, one started a blog with her students in an elementary school (in the interior of BC… I offered her some help last year, but have lost touch this year. I don’t think any of them maintain their own personal blog.
In the post Darren asks a few questions including:
How do we transform OpenPD so as to attract the kinds of teachers that aren’t the most technologically savvy?
How do we garner the participation of additional groups of teachers? Sure, individual participation from wherever you may be is fantastic, but a class of multiple classes would be ideal.
Here, in my comment, is one possible direction I could see Pro-D going if we want more people to engage meaningfully with technology:
If you want to capture a ‘new’ crowd then you need to offer them low-hanging fruit. Twitter has a difficult introductory stage. RSS takes time to develop… why not just have a few educators sharing with Google Reader on a resource wiki and let that be an initial introduction to RSS… challenge participants to add to the resource page.
I think wiki’s are a great entry point. They are easy to use AND when students begin to learn from their peers, or take responsibility for their own learning on a wiki that excites the teachers to want more!
Give them a project with easy-to-find success within reach. For example, a fully developed 2-3 week student project with rubrics they help develop (with your help too) – something with a start, and a finish, and a lot of opportunity to build student buy-in, to get support and to find success.
It is a fallacy to say that a networked teacher does less, or has an easier time engaging students… that takes hard work and good teaching. So, don’t pump-it-up as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Instead, provide an opportunity for teachers to see and experience the transformative nature of these tools on LEARNING (as opposed to ‘teaching’). Once this happens it is difficult for a teacher to go back into their pre-technology cave of shadows… they’ll be hooked and they will seek out the new tools, and take the time to develop their own network.
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…
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!
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Comments
David, I’ve been reading your posts since I started blogging for my students. I am amazed to see that I share some of your concerns as regards education. Amazed because of the different educational realities we live in and because we teach different subjects.How to deal with “structure dependent” students (most of them) is one of my concerns. They get puzzled when you don’t provide the expected, clear and well organized instructions. I love playing that game, though.I have to admit that I have failed many times. The worst was to feel frustrated and give up. Then I learnt to insist and be patient (both things at the same time). Success is not guaranteed, but when it finally happens the feeling of achievement the students get is so rewarding that it’s worth the “discomfort”. If students have the chance of making decisions, they have an experience and you also have an experience.I had a look at your wiki and I thought: “If I had had a science teacher like him, I would have learnt something at school.”Insist and be patient, and, please, never stay too long in your comfort zone.
David,I believe there is nothing wrong with needing some structure. It may be a sign of a totally different learning style compared to our own. Let’s say we should learn from it as well. What scientific basis is there to conclude that one style is better than the other?
I would refrain from thinking either that the student in need of “structure” should embrace any other way just because it is better to so many other people. I am sure that by taking part in your wiki, they are already experiencing 2.0 style and, to a certain extent, they must have challenged their previous structures for learning. No need to go over the board with efforts to help. The student can be an expert in his own needs.
Second, I would not try to device any steps to “instruct” these students. Perhaps I am not the best node in these student’s network to go beyond or learn more. Let’s admit it: we are in love not only with what technology enables us to do but also with ‘learning my way’! So I wonder whether I would not create a sense of lack of confidence in those students if I continue to encourage another learning style.
I would definitely help the “structure-needed” student to find a learning node within the wiki members. Peer help will do it. And I would expect that their interaction -unpolluted by my words- teaches me a lesson in learning. As a teacher, I think I would be quite effective if I simply manage to help the student find who can teach/provide the structured view he needs so much.
Look forward to your posts about how your students get on with all this.
Two Wolves Which wolf will you feed? A Remembrance Day Post
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Warning! We filter websites at school. Filters filter learning!
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My blog is my PhD I have given myself a Blogtorate of Philosophy.
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Bubble Wrap What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.
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Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood? My (digital) neighbourhood spans the globe.
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Personal Reflections:
Background
ChristinaL on Thursday, 17 May 2007, 03:19 BST # |