Class Oct.26-Who Owns the Learning?

Well walked away from class tonite with several different emotions, relief that next weeks homework is working on our Major term projects.  Disappointed because I really needed the feedback from my "Top 10 Tips for Digital Photography"  homework assignment was not happening.  UGH I was looking for that not so immediate feedback.  This is too bad because I would like to know how am I doing with this latest assignment.

I can understand that life happens as we all are forced to succombe to it's challenges, oh well maybe a cyber comment on my assignment.(AL?)

Even taking this feeling of disappointment back to my own classroom is really just helping me along, as this is the same feeling that my students feel when I do not give them the immediate feedback that they need and so willingly thirst for on a daily basis.  These immediate moments are really the teachable moments that Ruth Culham and Lucy Calkins mention in their books on writing.

This evening felt very informative and for the first time I did not walk away feeling extremely overwhelmed.  Mark and I had an extremely good opportunity to explore the similarities in our personal research through a very focused discussion regarding Grown up Digital, by Tapscott.

The discussions that I was able to partake in with my cohort members were quite enlightening to me.  through face to face discussions I can say quite confidently that we are all discovering the underlying elements of how to teach to this generation of hyper-tech kids.  I am planning to develop another mini project based activity, as we have done for our Universty class, to craft my skills and really increase the learning in my classroom. 

Al talked tonite about a point that really had an impact with me, that was WHO OWNS THE LEARNING? - just by introducing this idea during class my mind began to race and I started to realign my teaching style to this thought, it was great, but I did develop a headache from the overload. (haha)  Keeping this in the back of my mind, I will now bring this back to my classroom and continue to improve my role as the facilitator rather than the in the forefront teacher, another to view this is to lead from behind, I see the role changing greatly, to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge by the students to be highly motivational this is what is lacking at times in my own "teaching".  From this discussion I am able to take back to class an improved appoach yet again, that is to guide the students on the discovery of the needed knowledge and then help the students learn to organize and  represent their newly acquired knowledge into their writing and personal learning.

I even flashed back to how I modelled my daily teaching back when I taught Core French, it was highly motivational for the students as this is how I taught everything, project based, that's why the student's enjoyed me as the teacher.  (Or so they said!)

So it is safe to say that there were many connections tonite in class for me!

While I was at school today I aborded several discusssions with fellow teachers regarding technology for this generation of learners.  Some teachers felt that it was "beyond them" and were just attempting to keep up.  Other teachers had valid questions such as how do the young learners sift through the bull shit that is very often found while they are researching online.  I attempted to answer this with great confidence that today's 21st Century Learner have an innate skill at "sniffing" out the BS.  as they are always questionning the validity of what they are seeing and engaging in.  However I am finding that the difference between what is real and real looking next to impossible to distinguish anymore and some of my Grade 2 students are expressing the same question,  this is good critical thinking IMO.

I recently (last year) had a take home assignment that worked real well, they were to interview a grandparent about what life was like for them when they went to school.  I remember doing this with great success as we touched on many "fun" bits of learning. Such as how to conduct an interview.  Well atleast for a 7 year old !

Fun is a great motivator.

Back to talking with coworkers...meeting the learning needs for this group has to be from the ground up, what I mean is that teachers need to make a shift in the early elementary classroom as far as how we teach, and carry on with this shift through their entire educational experience to send these young learners into the world.

There were other comments that intrigued me, such as,  the need to present back to my staff all of the wonderful learning and discussions revolving around student learning. Also the need for teachers to be taught how to use all of the technology that is underused in our schools (well atleast at some schools) so this brings me back to a point in our discussion with Al tonite, that is regarding our Final projects about the Research on the 21st Century Learner we are all doing, it is a good approach to take that I am providing Professional development for my staff about the qualities that make up a 21st Century Learner and what we need to do teach this newer style of learner and all of the other isms that come along with these hypertech kids.

Well I come back to the title of this post.  Who Owns the Learning?-we all own the learning.  Teacher and the student in a symbiotic relationship.

Project Based Learning Assignment

Just a quick note for now, I found that it took me forever to get this done, as there is so much to synthsize and then try to represent what I have learned through the various activities.

Reflect on how the assignment was presented-it is hard to get into your professors head to figure out just exactly how to set it all up ... I can only imagine what my students must go through!  This experience encourages me to be very clear in giving instruction in my classroom

I wanna know what about the teachers out there who are not currently recieving PD for Tech integration and this Net generation basis of instruction.?

Getting great tech integration ideas for my teaching however.  This is good. 

Article: Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning

The ideas introduced here follows along with the thoughts and developments of our cohort instruction and discussions.  In a nutshell this article hits the nail on the head as far as describing what every good project needs that is meaningful questions that allow the students to be hungry to find the answers.  I found the article to be written very clearly and I agreed with the points made of the article.

"It is the process of students' learning and the depth of their cognitive engagement"

The project must be personally meaningful and have an educational purpose were very clearly stated and the article supported it's statement all the way through by referring back to this underlying idea of the essentials of a project, which are

1.  A Need to Know

2.  A Driving Question

3.  Student Voice and Choice

4.  21st Century Skills-the fun stuff like technology, this part of the article aligned greatly with another article named the 21st C. Learner , even used some of the same language like collaboration, communication, self assessment, critical thinking, purpose driven.  These skills have been referenced to in great detail as the NET Generation Skills according to Don Tapscott. Great connection to what is current in the development of what and how teachers need to teach to this group who do not respond well to being broadcasted to

5.  Inquiry and Innovation

6.  Feedback and Revision

7.  A Publicly Presented Product

Article: Show us What Homework's For (for October 26)

So just how should homework be so that it might be successful learning tool for my students in the classroom?
This is the question I found myself asking while I was reading, how can this article impact my students?

I found that this article was easy to read and very clear.  (Thanks Al!)

Impact to my teaching?
Yes, how?
1.  Remember to keep my homework assignments PURPOSE DRIVEN if I can continue to individualize and differentiate my homework for specific needs of my students, target their areas of weakness and push them to get better, this will motivate!  I can do this by keeping in mind to personalize the work, purposeful work, with a real life practical approach.
2.  Remember ALLOWED VARIETY IN LEARNING to continue to touch on multiple intelligences like art, poetry, etc. 
3.  Immediate FEED BACK to focus on the part of a lesson that my students did not quite understand so that they can fix what part they did not get and show growth from there assignment
4.  NO GRADING OF HOMEWORK inorder for my students to not feel threatened about the homework I must implement a not marking this for points approach, keeping the purpose in mind this homework will be a time to show me that they can practice the specific area of weakness and require less time for the drill and kill of repetitive  homework which eats up so much time.
5.  BETTER USE OF TIME is therefore the end of result if I can continue to implement the lessons from these aarticles.  With better use of their time, my students will be able to focus on less is more as the quality of work will increase.  I will be able  to help them get to a deeper understanding of the lesson/critical points faster and easier with good homework.  With this in mind I think that my students will then experience more personal happiness which will keep them motivated and they will continue to be willing to work hard  and desire to succeed. 
6.  The Four R's-Readiness, Repetition, Review, Revision was suggested by students in article to facilitate homework, if the work is CONNECTED to something personal or if it is meaningful to my students I will make it easier for my students to learn.  In the article the students stated that the homework the wanted to do involved collaboration, reflection, personal connection, sharing to the group and immediate feedback, these qualities of good homework keep coming up in the different articles that we have been reading
7.  Projects that I am going to assign will be motivating to generate a want to perform, desire to do well, and to make if FUN to learn

In my classroom I have made changes to speak to this need by no longer providing the skill and drill work for take home, we cover the essential in class, they are responsible to learn the words any way that works for them (makes it differentiated  and personal responsibility to their own learning style) also by doing spelling in this way I can provide immediate feedback to the kids as to the spelling strategy we are learning.  I can also provide the time that some of my students may not get at home because of their other interests and sports commitments.  This also provides time for them to work together and collaborate on the answers for the activity.  With just a little more tweaking I have now developed a high motivating and high interest activity just by tweaking .  Oh yeah!  Differentiation is much easier to do now as I can personalize the work for some to do in school using a program called Co-Writer.  I have already seen significant improvement on the 3 tests that I have conducted to see if this 21stC approach impacts my class.  It has! 

Week 3-raw

Digital picture assignment week.  Spent all weekend  and many evenings at school researching tips to digital photography.  I focused on my audience, my wife, who is a point and shoot type of photographer but has a great eye.  Unfortunately it was not as simplified as I wanted it to be.  I incoroporated an attractive cover as to capture an audience if it was sitting at a magazine rack at Chapters. During the class we were instructed ot resize images.  The point of the activity was well illustrated as though we did all the reading you still need to actually put the skill to use and resize images! Still finding that there really is so much to get a handle on.

I enjoyed the hyperlinks and bookmarks assignment used it in my classroom, tried to keep the youtube links short which makes a difference for their attention, I found that many of my students enjoyed the shocking content that I included.  This was the plan, to create different environments so that I could begin to get acquainted with what makes these young learners tick aside from pokeman. haha

Something that I walked away with from this week is that my friend in the Mounties and I could actually talk digipicspeak and I could follow, he shared with me the finer details of raw images for crime scene investigative work.  If I could plan a way to incorporate our discussion with him visiting my class discussing how technology is changing the way evidence is stored and data logged I think my students would be able to connect to my Social Studies curriculum which on its own lacks anything motivating.  This is what I find myself creating - interesting fun activities that allow the children to work together and discover how technology has changed in a short period of time, and compare it to how things were so different to when there parents were students by interviewing them.

Tapscott

Tapscott brought up a great comment that I am reflecting about, this is the notion of changing how we teach to the net generation child.  As I have been reading in articles collaboration is the key as well as making it a personal journey of learning.

Tapscott video Grown Digital

Embedded in this video interview is a very strong message that this generation is out there and educators have to continue to adapt and personalize what we are teaching and how we are engaging the social learner.  I am finding more and more evidence in my discussions with family and friends, and especially colleagues that there is a significant disconnect to the student who is digitalized.  In the schools today we have a significant need to diversify the old ways of broadcast teaching and begin to embrace the newer digilearner who learns better if they are emotionally attached to the work with a social responsibility to meet certain group goals. 

The article 21st C. learner introduced the ideas quite clearly of what kinds of skills these students have and must have to succeed.  Like conclude, collaborate, communicate, organise and display knowledge by their Tech. abilities, and how it all connects to the real world. 

This is actually what Tapscott was heading toward in this video, that is that the whole world is not connected and communicating openly.  Web based discussion is eminent and we as educators must provide the social education as well as technological for the students to navigate life becoming socially responsible and maintaining privacy.

P. Routledge 

Struggle

Okay so to touch base I am involved in a masters of education program with a focus in technology. 
I have no interest in blogging but I am diving into this experience. 
Reflection on the first couple of weeks, well crazy is a word I would use to describe the work.

Ofcourse it is important to realize that life goes on with or without involved in it.  So I have felt disconnected from family because of the amount of time that is required to fulfill class assignment without even really tackling the 2 major assignments for the bang for your buck  for points race for a mark.

Struggling how I organize this preliminary rant about course objectives.

The readings have been quite enlightening, I have enjoyed the discussions and improvements that I have already implemented in my teaching.

I will be popping back later.  Life is happening again. 
Post up if you have any comments.