Small Changes; BIG RETURNS

 

My word I can be long winded!  In preparation for the Horizons Conference on Friday, I thought it would be a good idea to get the rest of our Freepath interview posted. Congratulations to any of you who read it all the way through! I guess the value for me has been in the writing and crystallizing of my own thoughts as I have been preparing for these 2 conferences and sending in proposals for others.  

Read on, MacDuff!  I hope some of it has been helpful. If you nave a moment, leave me a comment below. I'd love to hear back from some of you.

FINAL FREEPATH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: 

In your session, you discuss the idea of ‘blended learning’; what does this teaching model look like?

 

At its simplest, blended learning is a custom approach that mixes a variety of content delivery and student response options to get the best fit for the student (in our case) or for the class.  We know that particularly with learning packages, it’s difficult to get the students off the bottom couple of steps of Bloom’s cognitive model (above) . Projects like making posters may offer a more creative, less ‘word bound’ way for students to respond -- but really -- how many posters can one student make in their high school careers? How many will they ever do in their work or family life (except when helping their own kids with their homework)? And do posters really reach up the lowest steps of the above model and engage learners in application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluations -- or are they just more basic knowledge presented in a visual way?

Here's what our new teaching model looks like:

I. Trigger Activity : Each new section or unit begins with an activity that serves 2 functions: (1) to generate student interest; & (2) to get the student and teacher to connect so the teacher can assess ability, prior knowledge, and interest levels of the student.

In my new Earth Science program this will be a mind map introducing the key topics of the unit but that will also be loaded with interesting links that will connect back to old learning, stimulate conversation about current events, amuse, surprise, or pique curiosity.

II. Content Acquistion :  This is where we can save time. Typically with the current learning packages, our students spend so much time acquiring the information in a course we don’t push them to do much higher order thinking or truly creative projects.  By setting out the learning objectives in a simple form right at the beginning, and using Freepath to package the learning materials, students will be able to accelerate their progress through this material, work non-sequentially if they wish, and have some measure of control over how much time they spend acquiring the required content and skills.

III.  PEL -- Project Enhanced Learning:   (I think I may have coined a new term!) Students will use a new web-based tool or resource together with what they have learned to solve a problem, answer a bigger question, make a connection, do the review, create a presentation, or fulfill the learning objectives. This requirement can be built into the body of the unit or done after the basic content has been covered.  It is possible that a well- constructed project may become the vehicle for the content acquisition -- that’s the neat thing about finding these tools.

 
How do you see social media impacting students in the 21st century? How does it impact teachers and where do you see the intersection?

Marshall McLuhan created the slogan "Reach out and touch someone" for the Bell system in 1979.   I think he’d be delighted by the way technology has so shaped our lives in the nearly 30 years since his death.

Clearly many students are wrapped up in a web of connections -- whether it’s as simple as passing notes by texting each other or participating in Facebook or Second Life. Contrary to school rules, their phones are always on. We can either fight this or, in the parlance of the 60’s and 70’s, co-opt it. We may not be able to ‘out-tech’ our kids but we can certainly outsmart them and harness their desire to be connected and use it for our own purposes.

Students with their phones out on their desks, accessing the internet and completing tasks using these as a primary learning tool can’t be texting each other under the table.  Students who are using the wealth of the internet as their primary learning resource and who are more engaged in their learning don’t have time in class to manage their Facebook files and keep up with their Tweeting friends.

Regarding how social networking impacts teachers:  I’m of the “Be wary because Big Brother is watching” generation, and I still have a lot of distrust for living so publically, but I will say that finding how willing people “out there” are to make time to help each other completely took me by surprise.

I can find a bit of software, get into trouble trying to make it work, e-mail out a request for help and then get back a response -- I find that totally amazing.  I am so used to waiting for hours on the phone or weeks for a serviceperson to come to the house or even in line at the bank or at the market -- this online world of people who want to connect, to help, to dialogue, and to learn form each other is a delight.

However, trying to fit the hours it can consume into an already crowded day and still find time for relaxation, my husband, and sleep is a challenge.  Perhaps the question on balancing time should have been asked in this context. It’s what I am truly grappling with right now.

 

 
Your presentation at the upcoming CUEBC Conference is entitled Small Changes; Big Returns: integrating Web-based Tools and Resources. Can you give us an idea of what we'll be seeing?

Debra and I have put a lot of thought into how education at the White Rock Learning Center can be taken from ‘pen and paper’ to more engaging delivery and improved student achievement.

The two of us collectively have been teaching for more than 50 years, and although we know that education should be a dynamic process, it is very easy for seasoned teachers to become complacent about the design and delivery of new educational material. Years of marking, large numbers of students in classes, and textbook upgrading can often squelch the teacher’s passion for the profession.  

With our students’ lack of self-directedness and our own need for professional renewal converging, Debra and I decided to start making some “small changes” in our classroom delivery --  i.e. incorporate a Powerpoint activity, try an essay template set up like a fillable form, add links to video files and animations, and use the Google research engine to find information in all content areas.

The small changes had BIG RETURNS.  A young man who had been struggling on and off to complete Geography 12 started attending regularly because the Powerpoint Jeopardy task we had set him was both manageable and intriguing.  Students no longer complained about not knowing what Deb wanted when reading the essay assignments. The structure and her voice were there on the page.  Some life was breathed into the deadly Earth Science course  when the students could see animations of processes and get video instruction.

Then, with the discovery of Freepath it all came together.  It became the delivery tool that would enable us incorporate these changes into a well designed lesson plans and package the new lessons up for the students.

Freepath is meets the criteria for our ‘tools of choice’ because it’s so easy to use and the company support is so good. With simple drag and drop moves, lessons can be created that allow students to work independently in a medium they are used to while at the same time allowing Debra and me to help those students who require direct instruction. The students benefit because they are involved more effectively in their own learning process, and Debra and I benefit because our passion has once again ignited.

“Small Changes; BIG RETURNS” is the core of our philosophy -- we invest in making small changes to our work to get BIG RETURNS with the students

 

Filed under  //   blended learning   Bloom   cartoon   Connect the Dots soup   CUEBC   enhance learning   Freepath   Horizons   Marshall McLuhan   model ot learning   recipe   social learning   tools   using technology   Web 2.0  

Here's my bit. For the full context, you can go to Dan Guhr's contribution: Web 2.0 and knowledge acquisition.

RE:  DAN'S OBSERVATIONS OF CALIFORNIA TEENS MAKING "A LOT OF COMMUNICATION NOISE BECAUSE THEY LACK A FRAMEWORK TO INTERACT WITH THE WORLD IN AN INSIGHTFUL WAY":

Hmmm... I have to say that of all the comments I've read anywhere in this event today, paragraph 4 in Dan's post above rings the most true for me.

I think some people's ultimate vision for social learning is a world in which the teacher/learner distinction will be gone and we will all merrily 'wiki' our way towards constructing knowledge together. Tech advances will make us all the same when it comes to learning. If this is indeed what's coming, 'old school' teachers should begin seeking other occupations now because we'll soon fade into obscurity just like buggy whips, 8 track tapes, and dial telephones.

I am convinced, however, that although school district administrators may be looking forward to the day when education can take place without teachers, they have a long wait ahead of them. As Dan suggested, the young need our guidance in making sense of the world.

Just because young people can access more of it faster than we ever could, does not mean they can process it any better. In fact, I would argue that although my students think they are 'living large' with their circles of friends and their constant 'connectivity', their world is really very small. Although they talk a lot, they don't really have very much to say.

We teachers are still here to create educational experiences that will expand our students' worlds and world views by helping them learn about, question, think, assess and integrate that which is outside their normal lives. In that way the teacher's role hasn't changed much since the first schoolmarm stood in front of the first one room school in the frontier.

So... it's for us to create and, to some extent, control these kinds of learning opportunities in the regular and e-learning class, so that students don't just play, chat, and piggyback on the work of others. They're already experts at that.

My students love it when 'old school' meets 'new school' within the realm of a collaborative project. The kids bring their facility with devices and their adeptness learning how to make new tools work. I find the tools for them to work with and interesting resources for them to learn from.

Once they have acquired the prerequisite skills and knowledge, I set the project task, and its objectives and parameters. I then become the accountability grit in the oyster shell. As a project evolves, all participants become both teachers and learners because we bring different stengths and perspectives to the table.

Where kids in the frontier school understood the importance of hard work and knew little about the world, my students know a lot about the world but need to come to value of perseverance. My kids need to learn that struggle is part of the learning process, that seeing the work through to the end is worth the struggle, and that when they are done they will have produced something of substance that they can be proud of.

AND MY RESPONSE TO GABRIEL KENT RE: DESTRUCTURING LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS:

My greatest concern is that 'unstructured' can devolve into 'directionless' unless there is some organizing principle behind it.

Consider the instruction: learn about penguins. For some that would be an invitation to do the minimum; for others it would pose a daunting task that might take weeks to complete. Guidance and clarification of expectations pull more from the former and set some limits on the task for the latter.

Students have different learning styles: some will come away with more faster from an open-ended learning environment; others do better with more structure. Generally, however, both types like to know the expectations up front. Some will use those as a platform from which to follow their interests more deeply; others will struggle just to feel competent and do well just to handle to basic load well.

At this point I am not willing to leave the setting of the main objectives for my students to decide any more than I would trust myself to a doctor who had trained by exploring his/her interests and who had ended up with lots of interesting and useful but unstructured knowledge.

I think the art of teaching is knowing when to inject yourself and when to hang back. One benefit that online tools provide is that we don't have to deliver a 'one size fits all' educational experience to an entire class. We can more easily craft learning experiences that excite the imagination and energy of those who are ready but which also provide a more secure path to follow for others. We want every learner to become self-directed and capable of learning independently, but they don't all come to us that way.

Some educators would say that project-based learning -- completely open-ended with the problems and questions set by the participants and the information/skills acquired growing out of the needs that arise as the project develops -- some would say that is the way to go. I'm just not comfortable with that -- it's too amorphous for me.

I think more interesting questions will be asked and problems discerned by students who are more knowlegable, so I set the agenda for basic content and skills, but at the same time use new tools to open up how students can go about acquiring these.

Projects can be used to accomplish this as long as the expectations are clearly laid out ahead of time. They can also be used as way for students to then progress to the more "unstructured" learning that comes from their posing and trying to answer the sorts of questions Dan asked. You're right -- there are no right answers and that's why they need to be asked, and why most students need guidance in learning how to take on such issues.

There is a place and a need for both unstructured and formal learning experiences. That has always been the case. The problem has been how to get both enterprises going in a class of 35, how to nurture the growth of all learners as learners rather than allow them to remain as simple collectors of content, and how to do that within some sort of manageable time frame.

 

Filed under  //   Dan Guhr   Edublogger Event '08   Gabriel Kent   project based learning debate   Web 2.0