In planning activities for Pinnacle, we have tried to make them as self-guided as possible while still squeezing in experiences with the typical technologies we would like you to take from the experience. In the classroom, we hope that as students become aware of various technologies, you will allow them to direct their own learning and the ways in which they express their learning. In our case, the assignment on student-centered instruction does not quite fit the bill simply because we needed to teach you the technology of Audacity as well. In the classroom, once students have used something like Audacity once before, it should become invisible within the instruction and ultimately a tool that they might choose to use.
In what ways would you suggest making an activity like this more student-centered? For example, how might you allow students to choose their topic, their means of learning about that topic, and their method of assessment? In this case, you were given a topic and simply told to research it with some guiding links. Then you were provided a specific tool to use to generate some kind of response demonstrating what you learned about the topic. (Design)
In what ways are you considering changing your classroom? a given period or day's agenda? and lesson plans in general? What are your feelings on relinquishing the control of so many facets to your students?
Please listen to the other two podcasts and respond as well.
Remember to bring your Wireless Slates on Monday and Tuesday so that we can pair them for you.
I have my desktop publishing students complete a project that introduces themselves to me and the other classmates, and in the past I've had them simply put music to images, etc. This project is entirely student-centered, as they get to choose the way they introduce themselves~tell us about them, tell us about an influential person in their life, a life experience, etc. This year, I'll have them use audacity so they can record their voices narrating the slides in whichever program they chose to use (MovieMaker, Photoshow, Voicethread, etc.)making that much more student centered by offering them even more choices.
ReplyDeleteI'm fairly comfortable letting go of control in my classroom, so I will continue to do so this coming school year, but will try to do it more in my English classroom.
My lesson plans and day-to-day activities will be very different this year, as I will FINALLY have my own classroom and all the nifty technology I have acquired. Most likely I will be using it in some way, shape, or form every day!
The way I want my classroom to change it to do more of what Pinnacle training has encouraged and inspired through training and equipment. I am revising lesson plans to a project-based type of learning while revamping the daily grind with the bells and whistles of technology. My goal is to design the daily grind into a seamless use of technology and content so that they look forward to class each day! I also want the poster-size post it notes for plus/delta and the x's and o's. These activities are great ways to let the students take ownership in their environment. The feeling of letting go is scary but the outcome will put student-centered learning back in my classroom!
ReplyDeleteAs a second grade teacher we study animal life cycles. I would allow each student to choose which life cycle they would like to study; frog, bird, butterfly, etc. I would create a diigo tab with the different animals and allow the students to research their particular animal using the websites I have placed in each of those tabs. For assessment students could create a digital poster or presentation using the information they had found.
ReplyDeleteGiving up control of certain areas of my classroom is going to be hard and a challenge for me. I plan on starting small and not changing everything at one time. This will allow me time to reflect and learn from things that need to change and things that I need to continue as I transition over to a project based learning classroom.
This year will hold a nice change to 90 min. classes for me. I foresee better opportunities to seamlessly include technology with what I'm teaching. My AIG students complete a Family Heritage project each year that begins in September and is not completed until the spring. They have requirements that are already dictated by the curriculum, but I'm going to change the format. Instead of having to write longer papers I want students to use their kidblogs to share information. Other parts of the project will work really well to have presented with voicethread. Last year I began having students work in stations. I want to expand this to be much more consistent this year. Stations give students an opportunity to work cooperatively to complete tasks. At the same time it allows me to step back and facilitate the learning. Also important is that I'm able to work with small groups to reteach concepts they've struggled with. With classes that range from 26-30 or more it's difficult to have that small group time.
ReplyDeleteIn the fourth grade, preparing students to succeed on the 4th grade writing tests (2 content-specific tests and 2 on-demand tests) is a major focus. I plan to incorporate Google Docs into our writing lesson plans: the instant collaboration and "real-time" comment feature that Google Docs provides will be valuable during team writing projects and writing conferences.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the "relinquishing control" question, I believe that, as Harry Wong says, the person working is the person learning. If the teacher is controlling everything and making all of the decisions, then it is the teacher who is doing most of the learning. Obviously this is not the goal in our classroom communities. We want our students to be independent learners who have input on their individual learning paths.
I think all of the podcasts seem to hit on the same thing. Student will learn and retain more when given the opportunity to relate and apply what they are learning. This can really only be done through student lead learning. I thought the "The View" was done well and did a pretty good job of modeling the importance of student lead learning.
ReplyDeleteI am super excited about making some changes within my classroom this upcoming year! I am looking forward to starting a blog with my students. I really want to post some kind of relative topic about our lessons for a given time and have students write responses and ideas to it through a blog. I am thinking about introducing it and having students complete maybe 2 blog posts per 9 weeks? I want to see how that goes because of student computer access outside of school. I am also looking forward to putting students into groups more. In Social Studies I think that it would be awesome that instead of tests, I do student-centered projects that they choose to further an idea that they were interested in through the chapter. Students will work in groups and choose a form of technology to present their "project" (Kind of like the movie idea from the Atlanta school we watched!).
ReplyDelete*Listening to the presentations of PBL, I think all groups displayed the importance of making classrooms student-centered. I really like the way the Evolution of Education showed how different this new movement is compared to the way teachers have been teaching for years. Great job everyone :)
ReplyDelete~I also wanted to add another way I am looking to use student-centered PBLs in my classroom. We write a big research paper in 6th grade and it is the first research paper students write. I have previously given them a few "topics" to research and then choose which one they want to write about. Students are given websites of helpful places and basically just given everything except the writing paper. I am looking to re-do that whole project to better fit into the PBL style and have students do their own research and create their own projects possibly on top of the paper!
I really enjoyed listening the podcasts we created on Thursday! All of the projects focused on the importance of student-centered learning. I enjoyed the humor added in The View podcast and the radio technique used by the creators of PBL. Nice job everyone!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like we all have futures in broadcasting! When I listened to the podcasts, I realized just how committed we all are to our students. Being an educator such an important job. We need to take it seriously, but a little humor doesn't hurt!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed not only making the podcast but listening to the other groups creations. I am so excited to use some of the new things I used in my kindergarten classroom because I know my little ones will have so much fun with it! In kindergarten land, we have to be student centered because there is no other way to keep that short attention span. I know I can easily integrate these tools we used this week into my literacy centers. I especially liked audacity because it was easy for my kids to use and creates a new way for my students to communicate their thoughts to me since they can't write at the beginning of the year. I think I may just let students have more control by letting them do "talking journals" on audacity and tell me anything they want. My kids want to tell me everything all the time about their personal lives and interests, and this could lead to writing about our "talking journals" and will definitely keep them motivated since they can talk about their favorite subject; THEMSELVES!
ReplyDeleteI am glad that it sounds as though you enjoyed the podcast assignment and did a great job at creatively expressing your knowledge of student-centered learning and PBL. You all discussed ideas that amount to deeper rather than broader instruction and that is of great value. Fear not, integrating every tool at once, but take on manageable pieces, perhaps like blogging and podcasting, that can act as gateway technologies to the rest.
ReplyDeleteI love the podcasts. It was a fun and interesting assignment. It is wonderful to see the creativity that we all have. It is also wonderful to see that we all have an understanding of what student centered learning is and how it can help our students ability to learn the information that will make them successful in the future. Now if we could just get DPI and the politicians to understand that it is not all about testing. It is about assessing knowledge in hands on activities.
ReplyDeleteAs for AU/EC world.. I can see where the activities that we are doing can be adapted to use with special needs children. Many of our special needs children do not know how to advocate for themselves... I could see these types of activities giving practice at speaking up .. by giving them a voice.
I am exicited about meeting with my team members later this week to discuss the upcoming year and can't wait to share with them all I have learned.
It was a challenge to create the podcast in such a limited amount of time - but I enjoyed hearing each group's creative take on the same topic.
ReplyDeleteAs I have begun thinking about various ways to address K-5 curriculum with my ESL students this fall, I am thinking about creating a technology or project grid, and allowing students to work collaboratively to summarize the key or important concepts of each unit and then capture them in a project with their chosen technology/ medium. I would like to be able to put all of these projects into an electronic file, so that at the end of the year the students could take a cd/dvd of the year's work home- a "What We Learned" yearbook - as opposed to a "who was in my class" yearbook. :)
*I think most of the podcasts made the main idea that PBL should be student-centered by having the students choose their work and be involved in their own learning. I like the idea of using this in my classroom because it will help students become more engaged, prepare them for 21st century skills, and make my classroom more "green".
ReplyDelete* This year, I want to use the technology as a tool to make learning more fun and help create 21st century learners and thinkers. I want to help prepare my students for their future by incorporating not only technology, but more collaborative work in my classroom. I want my students to be in control of what they learn. I think my biggest challenge will be making sure my students are learning the appropriate items that coorelate to the test as well. In other words, I want them to be learning correctly and it be consistent...which is where my job is as a facilitator.
It is pretty easy to make an assignment like this more student centered through more choice. If you have a difficult time trying to fit student choice in with your curriculum, you could try using student surveys to figure out where the students' strengths fit into your curriculum. I think many times when we attend these cool workshops and learn new tricks we expect ourselves to change EVERYTHING immediately, but this often leads to burn out. Do I think my teaching will change this year to reflect the Pinnacle program? Of course! Do I think I'm going to suddenly become the most awesome, most digital teacher ever in a single academic year? Of course not, that title belongs to Briggs at my school and I have a lot to learn. I plan to find some impact tools (mostly likely Google documents and blogger) and implement them within my classes on a regular basis until the students and I have a good handle on them and figure out how to make it work seamlessly. I'll continue to use Glogster for outside projects, but I'll add in other choices like GoAnimate and Voicethread. I have control issues, so using a few programs/applications in several ways helps me get comfortable before tackling another big chunk of stuff. The students in my AP class get a lot of choice in what they write, but not how they write, so I think dogpiling on some documents for brainstorming and editing is going to be fun. My other kids are much more controlled by me, so I'm hoping to integrate some cool tools that let me loosen up, allow the students some choice, but still get through all the "stuff" we need to accomplish in 18 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI loved listening to the other podcasts! It was cool to see how differently the three groups approached the tasks, yet still conveyed the same message. It was also cool to hear how the podcasts reflected each groups' personalities.