More and more these days, I am in awe of the energy that people share in their blogging.
Two posts this week exemplified this energy.
Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano wrote about a modern classroom. In this classroom:
The learning just oozes through the cracks of the physical classroom walls. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about an authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world.
I liked the ways in which 9-11 year old students used Skype, worked with backchannels (including Google Chat), tweeted, doodled with mindmaps, and took part in a debrief.
Silvia’s post was illustrated with some great pictures. She concludes her post with the question ‘So, where do we go from here?’.
The students are very excited and are taking ownership. There is no talk about what kind of grade they will be receiving for their work. An authentic audience will decide if they were successful. Students will volunteer to take on different roles in the publishing, marketing, finance, communication department. We will allow them to take the lead, consulting, coaching and modeling if needed.
Sue Waters exuded energy in her post too. Sue wrote about advanced blogging and shares a great deal of information with very powerful insights. She has been involved in the current Educational Technology (ETMOOC) as a facilitator of some blogging sessions.
I liked Sue’s use of Storify to crowdsource discussions about planning and sharing information about blogging. I liked her warnings too:
- This is a long post! Feel free to scroll down to the sections that interest you!
- I’ve kept it in the same sequence as the recording so you can use it to supplement the information covered.
- I’ve also added some quick videos to demonstrate some ”how to’
- You can download it as a PDF by clicking on the PrintFriendly icon at the top of the post.
I follow Sue’s work with great interest. This post showed her synthesis skills and demonstrated her ability to enrich her posts with excellent recommendations and resource links. There is great stuff about:
- Stop, Look, Link
- Commenting Etiquette and Tips
- Digital Copyright and Fair Use
- Post Sharing Etiquette
- Making Posts Visually Engaging
- Post Workflow
I start my meetings with students next week. I am hopeful that I will be able to transform Silvia and Sue’s energies into my own blend of individualising and personalising a modern classroom.
I have not met the 90+ students in the unit I am facilitating (Sport Coaching Pedagogy). I am starting to receive their letters of introduction this week. I have received 20 letters all of which highlight remarkable differences.
All of the students in the unit will have three assessment tasks, one of which is a semseter-long e-portfolio. I am hopeful they will use Dianne McKenzie’s Inquiry questions to support their critical reflection:
- What did you learn in this session?
- What surprised or was new to you?
- What did you already know about? How did you know?
- What are some ideas that seem new to you?
- What do you want to know more about?
- What is something you would like to tell others about?
- What are some of the important ideas you are thinking about that you might like to implement into your practice?
I will invite them to generate the kind of energy Silvia and Sue exemplify in the richness of their responses.
Photo Credit
Faraday Cage (Britt Selvitelle, CC BY 2.0)
Lighthouse (S Khan, CC BY 2.0)
