To improve K-12 education, school districts must
- Manage teachers and students for the highly-skilled, creative work we want them to do.
2010-10-04
One bullet point for education
2010-04-15
shadowing
Interesting, I have already made a connection with Jane McGonigal on Facebook. I am choosing her to shadow, but I will have to initiate more communication in order to complete the assignment...stay tuned.
Oh, I chose Jane because she is one of those people I should be listening to... (see my last post)
Oh, I chose Jane because she is one of those people I should be listening to... (see my last post)
Switching Gears - Pay Attention!
My experimental period's students have been in the traditional class format since April 5. Next year I will have to remember if I shift gears to pay more attention. I did them wrong by failing to mention that we were reverting to the old homework policy. When I was reminded of this today, I had to add some more homework points that were lost due to my shortcoming rather than the students'.
Now I am shifting gears myself in this blog. I am in a number of online courses, two traditional in Moodle and WebVista, and the other two are radically different. They are both using RSS feeds to receive information/assignments from students. My posting this evening is an assignment for my most radically innovative course, Urgent Evoke, but I feel it is also an assignment for the other innovative course as well. Therefore, I am including both tags!
So, here I am cheating on my first assignment. I was told to pick one, and I find I must pick three secrets to social innovation:
1) think like a child - children have no limit to their thinking
2) keep learning from your customers (for me, from my students)
3) listen to the right people
1) One of my best assets is flexibility in my thinking - #1. It allows me to approach problems of any sort more like an engineer. I coopt all sorts of things for my own purposes. From a message-in-a-bottle that generated my post-spring break lesson plan, to meeting a new like-minded soul and recruiting her to host my students in an internship, to the billboard contest that ended up as a class assignment, I will use anything if it suits my needs.
2) My first and most important discovery as a new teacher was how much I learned from my students. They help me learn to be a better teacher by explaining what they don't understand, what they like, what they don't like, etc. They teach me every day.
3) Listening to the right people can help you avoid mistakes, take other variables into account, and better prepare for the tasks ahead.
And the other course asked me to do something to manifest my vision for education in the future. Here. Here it is. I am both teacher, and learner. I am sharing what I am learning with a wider audience (well if someone will read my blog, that is), I am implementing my secrets to social innovations, too!
Top that! (Okay, so there isn't video...yet!)
:-)
Now I am shifting gears myself in this blog. I am in a number of online courses, two traditional in Moodle and WebVista, and the other two are radically different. They are both using RSS feeds to receive information/assignments from students. My posting this evening is an assignment for my most radically innovative course, Urgent Evoke, but I feel it is also an assignment for the other innovative course as well. Therefore, I am including both tags!
So, here I am cheating on my first assignment. I was told to pick one, and I find I must pick three secrets to social innovation:
1) think like a child - children have no limit to their thinking
2) keep learning from your customers (for me, from my students)
3) listen to the right people
1) One of my best assets is flexibility in my thinking - #1. It allows me to approach problems of any sort more like an engineer. I coopt all sorts of things for my own purposes. From a message-in-a-bottle that generated my post-spring break lesson plan, to meeting a new like-minded soul and recruiting her to host my students in an internship, to the billboard contest that ended up as a class assignment, I will use anything if it suits my needs.
2) My first and most important discovery as a new teacher was how much I learned from my students. They help me learn to be a better teacher by explaining what they don't understand, what they like, what they don't like, etc. They teach me every day.
3) Listening to the right people can help you avoid mistakes, take other variables into account, and better prepare for the tasks ahead.
And the other course asked me to do something to manifest my vision for education in the future. Here. Here it is. I am both teacher, and learner. I am sharing what I am learning with a wider audience (well if someone will read my blog, that is), I am implementing my secrets to social innovations, too!
Top that! (Okay, so there isn't video...yet!)
:-)
2010-04-05
Fourth Quarter - Reviewing for AP Exam
We started 4th quarter today. Although I don't want to discontinue the experiment, I do feel some of this time is crucial to students solidifying their understanding. Therefore, I think we will do this unit of review in the same manner as all classes. However, we will include more technology usage than we have in the past, in all of my classes. After this unit ends next week, we will have a practice AP exam in class. That, also, will be handled the same as in my other classes. After that, though, I may be able to have a few classes that are flexible for this group. Yes, thank you blog. I didn't know that much this morning when I told them we were going to revert back to a more traditional lesson plan for today...
2010-03-19
Friday Lab
Today I am happy to report that more laptops were taken from the cart. Students still liked exploring the test prep guides (and I did buy two more last night), but more decided they might like to also explore some online resources. At the end of class, I quizzed them inference for the slope of a regression line. Those that focused on that today were able to answer my questions....what distribution do we use for inference on slope?....what degrees of freedom do we use? I think they answered better than my other classes would have; although, I did not quiz the other classes.
Still wondering what to do about the student who is so advanced yet not so motivated. I do think he is a bit burned out, so I am cutting him a little slack.
Still wondering what to do about the student who is so advanced yet not so motivated. I do think he is a bit burned out, so I am cutting him a little slack.
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