" More porous classrooms in the future?"
" As we stop resisting the networks, shielding our classrooms as sealed containers, designed to hold and protect both learners and that which is required to be learned — I wonder how porous classrooms might reshape themselves by the actions of the students. Might, in such classrooms, active differentiated instruction techniques become practically obsolete. Might free learners, engaged in a lifestyle of curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, and construction; supported by professional master learners, make education less an ordeal and more a habit." By David Warlick "No More Sweet Spot" http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1680
What do you think about David Warlick's statement?
I think that fear strangles and suffocates! It does not protect, it alienates. I deal with a feeling of apprehension everytime I come across something different or unknown that I need to work through to understand. I work very hard to deal with these emotions because I might be inhibiting my students from learning and acquiring because I do not have the ability or the wherewithall to overcome the feelings that accompany the 'unknown' such as the options and hidden opportunities that technology holds for its users.
I do not want to teach the way I was taught. I became a teacher to provide learners with opportunities so that they could navigate through problem areas successfully using sound judgement, hopeful optimism, and collaborative negotiation towards a more positive way of life and healthier choices in whatever area they chose to live and learn in.
I Am Healed
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I am healed, I know who I am, and I know the work God has called me to do.
This is a big deal. I have spent the past three decades as a largely broken
and ...
2 weeks ago
Incorporating technology into my teaching and my students learning was an incredible gift for me. First, I began with one computer, and later two, in my classroom. How on earth was I to make effective use of 2 computers with 29 students in two grades?
ReplyDeleteI had to change what I was doing and how I was doing it in order to be able to make the computers tools for learning. So I had to change how I taught - had to get off the proverbial stage; before that, I actually hadn't even realized I was on one!
That created a shift to more student-centered, projects - something I had always believed in but wasn't sure how to go about. I guess I just needed a purpose to push me there.
That created a shift to providing more ways to have students "show what they know." That prompted a shift to more choice in topics for learning and for once I found that I could challenge those advanced learners by letting them go in directions that previously I thought I had to plan and control. It also allowed me to effectively support other levels of learners.
That created a shift in control within the classroom - I was not so exhausted from "managing" my students and keeping them all "with me" because they were all working in groups on different things at different times. And the best part of all - because the learning was more student directed, I had time, actually TIME, to walk around and listen to student conversations, to assess student learning and to ask questions and have conversations about their learning! Imagine!
No longer was it uncomfortable for me to say, "I don't know" because now I could ask, "how could we find this out?"
Creating that porous classroom that Warlick speaks about means helping our learners become connected through their blogs or other online networks and building on this network to support learning.
So, tell me, how do schools in this province move towards a more global way of thinking and learning when many school districts block or filter Internet sites? Why is it we have technical managers and not educators making these kinds of decisions?
How do we embrace the coming inquiry based curriculum when many of the most current resources in some schools (including global perspectives and learning networks) are blocked?
Marnie
I have to say that when I met Dr.Alec Couros, I was very amazed and grateful for his youthful and very masterful technological intelligence. This generation of people with ideas who have had the tools in their fingers from an early age are assuming control and sharing it, empowering others, utilizing co-learners and colleagues to enable and influence schools and powers in the schools to increase their range of thoughts to see the validity of using such tools/sites and understand the power behind global teachers and global classroom learning power. I think there is power in numbers.
ReplyDeletePrecedent setting at any age and on any stage does not come easy. The shifting of control seems to be speeding up. Consumers at very ages are wanting tools. So, their parents buy them and vocally demand that the schools keep up. Individuals, families, and communities need to use their voices as a tool to incorporate and adopt change in the present school system.