ASBUP 2010: Project Based Learning with Andrew Churches

Posted on March 16, 2010 by teachingsagittarian

Andrew Churches’s Project Based Learning Institute session was informative and overloading and full of gems!

Andrew managed to keep us engaged and busy for four hours as we made our way through the mirad of information surrounding his own classroom teaching, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and how it all fits with Project Based Learning.

Rather than try to recall all of the information Andrew passed our way – here’s a list of links to his wiki Educational Origami that stood out for me:

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy – loved the activity we had to do – match the task to the Bloom’s level! Very informative – and sparked really deep conversations about the complexities of tasks

Bloom’s and ICT Tools – check out the really clear diagram!

The following are quick resources for Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Each sheet has keywords, activities and technologies that correspond to each taxonomic level.The activities that are represented at each level are not an indication that the student is creating or evaluating, rather tools that can lead to this. As always its the quality of the work rather than the tool or technique that is key.
1 – Remembering.pdf
2 – Understanding.pdf
3 – Applying.pdf
4 – Analysing.pdf
5 – Evaluating.pdf
6 – Creating.pdf

4D’s project based learning presentation the 4 D’s.pdf – this was really helpful!
Activity Mapping Tool A3.pdf – this tool is useful in the planning of project based learning and maps the Bloom’s taxonomic level against a modified Daggett’s application model

But don’t stop there – bookmark this wiki and be prepared to loose a couple of hours or five as you navigate your way around the resources!!

Managing Peripherals

Posted on December 7, 2009 by teachingsagittarian

Week 5: November 29 – December 5

Essential Question: How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students? What are some things you’ve learned and hope to implement.

There’s three things in the classroom that I just can’t do without.

We manage all of them the same way we manage anything: with procedures, clear expectations and with care.

Together, we drive our classroom, our SMARTBoard and our Document Camera. All three, revolve around our learning – together. That means for the most part, I’m not the only one using the technology peripherals in the classroom, we all are. Flickr Photo Download: ISB Elementary

They use the SMARTBoard to show their thinking, their working out, their knowledge and their understandings to their fellow classmates and of course to me. I get to use it to highlight a teaching point, show a tutorial or video, or use with a small group that needs hands on, visual, auditory grammar practise!

They use the Document Camera to share their work and to show off things that can’t be seen clearly by 20 students crowded around it or to show their mathematical working out process or their writing that they want feedback from their peers. And then I get to use it to model what I’d like them to see, like the read aloud we’re doing in class, or the writing in my writer’s notebook or the form that needs to be filled in, or the object we want to see up close.

I want students up and out of their seats talking, laughing, sharing, showing, demonstrating, and actively learning. The technology peripherals help me do just that. I quickly realised that I was only limited by my own imagination and theirs! But it didn’t happen just like that. I needed to model, support, guide, explicitly teach and encourage students to take control of the peripherals.

It takes time but believe me, every year it’s worth it. Most of all, me, the teacher, needs to take a giant step backwards and let the students do the work.

A wise mentor teacher of mine once asked me ……..

Who’s the hardest working person in the classroom?

Then she said:

If the answer is you, then something’s not right! It should be the students that are working the hardest!

So what are the things I’ve learnt from CoETaIL Course 4 and hope to implement?
I have a much better understanding of the Backwards by design planner and I’m hoping to embed that kind of learning in the classroom with the 3-5 TAILS . I want to experiment more with project-based learning and try to keep fairly up-to-date with web2.0 tools and resources that work well in classroom and of course I’m looking forward to the final project and it’s implementation in our 5th Grade classrooms!

Final Reflection – Course 1

Posted on March 1, 2009 by admin2

It’s incredible that Course 1 of our Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy is complete (well as of midnight tonight it will be!)

Amazon.com: Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age: Suzie Boss, Jane Krauss, Leslie Conery: Books Our final face to face session yesterday was a doozie! Kim and Jeff organised for the authors of Reinventing Project-Based Learning – Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age (from which our project assignment stems from) to skype in. It was very powerful to receive words of encouragement and advice from Suzie Boss (Portland, Oregon) and Jane Krauss (Eugene, Oregon) Also impressive was the fact that they were giving up some of their Friday night to talk with us.

Take-aways from the conversation:

If the technology (tools) is leading your project then go back and look at it again, make the learning lead the project
8 Essential Functions (Recommend that we read that section in the appendix – the tools will change and/or advance but the set of functions are enduring
Visible Thinking – Do something that has students showing their thinking. When you do this you can get some dialogue going – ie: what are they doing and why? By the time you get to the final product it’s too late to get into a dialogue
Must check out The American Crawl – amazing English teacher with a great reflection blog.
You don’t have a network for no reason.

One of the great things about Course 1 has been the chance to collaborate with members of my own Grade 5 team as we put together a Project especially after hearing the authors of Reinventing Project-Based Learning!! We set ourselves a goal of establishing our Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions by 11.00am (Lunchtime for the Course). It’s such a pleasure working with people who are willing and enthusiastic about learning in the 21st Century.

Julie Lindsay joined us via skype today too. Sheis an IT Director, currently working at Qatar Academy, soon to be at Beijing International School. Along with Vicki Davis (CoolCatTeacher), Julie developed an amazing project-based learning opportunity for students around the globe based on the Horizon Project, The World is Flat and Grown Up Digital. Julie and Vicki have recently completed the first ever Flat Classroom Conference and have received multiple awards for their ground-breaking work. Her blog, E-Learning Journeys, is a wonderful resource for all things related to globally collaborative projects. When I was teaching Year 7 in New Zealand (Grade 6) my class and I were lucky enough to be a sounding board for the Horizon Project in 2006 and 2007. It was an amazing opportunity to be involved at a lower level. My students got real insight into the kind of students that they themselves, in the not so distance future, would be. It was interesting for us look at the ways other students communicated and collaborated and produced a final product during the Horizon Project as well as provoking a lot of discussion about critiquing people’s work / thinking.

The last part of the day saw us back together in our teams finalising our Project. The GRASP was excellent as it kept us focused on exactly what learning we wanted to expose our students to. We struggled somewhat with the “Six Facets of Understanding” because none of us really had any experience with this. Having the template on our CoETaIL wiki helped a little, but we were unsure of what exactly to write. This provoked some discussion about our own understanding and together we were able to nut it out. Fabulous cooperation, contributing and collaboration! You can read our Project Page here – although please note it’s still a work in progress. We are going to share it with the rest of our team and have them add their input too, as we believe this has the potential to be a wicked Social Issues Unit for Literacy! We welcome any feedback or suggestions you might have – just scroll down to the bottom and start a thread!

It really is hard to believe that Course 1 is complete. The weeks went fast, the readings were thought-provoking, reaffirming and sometimes prickly. But that’s ok – we’re life long learners and this is what life long learners do – extend themselves, challenge themselves and learn new things. There’s more photos in my flickr photostream of Course 1 if you’re interested.