Saturday, July 18, 2009

Does you wiki?

I have been thinking about wiki and it's application for our classrooms at RFSD. I expect some teacher has done something like this. I imagine:

sharing technology with students in the flow of their instruction. The class is organized to work together and help document their own instruction within a wiki. Doing a unit on a subject, they add details to the reading, lecture and discussions they are having in class. Studying US Government, they take and post notes from class lectures and discussions. They contribute their own ideas and answer quetions in the content the wiki. Their contributions could include written, audio, still and video content. The wiki becomes a reference for the teacher as they expand on the lesson, make assignments, and assessments, and when they repeat the lesson next year. As an added benefit the wiki becomes a class portfolio, a measure of what they know.

I'm not sure if you can do all this on a wiki but I expect you can do most of it. Perhaps the assessment piece isn't in there. You could do some of your assessments using Google forms, like you would a poll.

In this way the class plays an important role in their own learning. They work with the teacher to build a learning community, learn the content, and produce evidence of their learning. The cool thing about the wiki is that it tracks who contributes, making work easy to find and evaluate.

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Friday, July 17, 2009

Technology for Instruction or Learning

As we create a vision for student learning, we should delve into our philosophy of technology. Does it follow from our philosophy of learning and teaching? How do we want students to engage with technology? Do we want to put them in pull out classes for typing and other basic proficiencies? Or do we want them to learn by doing, applying technology to their learning, picking up a computer when they need to do a task. As important as this target is, it is equally important to know when to hand students a pencil, or a blackboard, or face to face with each other; using all sorts of tools and arrangements to read, write and engage in projects. The plan to use technology should begin with a question of purpose:

  1. What learning outcome are we aiming at?
  2. What does the student need to know, perform.
  3. What vocabulary do they need, what processes do they need to understand?
After all, we have been using tools in learning and teaching forever. Technology is a revolutionary tool for sure but it should serve our learning objectives. As we create learning experiences for students we need to explore ways to put technology into student's hands to create, communicate and collaborate.

On another note...
If we're going to put more tech in the hands of students, we need to orient them (and ourselves) to the social norms of that environment. What are our expectations for them? What are the rules for engaging each other (and anonymous people) online? Some useful topics:
Students will benefit from 21st Century tools for learning as we balance our concerns with the advantages that the tools afford. As we understand the tools we will do a better job of integrating them into the flow of instruction. Students could begin to tell us when they need a particular tool.
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Dream and Prayer


We're all living the same, different, existence,
reaching for a connection and fearing it's loss.
My jealousy is a reminder, a signpost to a new state of being
Where I pause, release and reframe my boundaries,

I accept that I have longing and pain,
and see it melt, see others equal and greater to mine.

Breath with this moment - let us be.