My students worked on putting together a book to publish through Amazon. This is one of the tools I used to help them think of all the materials that we need before we can become successful self publishers.
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After reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon and watching the TED talk "The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Adichie I decided it is important to allow my students a voice in the direction their learning takes, and what products they create and the importance the product plays in the classroom. I also decided that it was important that my students products and process is shared with the world so that they can see the way that young writers go about learning how to become great writers. I informed my students I was doing this so that they knew all their work was being made with the intention of being experienced by those on the world wide web. The following Storify is the outcome of this experiment. I used the hastags #csusmedu16 and #edl680ig to track the photos.
I felt that this was important to do because often times, the only voice heard in the classroom is the teachers, and the decisions being made are done by the teacher. By opening the class decisions up to the class, the students were able to share their stories (both their life stories and the stories that they have written). Students were able to create a class culture that is genuinely based on them because they were truly the curators of the class. This required a lot of communication on everyone's part, and because of it I believe we were able to create a community. This experiment also allowed to me to better understand my students learning process and help me, as a leader in the class, better meet the individual needs of my students.
This book was for those who wish to self publish, initially. I read this book with the intent of being able to help my students understand what they can do to get their writing into the "real" world. What I got out of it was that I need to be producing work as much as I encourage my students. I should be leading by example, and what I can be sharing is what I do in the classroom.
I have been slowly coming to the realization that this career is highly creative, and is constantly renewing itself. And thank goodness for that because without this renewal teaching, and therefore learning, would become boring. Since I am constantly creating material, and recreating this material, I should share this on social media sites so that the world can see what my students are doing, what they are creating and how they are going about doing it. I have recently been asked to do a large project, and I was unsure how to go about actually doing it. I needed an example. If I am having this problem, then I definitely have students who have this problem, and when I share curriculum or project ideas with the teaching community, having an example of a finished product, as well as documentation of the process, will help my students and the teaching community better understand what I am sharing. The quote that I felt was the most meaningful to me was about human spam. These are people who, “don't want to pay their dues, they want their price right here, right now. They don't want to listen to your ideas; they want to tell you theirs. They don't want to go to shows, but they thrust flyers at you on the sidewalk and scream at you to come to theirs.” I learned that the best way to get people to pay attention to what you're doing, is to pay attention to what other people are doing and to genuinely invest them. I hope to be able to translate these ideas to my classroom, and encourage my students to both be regular producers of quality material, as well as pay attention to those around them and what they're creating. Kleon, A. (2014). Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered New York: Workman Publishing Co., Inc. This three part blog will be about the book A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. In each post I will summarize 3 chapters of the book by writing down, for each chapter, a quote from the book, a question that I had while reading, or still have after reading, a comment that connects to my previous learning, and an epiphany as to how I can make a change in my teaching.
This three part blog will be about the book A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. In each post I will summarize 3 chapters of the book by writing down, for each chapter, a quote from the book, a question that I had while reading, or still have after reading, a comment that connects to my previous learning, and an epiphany as to how I can make a change in my teaching.
This four part blog will be about the book A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. In each post I will summarize 3 chapters of the book by writing down a quote from the book, a question that I had while reading, or still have after reading, a comment that connects to my previous learning, and an epiphany as to how I can make a change in my teaching for each chapter.
Chapter 1 Quote: "The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge" (pg 31) Question: How can I harness my student's googling ability to better the lesson I create, and also how to help them become better Googlers? Comment: I watched a Youtube video of you young man who was able to teach himself, in his own pace, in a community of other invested learners. The story with Sam reminded me of this learner. Epiphany: I need to make sure that I am using the interests and abilities of my students in my classroom instead of relying completely on my own ability. Chapter 2 Quote: "people today often describe schools as 'broken' ... Rather, we look at the question in terms of how our schools' environments blend - or fail to blend - with the freedom and wealth of the digital information network." (pg 36). Question: What kind of questions would my students be interested in learning more about? Comment: I enjoyed the idea of think about the learning environment as something that cant be broken, and that it is in fact is something that needs help in evolving. Epiphany: I have my students create their own questions, and create their own learning. Chapter 3 Quote: ""What Wikipedia can do, unlike Encyclopedia Britannica, is offer a very detailed record of the controversies over certain pieces of knowledge" (pg 46). Question: How can I help my students work within the contently changing information, so that they can keep themselves accurate? Comment: I remember always being told not to use Wikipedia as a source because it was inaccurate, but now I'm actually thinking that my teachers didn't want me using because it is constantly changing. Epiphany: Play is still the best way to learn so I need to add play (or discovery) into my lessons “Redefining Teachers with a 21st Century Education ‘Story’” and article by Thom Markham from MindShift. Let me summarize this for you. It is an article that is meant to inspire teacher to become global citizen, and the help put into perspective the struggle that teacher face in today’s educational climate. There are four main points the author makes:
1. Appreciate the power, beauty, and challenge of the present moment. The time we live in is challenging to teach, because it is constantly changing. It is never the same minute to minute. The inertia of each new piece of information is so intense, that it is difficult to follow where it came from and where it is going, yet that is our job as educators. Not only that, but also to slow down the world enough so that we can help our students make sense of it. It seems impossible, yet instead of being afraid, we should be invigorated. We are “co-creating a future that no one can imagine”. We have a hand in helping our students become the sculptors of the future, we are Da Vinci’s teacher. YES! How awesome is that? NO! How are we ever going to be able to live up to those standards. Easy, one day at a time, making sure each moment is authentic, meaningful and passionate. Seeking joy and genius in each student. 2. Contribute to a global vision. This outside of the box, or in the case of education, outside of the standardized test (which really should be treated like a four letter word). “The concerns of teachers everywhere have converged”. Teachers are no longer alone, we are all a team, a huge global team and our students are prize. Not the score that they make on test, not the project that they built in the class, but the potential they have to change the world for the better. 3. Redefine smart. “‘Smart’ these days includes grit, resiliency, empathy, curiosity, openness, creativity, and evaluative thinking”. No longer is our only goal to create moral citizens, nor are we are curating a generation of industrial age factory workers. We are teaching the future innovators that will change this world. And we need to stop telling them their interests, their natural skills are not good enough. So what if Susie can multiple 20 problems in 2 minutes, she is an amazing poet. Let’s foster that skill of hers, let’s help her become the next Pulitzer Prize winner. So what if Blake can’t write, look at this cog that he created. Sure I have no idea what it does, but it works. Let’s get him into a Robotics group and foster that skill of his. NOW, let’s get the two of them together and see what they can co-create. Our goal is to create ‘better people’, but how can we do that when we are stunting the individual uniqueness of students. 4. Live the collaborative reality. The Learning does not begin and end with the students. It begins and ends with the teacher. When the teacher has stopped learning, then the students will stop learning. We can prevent this by sharing and searching out new information, and since teachers are now a global community, with the use of social media sites, it is now easier than ever. The challenge is great, this much is clear, but together we are greater. Markham, T. (2015, February 11). Redefining Teachers with a 21st Century Education ‘Story’. In Mindshift - How We Will Learn. Retrieved December 6, 2015, from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/11/redefining-teachers-with-a-21st-century-education-story/ Grant Wiggins has a post entitled A Veteran Teacher Turned Student for a Day. In which a teacher talks about the experience she had while shadowing a student. The teacher talking in Wiggins post is absorbing and very enlightening. it was not that long ago, I was a student in a high school much like the one that was presented in the article. In many of my classes we were “absorbing information but not often grappling with it”. This led to the lethargic feeling the speaker talks about at the end of the day. However, it has been a long while since I have had that feeling, because I am no longer just a student, but a teacher. And I am afraid I am falling into the same habits as teachers before me, falling in love with the sound of my own voice and saying the phrases “please be quiet” and “ok let me say it one more time”. I am concerned I am making my students feel exhausted by having them sit the whole period, instead of providing them time and a reason to get up and move around, and not providing them enough time to be the ones to do the talking, and that maybe my sarcasm is acting as a tool to make them feel like a nuisance. There are a couple of different actions I can take to help my students be more engaged in the classroom. The first is to make sure my heart is right before interacting with my students. This means summoning my patience, and looking at the time the students ask me questions, even if it is the 15,000th one that day and they all have the same answer, as an opportunity to show that student patience and kindness as well as an opportunity to get to know that individual student better. The second goes hand in hand with the first, but to make sure my sarcasm is not a tool for injury. I can do this by building a rapport with the students so that they know they are valuable to me, and to make sure my sarcasm is not making someone feel small, but that it is being used to deflate a potentially toxic situation. The third way is to get the students up and moving. By doing gallery walks, having them switch groups multiple times in the day, or committing the last or first 5 minutes of class to movement to literally “get the juices flowing”. The last way I can engage my students is to give them to time and opportunity to ask their questions in a stress free environment. This can be done by playing Trashitball (an activity where the students write down questions that they have either about that day’s lesson, yesterday’s lesson, or a general life question and at the end of period play basketball with the balls of paper. The teacher then reads these and addresses them at the beginning of the next class period) or by providing the students a, “five-minute reading period,” at the beginning of a test, “in which students can ask all their questions,” about the test, “but no one can write until the reading period is finished”. There are many different way of creating an engaging classroom, and it is my job to make sure mine is engaging for me students. Wiggins, G. (2014, October 10). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned. InGranted and. Thoughts on Education by Grant Wiggins. Retrieved December 3, 2015 Follow the link for the article: _ https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/ Here is a quick video on how to embed information into a Google Doc, so that students can have more feed back on an essay, than simply "You need to fix this"
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ResearchAuthorAspiring Teacher Archives
May 2016
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