Back to the Future: Mr. Crosby Mr. Crosby compares the education children have before they reach his class as constricted. He uses tools such as Blogs and heavy internet access to broaden the spectrum by which students explore and enhance their knowledge. His students maintain blogs-just as we do-posting videos, links, activities and other tools to broadcast their knowledge. His students accessed and created Wiki pages to integrate them into their projects. This gave them different perspectives and had them analyze the driving question in depth. A recurring statement by the teachers we've read about before is the extreme positive impact leaving comments does for his students and others. This motivates them to want to excel in everything they do to receive the accolades they long for. The main thing I would take away from Mr. Crosby is that Project Based Learning (PBL) truly helps students learn more and that collaborating through technology is key for greater success. This is extremely helpful for students like Celeste. She has leukemia and due to this horrible ailment she is not able to always attend class. With Mr. Crosby's in depth involvement with technology she is able to interact in ways she otherwise would not have been able to. She does not get left in the dark or behind and is able to feel as normal as possible when dealing with her disease. Technology is changing our world in more than just education, it is changing children's lives.
Blended Learning: Paul Anderson Just as we assume what the future should look like with hovercrafts and flying cars this video Mr. Anderson portrays what most believe the future classrooms should appear as. Classrooms, he says, will be collaborative strictly through mobile online classes that will integrate directly into everyday life. Mr. Anderson goes through the "e's" of the learning cycle: evaluate a question, engage, explore, explain, and expand after the answer and continue to push the envelope of the question. Putting these two concepts together you in turn attain blended learning. To entice the students the teacher-instead of asking tons of questions-show a video to capture the students and get the wheels turning so that they are the ones elaborating. Students will perform lesson diagrams and then go into a review section. Lastly, they will have a summary quiz. The quiz will be a touchstone to see if the students are ready to move forward or need more practice with the subject. When finalizing the lesson you will give the students and test using pen and paper. Using Mr. Anderson's blended learning will help integrate technology and establish a great system to use when formulating lessons.
Building Comics: Sam Payne Sam Payne is a fifth grade teacher who understands the importance of internet safety and introduces to his class by way of your beloved neighborhood Spider-Man. He challenges students to be digital citizens and recognize the overwhelming power they possess when they have the internet at their fingertips. He has his students create a digital superhero. By using their laptops they are capable of completing this task. They create comic books and they analyze technology structure. They will then peer review their classmate's works. This idea Mr. Payne brings forward is a great collaborative and technologically safe project that still follows the guidelines of his lesson.
PBL: Dean Shareski These two teachers from Canada found a way to incorporate two lessons into one by way of technology. They particularly used it as a means of feedback on their English and History lessons. They concurred that students learn more when utilizing more subjects at the same time through technology. The lesson play did its job of helping expand the students' thinking.
Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program The video first reiterates the meaning and importance of PBL; it's collaborative and students work together to solve real world issues. Student's are encouraged to speak publically early on. This helps deter fear of public speaking that some adults still battle with to this day. It creates more responsible learners that self-motivate and strive to do better because they want to. PBL's push students to be more independent; but, they must still know how to work together, communicate, and solve problems. It is an adaptive style of learning that helps students in all subjects do better. It is a better way for students to learn due to the fact that it keeps them interested and interactive so that they are not stagnant. Every student has a curious streak and PBL shines a light on it.
Really great summaries of each video! They were very thorough and it's obvious you paid close attention to each one. I think you should put a little more at the end of each section about what you learned from them. Your summaries are fantastic, but your answers to the prompt "What can you learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?" is a little lacking.
ReplyDelete