The past three weeks have cover a wide range of topics and all important in consideration when planning PBL units. How do spark passion in our students? How do we use our own passions to ignite passion in others? How do we make sure our students have the skills to be a good digital citizen? And how do we do everything while making sure we are using best practice? These are essential questions that will help guide us in our design of effective project based learning lessons.
We can create a well designed, planned out project, but if it doesn’t hook the students it can fall short of success. The students have to be engaged. They have to get the “so what?” of the learning. This can be done by thinking about passion. There are two ways to tap into passion. First is to find what your students are passionate about. One of the cool ideas involving student passion is the Genius Hour, where you allow your students to spend 20% of their time exploring a project of their own passion. Imagine what your student can create when you give them permission to deeply explore their own passions: inventions, charitable deeds, incredible art? This empowers your students to be a part of the world at large. The other way to tap into passion is using your own passions in your teaching. Take a subject you are passionate about and let it shine. Passion is infectious and your students will start to see why you are passionate about your subject.
There were two quotes by Benjamin Zander that really stood out to me, and I think others as well. The first is a conductor “depends for his power by his ability to make other people powerful.” This really hit home with me because as a teacher and a librarian, I share this power dynamic in common with conductors. My power or success depends on my ability to get my students to own the knowledge. It does not matter if I attain the knowledge. The point is that my students get it. They make the noise. The other quote that was powerful was that his definition of success depended on “how many eyes are shining are around him.” Shining eyes mean you’ve infected them with your passion.
I can see this as being truly instrumental in my instruction in the library. Firstly, because my curriculum is more skills based, rather than content based. This means I can tap into my students passions to teach these skills. They will be engaged in the lesson because the content will be a topic they truly care about. They can be investigators of their own lives. Secondly, my curriculum is honestly not that exciting. Research skills do not lend themselves to a wow factor or a shock and awe hook. I can tap into my students’ passions or I can embed my own passion into each lesson. I can pick a topic that gets my heart racing and use it to teach the research skills that my students need to have for their future. I can be like a conductor, giving my students the power to make beautiful music or give them the skills to answer important questions in their lives. I can gauge my success by how many shining eyes are staring back at me at the end.
Another consideration when thinking about our students’ success is developing them as digital citizens. Creating the presentation on digital citizenship with Holly was really awesome. I always wanted to develop a lesson that taught my students how to be better digital citizens. It was a very big topic though. It encompassed so many other digital skills that it would be many different lessons put together to get the full big idea across to students. There are nine different elements to digital citizenship: etiquette, literacy, access, security, health & wellness, commerce, communication, rights & responsibilities, and law. Just like how being a citizen of a country, all the different parts need to be there to be a good digital citizen.
I would like to further explore all 9 parts that define a digital citizen with my students. Another great part of that project was viewing other groups projects. So many of them are useful in developing lessons on these topics for my students. I already do a website evaluation lesson, but I can improve it after viewing the presentation by Elaine and Alice. Again I do a internet safety lesson, but I didn’t include anything about cell phones. Nate and Rich’s presentation gave me so much need information on this topic. Two presentation made me think more on a personal note. Stephanie and Laurie’s presentation on digital footprint really made me think about putting children’s images on the internet. We are creating a digital footprint for these kids and they don’t even know it! It made me more discerning in what pictures I post to the internet in my personal life but also what pictures of my students I choose to share, even when they have given permission. Also Michael and Meghann’s presentation about social bookmarking showed me how I can use this more in my professional life to curate important resources for my own growth.
New standards are being developed and implemented in many different fields of education. It is interesting to note that many key ideas are reiterated in the many different standards. The Common Core State Standards, the NETS, and the AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner all put a heavy emphasis on research and ethical use of information. This is where the work of PBL and IBL gets its power.
I like that these standards. They acknowledge the important work that I am already doing. They also are a bit of a challenge. They kind of challenge that makes a point of hard work, not one that is unattainable. It is the motivation and the end goal that can drive us to do this important work. The intermingling of ideas in the different standards also helps with collaboration with classroom teachers. We both have similar standards that enables us to work together. And working together can make the learning more powerful and the teaching more fun.
Chapter 3 of “Powerful Learning” talks about mindful engagement. This brings all three considerations together: interest and motivation (passion), the academic standards, and building a community of learners. It also includes self monitoring. This feature is important in developing not only strong readers but also life long learners. The self monitoring has them check whether they understand the words or concepts but also it helps activate their prior knowledge. Like a good engineer or scientist, the student is constantly checking their product (knowledge) to see if it works and what can be improved.
Although this chapter was more about strategies used in the classroom, it was helpful in knowing what my classroom teachers needs and expectations should be so that I can help support them in their teaching. But the part that I think is the most helpful is the self monitoring aspect. Self monitoring so important in research as well as reading. The students should not be reflecting only at the end of the research project. Self monitoring can should be used to know that they need to do PRE-search before really getting into the depths of the project. It should happen again to make sure that they are getting the right kind of information or using the right sources. They can self monitor every step of the process. This will make them the most successful in the end.
These topics will help me as a teacher immensely. They are different parts to a bigger goal of a creating engaged lifelong learners. Passion can hook them. The standards will guide them. Their digital skills will make them part of a larger community. And their self monitoring skills will ensure that they are successful in the end. I hope to use all of these ideas in my lessons and units from here on out.
We can create a well designed, planned out project, but if it doesn’t hook the students it can fall short of success. The students have to be engaged. They have to get the “so what?” of the learning. This can be done by thinking about passion. There are two ways to tap into passion. First is to find what your students are passionate about. One of the cool ideas involving student passion is the Genius Hour, where you allow your students to spend 20% of their time exploring a project of their own passion. Imagine what your student can create when you give them permission to deeply explore their own passions: inventions, charitable deeds, incredible art? This empowers your students to be a part of the world at large. The other way to tap into passion is using your own passions in your teaching. Take a subject you are passionate about and let it shine. Passion is infectious and your students will start to see why you are passionate about your subject.
There were two quotes by Benjamin Zander that really stood out to me, and I think others as well. The first is a conductor “depends for his power by his ability to make other people powerful.” This really hit home with me because as a teacher and a librarian, I share this power dynamic in common with conductors. My power or success depends on my ability to get my students to own the knowledge. It does not matter if I attain the knowledge. The point is that my students get it. They make the noise. The other quote that was powerful was that his definition of success depended on “how many eyes are shining are around him.” Shining eyes mean you’ve infected them with your passion.
I can see this as being truly instrumental in my instruction in the library. Firstly, because my curriculum is more skills based, rather than content based. This means I can tap into my students passions to teach these skills. They will be engaged in the lesson because the content will be a topic they truly care about. They can be investigators of their own lives. Secondly, my curriculum is honestly not that exciting. Research skills do not lend themselves to a wow factor or a shock and awe hook. I can tap into my students’ passions or I can embed my own passion into each lesson. I can pick a topic that gets my heart racing and use it to teach the research skills that my students need to have for their future. I can be like a conductor, giving my students the power to make beautiful music or give them the skills to answer important questions in their lives. I can gauge my success by how many shining eyes are staring back at me at the end.
Another consideration when thinking about our students’ success is developing them as digital citizens. Creating the presentation on digital citizenship with Holly was really awesome. I always wanted to develop a lesson that taught my students how to be better digital citizens. It was a very big topic though. It encompassed so many other digital skills that it would be many different lessons put together to get the full big idea across to students. There are nine different elements to digital citizenship: etiquette, literacy, access, security, health & wellness, commerce, communication, rights & responsibilities, and law. Just like how being a citizen of a country, all the different parts need to be there to be a good digital citizen.
I would like to further explore all 9 parts that define a digital citizen with my students. Another great part of that project was viewing other groups projects. So many of them are useful in developing lessons on these topics for my students. I already do a website evaluation lesson, but I can improve it after viewing the presentation by Elaine and Alice. Again I do a internet safety lesson, but I didn’t include anything about cell phones. Nate and Rich’s presentation gave me so much need information on this topic. Two presentation made me think more on a personal note. Stephanie and Laurie’s presentation on digital footprint really made me think about putting children’s images on the internet. We are creating a digital footprint for these kids and they don’t even know it! It made me more discerning in what pictures I post to the internet in my personal life but also what pictures of my students I choose to share, even when they have given permission. Also Michael and Meghann’s presentation about social bookmarking showed me how I can use this more in my professional life to curate important resources for my own growth.
New standards are being developed and implemented in many different fields of education. It is interesting to note that many key ideas are reiterated in the many different standards. The Common Core State Standards, the NETS, and the AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner all put a heavy emphasis on research and ethical use of information. This is where the work of PBL and IBL gets its power.
I like that these standards. They acknowledge the important work that I am already doing. They also are a bit of a challenge. They kind of challenge that makes a point of hard work, not one that is unattainable. It is the motivation and the end goal that can drive us to do this important work. The intermingling of ideas in the different standards also helps with collaboration with classroom teachers. We both have similar standards that enables us to work together. And working together can make the learning more powerful and the teaching more fun.
Chapter 3 of “Powerful Learning” talks about mindful engagement. This brings all three considerations together: interest and motivation (passion), the academic standards, and building a community of learners. It also includes self monitoring. This feature is important in developing not only strong readers but also life long learners. The self monitoring has them check whether they understand the words or concepts but also it helps activate their prior knowledge. Like a good engineer or scientist, the student is constantly checking their product (knowledge) to see if it works and what can be improved.
Although this chapter was more about strategies used in the classroom, it was helpful in knowing what my classroom teachers needs and expectations should be so that I can help support them in their teaching. But the part that I think is the most helpful is the self monitoring aspect. Self monitoring so important in research as well as reading. The students should not be reflecting only at the end of the research project. Self monitoring can should be used to know that they need to do PRE-search before really getting into the depths of the project. It should happen again to make sure that they are getting the right kind of information or using the right sources. They can self monitor every step of the process. This will make them the most successful in the end.
These topics will help me as a teacher immensely. They are different parts to a bigger goal of a creating engaged lifelong learners. Passion can hook them. The standards will guide them. Their digital skills will make them part of a larger community. And their self monitoring skills will ensure that they are successful in the end. I hope to use all of these ideas in my lessons and units from here on out.
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