Em's Ever Evolving Erudition

We have covered a lot of important concepts in the past couple of weeks: telecommunication, collaboration, assessment, and evaluation. All are integral to creating powerful IBL/PBL projects. Each week has given me food for thought and added tools to my tool belt. I have already started embedding these concepts into my practice. In week 7 we covered telecommunication and collaboration. With today’s advances in technology, students are no longer stuck learning only within the school’s walls. They can now connect to other students around the world or with an expert in a specific field. These connections can be very powerful. Students start to see bigger pictures, see their real world potential, and are more engaged in their learning. There are some great examples of this happening all over the world that we got to explore. I really was blown away when looking at some of the projects on the Google Science Fair webpage. These kids were inspired by real world problems and situation...

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. Imagi...

“Students are most successful when they are taught how to learn as well as what to learn” (Barron and Darling-Hammond 8). Project-based learning and definitely inquiry-based learning is about process and content. We teach the students the skills they will need to be successful to complete the project. By making the learning more student focused in these processes we awaken creativity and passion within both ourselves and our students. By shifting our pedagogy, we empower our students to take responsibility in their education and give them the skills that will be important in their uncertain future. Project-based learning and inquiry based learning can be very powerful in teaching students both skills and content, but it doesn’t just happen. Scaffolding and pre-planning has to happen for students to be successful. This help support the learning of critical thinking skills, self-direction, and teamwork (Savery 8). If teachers take the time to do this very important training on the pr...

My reaction to Doug Johnson’s article is “easier said than done.” I like many of the points he makes. The internet is a teachable moment with students. The fact is that the internet is a fast growing part of everybody’s life. It is accessible everywhere with the invention of smart phones. Our society is hyper connected. Students are definitely going to be exposed to the dangers of the internet, along with the benefits. It would be a great mistake to not teach appropriate behavior for our digital lives. The internet allows a degree of anonymity that can allow people to act irresponsibly. They believe that their words and actions cannot be assigned to them, giving them a green light to misuse the internet. As the suicide of that girl after the mother cyberbullied her shows, adults are guilty of bad internet behavior. It is of the utmost importance to teach all appropriate behavior. My concern is about policy. To get federal money, schools are required to have filters. This will take...

I think I’ve written this assignment about five times now. Each tool that I look at I think, “ah ha! This will be my golden nugget!” I do a little write up while exploring the site. But I decide to check out another tool and the excitement begins again! There really are an overload of fabulous tools out there for us to use! The tool that end up really winning my heart was diigo (www.diigo.com). I know it was discussed a bit in class, but I had never heard of it. I actually went to it to start bookmarking some of the great tools that I had been looking at. When I signed up, I realized that this was the golden nugget I really was looking for. I’ve used delicious and honestly wasn’t all that impressed. It was nice to have websites cataloged in a cloud for me to be access from any computer, especially since I tend to do homework anywhere I find time: home, work, library. But other than that I never really got into any of the other features. Right away diigo’s website is organized i...

Reading GLE: RHS 14: Analyze and interpret author’s craft (citing evidence where appropriate) by… • Demonstrating knowledge of use of author’s style or use of literary elements and devices (i.e., imagery, repetition, foreshadowing, personification, hyperbole, symbolism, analogy, allusion, rhyme scheme, soliloquy, dialogue, or use of punctuation) to analyze literary works. Music GLE: APHS 16: Students make connections between/among the arts and disciplines outside the arts by… · Explaining how elements, artistic processes, and/or organizational principles are used in similar and distinctive ways (e.g., form, tone color, balance, unity and variety, texture, harmony, etc.). History GLE: H&SS9-12:13: Students analyze how and why cultures continue and change over time by… Analyzing and evaluating ways in which culture in the United States and the world has changed and may change in the future. My interdisciplinary unit would combine poetry and jazz and history. While studying the Ha...