Week 8- PLN Halfway There

Week 8- Post #1

Halfway There

The article by Miguel Guhlin on the Wes Fryer blog talked about the need to develop your Personal Learning Network in order to keep up with the information that is out there and become a better teacher.  The idea that professional development is out there for the taking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is both awesome and overwhelming.  You no longer have to wait for BER to send out their list of workshops for this year and hope one you need is in your area.  There are blogs to read, podcasts to hear, and videos to watch on any subject you can imagine any time you are free.

After reading this blog and reading David Warlick’s list of pre-requisites for an online PLN, I think I am halfway there.  Guhlin  listed three tools he felt were necessary for getting started; social bookmarking, which I’ve been using, Twitter which I have an account for but still really haven’t explored enough to see the benefits, and blogging which I have been reading lots of blogs but I haven’t made any comments on any outside of this class.  

David Warlick listed computer savvy and internet savvy as the first two items he felt were needed to begin a PLN which I’m feeling more confident about each day.  His third idea was to redefine your role from teacher to master learner and I hadn’t thought about this yet.  It adds new importance to the tasks of following blogs and watching a webinar when I think of it as becoming a “master learner” to become a better teacher.

Although I felt pretty good about having accomplished or furthered most of the ideas in the articles and videos this week, the one place I really fall down is the writing it down and sharing part.  I have been using Diigo but only to mark my own sites, not to look for others who may have found things I’m looking for.  I have been following the Free Technology For Teachers blog for two years but I haven’t once made a comment or joined a discussion.  

I think the main reason I have not done this is because I can do that part in person.  I am lucky enough to have a grade level colleague who is just as interested in all of this as I am.  She is right across the hall.  When we read things that strike a chord we will send each other the link with a few notes.  The next morning we chat about it.   We talk about things like how does this fit for our kids? How does it work in our building?  How can we make it work? 

I know not every person is lucky enough to have someone right in their building for their PLN and this week’s articles were all about online PLN, but I thought that piece was really missing from the discussions.  Each school has its own unique challenges and when you have two or more people working through all the information out there and thinking about how to make it work for that particular group of students, it’s very powerful and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Week 7 Questions and Projects

Week 7 Post #2 Questions and Projects

I loved watching the Project Based Learning in Hand video by Tony Vincent on two levels.  Seeing how the whole vicepresident project was created using a series of apps was very interesting and thinking about crafting driving questions that produce deep learning really made me rethink some things in my own classroom.  

 Weaving Storyrobe, Comic Touch, Easy Chart, Doddle Buddy, and screen shots from Notes together seamlessly was amazing.  There are so many choices of ways students can create content.  It is both wonderful and overwhelming at the same time.  Picking and choosing which apps to bring into the classroom can be a confusing and daunting task.  How do I introduce enough apps to give second graders that choice of ways to create?

I was really struck by the idea of opening a unit of study with a deep question and allowing that to drive the direction of student learning.  The thought of finding a question that would get at the curriculum but allow students to uncover the topic in a personal way made a lot of sense. 

When I first watched the video, we were getting ready to start an animal unit and then go to the Squam Lakes Science Center.  It seemed like the perfect time to give this a try.  The question I posed to my students is what animal would you bring to Squam Lake and how would you design the perfect enclosure for that animal?  The animal they choose had to be able to thrive in the environment at Squam Lake. 

The students were a bit more focused the day of the field trip because they had a task at the Science Center.  It was research for their project.  We used Rubistar to build a rubric together and they are now working on finding an animal suited to our climate and terrain but is not already at the Science Center.  They are automatically learning vocabulary and concepts like nocturnal, omnivore, colony, temperate forest, etc. just by looking for an animal.  Designing an enclosure that allows the animal to thrive and designing the learning activities visitors will see outside of the enclosure will require them to apply what they know in a creative way.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

Hooking the question our curriculum and talking through the requirements using the rubric gave me the confidence that I was still “teaching” what needed to be taught even though they were uncovering it in different places and ways.  I wish this was a unit that I had given pre and post tests in years past so I could compare the learning from the two different teaching methods.

Week 7 Post #1 Feed Your Passion

Feed Your Passion

 

While I watched the Passion-based Learning in Action video featuring Brian Crosby one thing kept coming to mind, teachers need to feed their own passion.  Passion is like a living thing that requires food, air, and exercise to stay healthy and grow.  

When teachers don’t feed their own passions by taking that summer writing class, joining that book club or hiking club, traveling to the places they want to see, their own interest begins to wither.  Sharing their passions with others gets it out in the open where it can breathe and be stretched.  It is so easy to get bogged down in the mundane of our work that we lose the excitement.  Test prep, study skills, paperwork, meetings, although important should not be the end all, be all of our days with our students.  

Feeding our own passions reminds us how learning can be fun and deep and lasting.  It reminds us that is what we should be bringing into our own classrooms.  

Knowing your curriculum and your students well, allows you the flexibility to remix things and do things in different ways to feed their passions.  It helps you to keep high expectations for their learning and keep it joyful.  So as the summer approaches find that thing that will reignite your passion and set aside a little time for it.  It will make you a better teacher in September.

Earth Day Podcast

This is a reader's theater for Earth Day. I did it with two reading groups from my class.  We use reader's theaters to work on fluency and expression.  This one also relates to our science curriculum as it pertains to Earth Day.  It was too long for Audioboo so I had to download Audacity and figure that out.  I think I would like to take if further for the kids, maybe putting it into VoiceThread or Animoto so we can add images and then post it on our class blog.  If anyone had any other ideas I would appreciate them.


Earth Day Podcast