Group items tagged

"Once the students had selected a topic from our over-arching theme of civil/human rights, and I had a rubric, it was time for the real work to begin. We started our project-based learning by making a list on the board of things we know about the topic followed by a list of things we "need to know." Basically, we completed the K and W of our KWL chart (PDF)."

"I decided to use the teacher console on Diigo to create groups for each of my classes. I used handouts and tips from Bill Ferriter's Digitally Speaking Wiki to get everything set up and explain to the student how I wanted them to find, annotate, and share resources and information. (I highly recommend Bill's resources. They saved me a ton of time.) The students had used Diigo for research on a project during a previous school year so I thought with Bill's handouts and the boys' previous experience we were in good shape to begin. I soon learned differently. We have a 1:1 laptop classroom and the boys have a natural tendency to head straight to Google any time they have a question, but it was obvious after the first day that they weren't finding the quality resources they needed. Additionally, some boys still didn't know (or forgot) how to share to a group while others didn't know how to write a quality annotation. I had assumed too much. They needed what Mike Kaechele calls a "teacher workshop" on searching for information and on how to use Diigo. They needed me to model what they should do."

"I knew where I wanted the question to lead but decided I was more committed to giving my students a voice than I was to accomplishing my project idea. I wanted our projects to be about "work that matters," but it needed to matter to the students not just me. I wanted their project-based learning to stem from their own empathy."

"Perhaps the most difficult aspect of project-based learning for me was figuring out how I was going to assess it. I'm sure some teachers love assessing and marking student work, but honestly, I'm uncomfortable with most grading and scoring. I appreciate feedback and I don't mind giving feedback, but I hate reducing it to a letter, number, or score. To me, it undervalues the learning."

The Student News Action Network was created, and is maintained, by students and teachers at Washington International School in collaboration with TakingITGlobal and bureau schools worldwide."

In this podcast, Alan interviews Silvia Tolisano, 21st Century Learning Specialist, along with other administrators, teachers and students at Martin J. Gottlieb School. Here, students are being encouraged to take more of a leadership role in their learning as they take part in a variety of jobs inspired by Alan November's article, Students as Contributors"

"Picture this: A student is at home, listening to my biology podcast and a question comes to mind, that she thinks would be of benefit to the community of fellow listeners. She wants to contribute to the podcast by asking her question in her own voice (like talk-back radio) and hear the question discussed on next week's episode. I have investigated and tried quite a number of options. Some of the best include K7, Skype Voicemail, Google Voice and iPadio and CinchCast. But none of these were ideal for the purpose. Some are expensive for students. Some are expensive for me. Some don't work in Australia (yes - I'm looking at you, Google Voice). Some are cumbersome for my purpose, and let's face it, if it takes much any effort, students won't use it). Enter SpeakPipe. A new service that is just what I've been looking for."