Webinars allow students to speak though the technology so they would not be as intimidated talking to an expert as they would face to face. Proper preperation of the class for a webinar would also allow they students to be successful. For example, making each student or a group of students reserch an aspect of the webinar and develop a series of questions or a direction of conversation would greatly improve their self confidence and content knowlege. Having fun with their friends would be an aspect of this preperation as would the interaction with the technology.
Students enjoy Challenge Based learning because they feel less guarded to participate more. This works very well in my classroom with classwork activites. Sometimes students feel very shy to ask an adult if what they are doing is correct, however if they can just ask their peers the same question then the person that will be grading them will never know. Collaborative learning works very well with webquest, lab analysis, and reviewing for an assessments. For example I promote study sessions during the class period. Students are broken down in to different groups to work on a reveiw packet and at the end of a set time they need to take a part and explain it to the group. I post the answers on the screen so they feel confident in presenting the information. It is very interesting to see how the students interact with the material and each other during this process. I have noticed ever since I started this process their assessment grades have increased and their stress level for the topics has decreased.
Challenged based learning still appears to give students the oppurtunity to go beyond the textbook learning. The article suggest that getting a job done well makes students feel good about themselves. If you feel good you tend to want to do more. Education does need to look at the future of our students, not all will go to college, but all want to feel successful at who they are and what they can do. The product or package needs to come from within the individual. Exposing students to possible carrers or ways to compete in our current job market can be realized through this challenge based learning.
Challenge-Based Learning works to help motivate students, because they are all involved in creating a problem, designing an experiment, collecting and recording data, and analyze their findings. The students will take ownership in their experiments, therefore they will want to have a successful and good experiment. Also, students would feel the need to have pride in their work since individuals from the community and possible employers would be reviewing their work.
I feel that the use of Active Expression, or "clickers" would be a great asset to my classroom/school. I can see students getting excited about learning and demonstrating what they "know", "want to know", and what they have "learned." It's a great tool to grab a quick assessment or to get the students thinking prior to learning new content. It's a great tool for pre-assessment and for review. The students will have fun with it b/c it is so similar to texting and connecting with video games. I only wish we had the monies to purchase this technology. For now we, my department, are using a paper form of clickers in order to assess students prior to learning and after learning. It just doesn't come with that wonderful ability to download the data in a way that is easily accessible.
Webinars fits what I see students doing on their phones. I believe this is what students know and if they know it. It this gives them the opportunities to make comments without being face to face. It also gives the ability to read, research and plan their comments. Student who do not understanding the subject will have time to read other's comments which will help them to clarify the subject being discussed.
Using Voice Thread would be the peice of technology that would be great for French students. Each time a student uses it to comment either verbally or in written form, they are achieveing success and gaining confidence in their ability to speak the language. As the level of the language increases, so would the expectation of length of comments and participation with the program.
This would give immeditae feedback on student success in speaking and comprehension. If remediation needs to occur, programs and degree of difficulty can be adjusted accordingly.
Althea - Sell! Sell! Sell! I think teachers spend so much time getting students to buy into learning that when students actually buy in it is June. Geoffery- I think this will be good for the students since they are comfortable talking to someone and not seeing them. Jackie, Robert, & Christie - I agree. :-) Tammy & Toni - I love the clickers. Students act like kids in a candy store. John - I agree. This is something that I definitely want to try.
using the voice threads allows students to take control and be responsible for their own learning. they would be using technology they that are not used to having in the classroom - however these are skills that they have already developed. if you make students do a voice thread on a topic, they are then forced to become the "teachers". they are accountable for what they produce. i don't think they feel the same way when they write a paper, however, if they can post something that they know other people will see, i think they would put more effort into making a good product.
Challenge based learning will allow a student to be successful because they are able to work independently and to challenge themselves. They can make progress, though it would have to be monitored by the teacher in order to make sure they reach certain points in order to complete the course. With the Carnegie curriculum that I piloted a few years ago, I would assign certain pages for the students to complete and then we would review them as a class so they could make sure that they completed everything correctly. This monitoring also allowed for me to ensure that the curriculum was completed so the students were ready for the final exam. The students enjoyed competing with each other when they worked on the computer portion of the Carnegie curriculum, which encouraged them to correctly complete the problems. Challenge based learning gives students the opportunity to discover solutions on their own and thus being able to take ownership on their learning.
This would give immeditae feedback on student success in speaking and comprehension. If remediation needs to occur, programs and degree of difficulty can be adjusted accordingly.
Geoffery- I think this will be good for the students since they are comfortable talking to someone and not seeing them.
Jackie, Robert, & Christie - I agree. :-)
Tammy & Toni - I love the clickers. Students act like kids in a candy store.
John - I agree. This is something that I definitely want to try.