"Helping students become quality Tutorial Designers has been on my mind and agenda lately. The reasons are plentiful, from the train of thought "if you can teach it, you know it", being a vital skill in the 21st century, Alan November's work "Who owns the Learning?"/ "Digital Learning Farm" to tutorials being an important piece in the self-motivated and self-directed learning of our times."
"Tutorial Designer" is one of the six roles, Alan November lists in his Digital Learning Farm that empower student learners and describes in his book 'Who owns the Learning?.
Take a look at the examples below of students:
sharing what they have learned in class
sharing beyond their classroom and their parents
sharing with a global audience in mind."
"We are intensifying the quest to empower our learners by allowing the students to become contributors to their classroom learning community. Our model is Alan November's six roles he outlines in The Digital Learning Farm.
One of these roles is The Tutorial Designer."
"In the spirit of my previous post Tutorial Designers, Guides, Step-by-Step Instructions: Amplification & Imagination, we are getting into the habit of "creating" by
articulating our learning
create documentation of learning in various media
learn to take the extra step to share that learning online for others to learn from us"
"very classroom at my school has it's own blog. Teachers are using it at various levels for parent/school communication, student work, two-way communication with commenting, documentation for classroom happenings as well as the hub and archive of classroom images, videos and audio."
"You are reading another post in the series "The Digital Learning Farm" based on Alan November's work of "The Digital Learning Farm", which he also outlines in his chapter of Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book "Curriculum 21"."
"Through a tip from Twitter, I requested a beta invite from a promising new iPad app called ShowMeApp. It promised to screen capture AND upload the video recording AND then provide me with an embed code. That ability was the one that caught my attention. "
"I am borrowing the notion of the Leitmotif, a recurring theme, and applying it to learning in the 21st century. For me it always seems to come back to a red thread of self-motivated and self-directed learning that connects all."
"In the back of my mind, I continued to have Alan November's Six New Roles for Developing Empowered Learners and Contributors, which I have written about before: Math Lesson? Empower Learners? , "Skype Jobs" for Students & Students as Meaningful Contributors "
"This is an end of the year reflection by Middle School students after contributing and working on a collaborative Math wiki this past school year.
Related blog posts about the Math Wiki project:
* Thoughts on Setting up a Student Created Wiki
* Setting up and Introducing a Collaborative Student Math Wiki
* Math Tutorial Music Videos
* Student Thoughts about their Math Wiki (Midyear Survey Results)
* Empower Student to Be Lifelong Learners NOT Dependent Learners
* Students as Meaningful Contributors"
"Teaching ourselves, our students and other educators how to use screenshooting (images) and screencasting (video) tools is a relevant skill to have that integrates in so many areas. Think Tutorial Designers (A role from the Digital Learning Farm) or the Flipped Classroom model. Being able to create, share and take advantage of readily available screencasts touch upon so many of the skills (create, communicate) and literacies (network, media, information literacy)."
"This summer, I facilitated quite a few workshops about iPads in the classroom. I wanted to make sure that the sessions went BEYOND using apps to play games, replace worksheets and kill & drill activities, but that the focus was transformative and pedagogical use.
I am especially thrilled with the slides from the following slide deck… I took my own advice from Presentation Makeover and took all the images used myself…no stock images…the model guiding us through the presentation is my 8 year old niece, Sophia, who was so patient with me as I asked her to model with the iPad. Many times she became engrossed in playing on the iPad that she even forgot that I was taking photos of her."
"I have had the pleasure of working with the Kauai Pacific School and Martin J. Gottlieb Day School faculty this past month in getting started with classroom blogs. The familiarity of reading and writing in a blog platform varies tremendously. I found it very helpful to start out with a brief overview of the architecture and vocabulary of a blog."
"All of our classrooms at MJGDS have their own blog. Several grade levels are piloting individual student portfolios based on a blogging platform.
* How do you keep up with all this information?
* How do you filter and organize it?
* How can you avoid having to go back to blogs to check if the owner has updated with a new post?
You can download this How-To-Guide for Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs as a pdf."
"If a teacher is lucky enough to have a SmartBoard at their disposal, it is their responsibility to use it beyond a "glorified projector screen". It requires a shift in thinking from the teacher's part to see a SmartBoard not "only" as a teaching tool, but as a learning tool."
"The more we podcast and have our students create video clips or other digital storytelling projects, the more we need to teach storyboarding as part of the process. Being able to pre-visualize how your story will unfold is becoming a vital skill to have for storytellers."