Before reading this article, and just looking at the title, I’m thinking; “Yes that’s what I’m trying to do now with my own teaching”. What would work in the “olden” days (only a few years back, or even as “young” as last year) has become “old style” teaching. I still haven’t read the article but this reinventing is the process phase that I’m facing right now at this point of my teaching. What a great timing!
After reading, I really like the idea of how to bring inquiry into students’ daily life. Access to mobile devices made it possible in Finland for students to be connected to other network technologies and these tools became an important piece of their project. Access to real people here in Thailand, in my case a colleague from South Africa, the access to educational tech tools here at school, and my luck again to get great help from Kim Cofino, will become important and essential pieces to make my project idea work. My project needs instructional goals and accessible technologies, plus student collaboration and problem solving skills.
I’m not very creative but more out of frustration I’m designing a project from scratch and integrating technology in a new way to reach my instructional goals. There’s noting wrong with my students but I feel frustrated that I can get the participation and engagement I’d hoped for so far with some of their work. Undoubtedly I’m privileged working with a small, talented, hardworking, bright group of English learning students in grade 8. Getting closer to the end of our Social Studies unit, I’m in the process of planning a project to share their learning. Again, the timing of enrolling in this tech course couldn’t be better than right now!
In order to develop a deeper understanding of the Social Studies outcomes students are asked to complete activities that include at least two of the outcomes. The activity project I'll offer in my class will allow students to be able to demonstrate an understanding of individual development and identity. After completion of the activity students will complete a “Learning Reflection” describing what they have learned in the process and explain the connection to the give Social Studies outcome. I aim for these students to learn and practice by using the language needed to gather information to help understand that changes in a person are related to the time period and society in which the person lives. Therefore my students are planning conduct an interview with someone who grew up in South Africa to engage students in experiences that helps gain better understanding, learn and practice target language, gain confidence, and use effective technology.
Technologies I plan to use are:
Blog: for instructions, sharing ideas, making choices
Flip Camera: to record interview,
Digital Camera: to document interview, create images
Mac computers: plan and create video
Important things to remember and think about when planning the project are: Set up a situation in which they want to ask questions, want to learn more, need to know something they don’t already know, and believe it is really important to them and, especially to the larger community to find out. We are in the process of doing the planning. In three different groups decisions are made for relevant question to be asked to get information from the interviewee to help understand the Social Studies outcome. By documenting the interview students will make their choice of how to make a video of this interview to share what they have learned.
