…technology with a twist

“If you really want to ramp up your teaching have your students create content that educates. That will naturally engage them at a higher cognitive level.”  This whole idea is not new to classrooms, but the means (Web 2.0) by which we can assist our students in publishing their work is. I am enthused by the number of teachers using wikis and blogs to make student writing REAL. A live audience at their fingertips. And not just the classroom teacher either.

“You can require your students to demonstrate their understanding of what they are learning by having them apply their knowledge analysing and evaluating relevant novel situations or problems. This I plan to do with two of my classes in first term. Both will be reading class novels & will be required to keep an online journal about their reading (one will have a pbwiki and the other will use edublogs) They can then read each other’s work, share ideas and discuss the different perspectives that emerge in their reading. I have given some though to suggesting that we invite the authors to join in our discussions at some point.

Better yet, get them to create content that educates an interested learner and they will automatically incorporate all those levels of engagement while they make their learning sticky. I don’t need to tell you that there’s nothing like having to teach a thing to make you really learn it. One class will use their journals as a beginning point in a collaborative project to prepare a ’sell’ on the film version of the novel.

I thought I might show this triangular thinking to the two classes and have them discuss what they see. Given that there is so much food for thought I may even send it home with them to discuss with Mum and Dad as well.

It would be an interesting exercise to have the kids change the triangles into learning timelines and then to plot some examples of their own experiences to assess what they have achieved and then to set themselves some goals for the term.