Going
Somewhere New
In his article, ‘World
without Walls: Learning Well with Others’, Will Richardson speaks about
learners engaging with the global online population, which has exceeded one
billion, to find others out there with similar passions and interests to share
information with. This, of course, has advantages (such as unlimited access to
information) and disadvantages (such as the quality and reliability of that
information).
Honestly
speaking, I have not really explored the concept of ‘virtualizing’ the
classroom in any meaningful way. I am, admittedly, technically challenged.
Actually, the first time I had ever experienced the concept was when Ben Steigner Skyped with
Jeong-hee Kim, the author of For
Whom the School Bell Tolls: Conflicting Voices Inside an Alternative High
School for a presentation he was collaborating on with some other students
for our EDUC 999 course, Research and Evaluation taught by Dr. Buckreis.
It really
left an impression on me, and I have been trying to come up with ways that I
could get my own students to collaborate with others on writing projects of
their own. Hopefully, I can take some of the knowledge from this course (for
example, I finally learned how to hyperlink… baby steps, I know) and begin
applying it to my own classroom with the intention of coercing my students into
sharing their own works with others in the hopes of receiving feedback and/or
extra-curricular information. For example, after reading this article for David
Flynn’s EDUC 925- Curriculum and Theory class, I really pushed my students to read
their classmates writings (a minimum of 6) to get an idea of not only what
their friends were doing, but some ideas they might apply to their own papers.
These blog posts, especially the part where we need to ‘comment’ on other
posts, seems to have a similar concept. I saw what happened when I had students
‘look into’ the writings of others in the classroom, I’m excited to see what
will happen when I apply this (via whatever medium I can comfortably work with
my students next semester), and beyond.
Well said. I also find a lot of value of reading my classmates' writings. I dont teach any writing classes, but if I did, I would use some of these techniques.
ReplyDeleteHi Gary!^^
ReplyDeleteAlso read this article for my second article response.^^ Great post! I think baby steps are fine because, as Steve said, our digital footprints or prowess can not be created overnight. It sounds like you are heading in the right direction, and I am sure the collaboration you are planning on doing in your class utilizing these new online resources will greatly improve your students' ability to communicate in English.
It's not how fast you move, it's that you move. From the members of my previous cohort I have heard of many stories of how they have their students peer review each others work. From oral presentations to writing. I'm really keen to try to use this collaborative learning as well, but I feel my elementary students don't have enough experience to really do this.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the first time experiencing the wall-less classroom concept when Ben Steigner Skyped with Jeong-hee Kim, the author of "For Whom the School Bell Tolls: Conflicting Voices Inside an Alternative High School" for a presentation we did for our Research and Evaluation course with Dr. Buckreis. I must say, I was also highly impressed with that, not only did he have the novel idea to make contact via Skype, but actually followed through with it. I also remember our first course with Dr. Andolina and when during a class discussion a large-type digression would take place or someone’s memory would fail, Andrew would seamlessly ‘mind the gap’ with his Google searches and find the information without missing a beat. I remember really admiring that and also thinking, “This is exactly how classrooms should be taking place.” I’ve also really enjoyed seeing the differences in approach we've all taken to certain presentation assignments using technology.
ReplyDelete