Welcome to my first Padlet about the "Greetings From Room 211" blog. The blog was designed to help Max, a CPS student who was away shooting a film in Toronto Canada, to stay in touch with his classmates back in Chicago. Max shared many of his experiences while making the movie (I checked....the movie is called A Family Man with Gerard Butler). The blog also allowed for teachers and classmates to make comments and ask Max questions about his experience. You can see a screen shot of the Padlet below along with a corresponding link.
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| Padlet - Bonnie Mattson |
I believe the blog has several active learning characteristics as stated on my Padlet. The blog was engaging, student centered, gave the students exposure to something they would otherwise not have been able to experience, and allowed for student interaction. I would not consider the blog a complete active learning package. The main purpose of active learning is to encourage and enable students to take charge of their own learning. Students are actively involved in the learning process by researching, investigating, creating, and collaborating. The blog was more intended to foster interaction and student connection not to engage in collaboration and exploration. The link below gives a great overview of active learning.
As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of the concept of active learning. I believe that it makes learning and education more relevant. The difficulty that I run into with implementing this in my classroom is the special needs of my students and their being at a concrete level of learning. I am starting to explore how I can slowly utilize different digital tools like Padlet to allow my students to demonstrate what they are learning. One tool that I have used successfully is Blendspace. It's a website where teachers can gather digital content all in one place and allow the students to pick, choose, and explore the subject matter I would like them to focus on. I can vary the levels of digital media for my students to explore which allows for differentiation and student choice.
I feel like I will need more time to munch and crunch the whole concept of active learning. I would like to investigate and explore how to implement this in the special education realm of teaching. Maybe we could call it adaptive active learning.
Until next time......
I really like the idea of the blog connecting the classroom with their displaced classmate. I think it has a lot of similar features to the way we use a discussion post in many online classes. I wonder if they used the blog to share any classwork or experiences from inside the classroom, or if it was mainly a one way window for Max to share his experiences.
ReplyDeleteIn this instance, Eric, Max and the students engaged back and forth slightly on this blog. Max has since left us again to film a new project (this one's a biggie!) and on the new blog we found it was much more of Max speaking. The students chose to text him more since they knew I was moderating blog comments :)
DeleteFor me the main component of active learning is student choice. For your students I would suggest starting small- maybe you give them a choice between two ways to show what they've learned. As time progresses you can add new choices. Perhaps it would be cool to create a Blendspace menu board where they could choose how to apply what they've learned!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestions Nicole! I am really excited to start finding ways to introduce and explore this with my kiddos.
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ReplyDeleteBonnie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your activity. That sounds like a great opportunity for students to stay connected. I am also a huge fan of active learning. I believe in fostering an environment where students think critically and work together to find answers rather than relying on adults.
Bonnie,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you raised the issue that you did. All educational theories and applications look different when we look at them from the point of view of students with special needs.
Control of one's own learning looks different for each student. Setting students free to explore the wonderful world is a nice idea. But, teachers exist for a reason. Guidance is necessary, arguably more so than it ever has been given the accessibility of information and images.
Using something like Blendspace allows you to reach that balance between loosening the figurative "leash" on the students while simultaneously informing their purpose.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing information about Blendspace! This classroom I work in is a kindergarten special education classroom and I can understand what you mean about how they are concrete learners, incorporating active learning can be challenging at times. I will have to explore Blendspace and see how the kiddos do with it! I love the 'adaptive active learning' idea, if you find out anyways that work with your students I would love to hear about them!
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