Hello there teachers! Are you like me and love using videos to appeal to your visual learners? Are you burned out from making graphic organizers to make sure your students are paying attention? Well let me tell you about a nifty little tool you NEED to add to your teaching arsenal. EdPuzzle!!
It allows you to control the videos your students watch. You can add voice overs, embed questions, and skip over parts of the video that are not necessary. It is highly engaging and can be linked to your Google Classroom! I have a bunch prepared in case I have a last minute sub, and need my students to do something while I am gone. Check out this video I created for my Animal Farm unit.
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In only 63 pages, Richardson is able to highlight the resistance to change, and offer not only reason for why we as teachers NEED to change our focus, but also concrete, totally doable solutions. He gives a list of new types of literacies we should be teaching our students, and tools that help us shift toward a more student organized learning experience. It is time to become transparent with our learning so our students are prepared to meet the demands of an ever changing world. Hell, there are like 3 iPhone releases in a year, how can we expect education to stay the same?
This book is for you! Yes, you. Sitting there on your computer, wondering what solutions there are to improve your classroom. Spend an afternoon learning and playing with new ideas. Your future students will thank you for it! From Master Teacher to Master Learner (Part III)In part three of From Master Teacher to Master Learner, Will Richardson gives his readers concrete ideas for how to become a more dynamic teacher. First things first, teachers need to share. They need to share their learning, with not only their students, but the world around them. “...Even though what you’re thinking right now might totally change my frame of the world or may spur me to think of an even better iteration of your idea, neither has if you keep it to yourself” (43). If you are tackling an idea, or following a passion project, share it! Transparency of learning is the best thing you can do as an educator, especially a 21st century educator. “The teacher’s powerful role is to model learning as a process of forming an idea or a problem, attempting a solution, iterating, and making and sharing the result instead of memorizing answers to age-old questions or doing projects that have been done thousands of times before” (47). Richardson’s final recommendation for teachers to become learners is to be present in the sharing of learning on the web. Because of the internet, what it means to have literacy(read and write) has changed. Here is what Mozilla has added to the list (47-49):
Overall, this book is highly recommended. It is a quick read (only 63 pages) and everything that is suggested is totally doable. I say that being extremely biased. My journey to become an educator has included these education progressions. My professors push us toward this shift of being a learner, not a master. I can see how teachers feel uncomfortable with all the changes suggested because sometimes it sounds like teachers are being obsolete. Which they actually are...or at least the old kind of teacher. Our children need Master Learners to guide their education, and I encourage you to jump off that cliff and go for it! I will be right there with you. Check out this book on Amazon!
"In moments of fast and unpredictable change, part of learning is to unlearn" (37). In the second part of his book, Will Richardson takes more time to break down what a Master Learner means to current teachers. Richardson understands that we are in the midst of a cultural change, and that the system is broken, not the teachers. Below is a list of Teacher-reported conditions that promote powerful learning (19). Do you agree with his findings? Richardson spends a great deal of time dealing with the idea of technology being the answer to all the educational problems. He views the addition of tech into the classrooms as a new tool. He sees teachers using it to package the same old crap they were teaching before they had technology. The potential for technology is not being utilized because it means dumping a system that has been in place since school was created. In its early days, school functioned to teach child what to know. Richardson calls for the transformation from knowing to learning (25). He believes that if we are to create the conditions mentioned above, we need to lesson the amount of content and push the organization of learning onto the student. Google has taken away the necessity to know everything outright *hyperbole alert!* and has introduced a more important skill, the process of learning. As Albert Einstein said, "I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn" (23). There are so many little nuggets of gold in this second part of the book. I looks like my highlighter exploded on the pages, and I am pretty NASA could see it glowing from Mars. One point I think it is important to point out is Richardson believes that teachers need to go out on their own to learn. We cannot expect our students to take the reigns of their learning, if we ourselves do not. He states, "just as kids are not waiting for the Minecraft course, we adults must seek our own resources and teachers either online or off. Those who wait to be taught will be left behind" (36). At the end of part II, Richardson starts to spell out what educators need to do in order to be Master Learners, and honestly, THANK GOD. I have read a ton of books during my credential program that point the finger at the problem, but offer no real solutions for teachers. I find my self nodding my head all while reading the book, devouring it fast because I want to get to the part that tells me what I can do. It seems as if Richardson will be providing me with some concrete ideas. Here is what I learned so far: I feel like the program at CSUSM, especially Jeff's course, asks us as new educators to work these ideas into our classrooms. Voice, choice, and agency! 20 percent projects! Inquiry questions! Google hangouts! What do all of you think about the ideas Richardson suggests to promote meaningful learning in the classroom?
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AuthorDevout book worm. Archives
May 2016
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