Student Involvement (Project Endings)

When teachers involve students in projects or any aspect of their learning, they are teaching more depth than a plan lesson, where she just talks. Students want to be involved in what they learn. 

If the teacher has gotten the students actively involved, to where they are making decisions, during a project then the same should remain until the project is complete. Below is a picture of steps for students involvement. 

If students participate in all of the steps, listen, validate, authorize, and act, then they must participate in the reflect step as well. There are many reason for students to do this. They have to be able to look back at the project and see what worked, as well as what didn't. If a project just ended without the students being able to reflect on the project then they would not be able to see their progress. 

Students, also, will not be able to see the importance of the project. If students do not see the importance or the relevance of a project they are likely not to put much effort into another project. Summing it up, involve the student in every aspect of the learning. Also, let them evaluate their final product. 

http://www.soundout.org/cycle.html

Student Choices in Learning

There are many things changing in education. One of the main things is the choice that students get to make. They finally have a choice in their own education, at least in a classroom where the teacher has embrace this time of learning environment. 

So, you may ask "Why should we give students a choice in what they learn?"  I mean it's been working great for years telling them what they have to learn right?

We can no longer look things the way we used to. The world is changing and as educators we must too! Students have so many things that take their attention now and they have ways of learning that do not include a teacher, whiteboard, and textbook. They get bored with that; therefore, we have to change something. Giving students a choice is the way to change that. They will still have to learn standards but they will be able to learn the standard in a way the want to such as using technology instead of paper and pencil. They can also change what they learn as long as they do achieve the standard. 

We've talked about ways they can change what they learn but why let that happen? It's simple! We let students have a choice because we want them to be actively engaged. Most of all we want them to actually learn! If we give students the choice then we know that they will learn something and they will be actively engaged. Once they have made the choice they are then motivated to learn and it is more meaningful to them. 

Let's take a minute to stop and think about how we are teaching our students now. Is that how you would want to learn? Do you remember anything from the way the learned in school and do you want your children learning the same way? 

             Vs. 

Collaboration

When it comes to taking online classes and campus classes, there are a number of differences as well as similarities. Group projects work similar in both situations. Let's compare:

        In - Class/Wiki Editing 

• The work is done as a team.
• Each students is supposed to have a certain thing they work on more. (Their specific topic.)

   There are more similarities but those are the main ones coming to my mind. However, there are differences too. Let's contrast:

         In - Class

• Students are physically seeing each other while doing their project. 
• The students are in the same physical place at the same time. 
• Students are working on the project at the same time. 

       Wiki Editing

• Students are at different locations when they are working on the project. 
• The teacher can see how much work each student puts into the project without having to ask the students. (It will be accurate.)
• Students do not have to work on the project at the same time. 

In both ways of group work, we are striving for collaboration and not just cooperation. With cooperation, students are working to assist each other and while that is what collaboration is to a extent, collaboration goes a little deeper. In collaboration, each individual has a say so in what is going on it the project. Students are taught at an early at (hopefully) to cooperate with others. They learn that they must work with other people and they need to be cooperative. Something that needs to change is that students need to be taught to collaborate instead of just cooperate. In this changing world, students need to learn how to speak up and share their ideas and adults need to learn to listen. 

One way to help teach students how to collaborate is to change the way teachers teach. We have to get rid of the traditional way where students are just passive learners. Teachers need to embrace the differences and ideas of their students. They need to let their students have a say so in some of the things that they learn. Granted I know that there are standards that need to be met. However, they can still be met and the students can give their opinions on what they want to learn about. A teacher just needs to be skilled enough to teach to the students interests while reaching those standards. 

Feedly

     Feedly is a new tool that I have been introduced to. It is a very easy to use tool. I like that you can add many different blogs to this one place. It makes following many people at one time much easier. You are able to organize the blogs into different categories. Also there is the option to view them all at once or to be able to only look at posts from one blog.
     There were a number of blogs that I added to my Feedly for my classes this semester. One assignment was to go in and comment on three different posts. I found many different blogs and posts that were interesting. It was hard to decide which three I wanted to include for the assignment. The first was the Cool Cat Teacher blog and the post was talking about G.R.I.T. this term is widely defined but this blog made it more understandable and it helped me to see different perspectives from other people. It was also nice to heard feedback from the original author of this blog.
       The MindShift blog was very intriguing because they actually interviewed students to see what they wanted out of school. These students were very interested in learning. They want so badly to learn and to be engaged in their studies but they are lacking the enthusiasm that their teachers should display. After reading this post or rather listening to the voices of all these students, I will make sure that I am the teacher that my future students are engaged and that I encourage them to want to learn. I will also take their opinions on how to better my teaching skills.
     Lastly, I commented on the Langwitches Blog. The article was about Google Glass. It is a very intriguing technology. I had never heard of it before but think that it could be a very good tool to include in schools in  the future. While, I know there are still kinks to work out with this technology and using it in schools but it could be used for good after further understanding it.
     I encourage you to go out and create a Feedly account. You may learn things that you never even heard about or you make just build knowledge. It is also I good way to keep in touch with things that people from your career field are doing and what is working for them.