Constructivist Teaching with Technology: Learning with Laptops

Tuesday 3:30-4:30

Some resources:

• thefischbowl.blogspot.com
• learningandlaptops.blogspot.com
• www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/21c/necc2007.html

Staff Development is critical!

• Teachers meet once every three weeks for three hours - talk about:
  • educational theory, latest research, etc
  • pedagogy, how it looks in the classroom, collaborating & coming up with ideas (would try things out and then come back in person & blogs to report)
  • technology piece, show tool (blogger, del.icio.us, wikis, etc) and talk about how they can be used in the classroom.
• Key point that helped them: teachers teaching teachers, not from administration or coming from above.

How did they want to change the way they taught? They realized they wanted to teach via Constructivism - humans construct knowledge. Learning is an active process.

Created professional learning environment. Treated students as professionals.

• Tables, rolling chairs, so they can change the dynamic of the classroom all the time
  • allows for increased collaboration
• changed posters in the room to things students were interested in, and added some motivational type posters
• posted expectations the students created (what do you expect of your teachers, of the class, of each other?) Had students sign it, laminated it, and posted

Successes

• engagement. Engagement with teachers (lunchtime isn’t teachers complaining, they talk about how they’re teaching & share ideas). Engagement with students (they’re blogging! Voluntarily!)
• Students blogging around the perimeter live while others discuss in a fishbowl
• Skype is better than blogger

Collaboration

• within and without the classroom
• what’s important for our students to have to be successful in the 21st century? Teamwork! Know when to be a leader and when to be a follower
• Collaboration on wiki with another class from another country
• Collaboration != cooperative learning
  • collaboration: students together are teaching each other and learning. Helping each other understand. Goes beyond walls
  • cooperative learning: same idea, but not as engaged. Restricted to classroom.

Get students connected

• Be a reflective thinker - ask the students to be reflective on their learning. They can tie it together to things they did before in the course, in other courses, etc. Promoting the reflection promotes connections.
• Take an active role in their learning. Want to learn want to make connections.
• Blogging gives voice of their own
• whose standards are you using? Yours or your students’?
• Podcasting! You’d be surprised who is interested in what students have to say. Anything students write can be podcasting. Grandparents can listen!
• Wrote their own textbooks. Student editor worked with instructor. Teams of students got photos, format, text, etc. Used wikis to help collaboration.
• Googledocs, review toolbar in Word
• Digital Storytelling. Ask one big question, talk about it all semester (What does it take to challenge the system? What matters? etc). Everything relates to question, at the end they build a digital story relating everything to that question.