The Flip: Why I Love It – How I Use It

by | Jul 25, 2011 | Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Uncategorized, Voices

I love the flip. I do. And I realize by saying this I’m making a controversial statement. I believe if used judiciously, in the right context, the flip can free up valuable class time and provide the background knowledge that is fundamental for students to then go forward and wrestle with higher order thinking. Bottom line: it’s not always the right instructional choice, it’s only one tool in our educational repertoire. But it can be a powerful one.

21st Century High: The Shift Begins

by | Jul 21, 2011 | Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

Our netbooks pilot has set us on a path toward a 1 to 1 networked environment in our high school. In our next step, we’re expanding the group to include a Theology teacher and a Spanish teacher. Our first trial runs are teaching us something both about the challenges of 1-to-1 implementation and the powerful learning that can occur when classrooms become connected. (Includes video with student comments)

Turning Tweets into Narrative Tales

by | Jul 19, 2011 | Personal Learning Networks, Teacher Leadership 2.0, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices, Web Tools That Deepen Learning

Ever wish Twitter provided a more coherent narrative? This tale of science adventure is being told both to underscore the value of Personal Learning Networks and to demo the power of Storify. Storify helps you assemble disparate tweets, pictures, retweets, responses to tweets and direct messages into one place — and one storyline. Add narration and extra information to the Twitter content, and you now have a chance to tell a tale and help others understand what happened.

Confessions of a Closet Constructivist

by | Jul 6, 2011 | Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

Most of our current classes structurally discourage cooperation and collaboration. For many hours of the day, our students are expected to sit and learn by themselves. I have to confess that all of the years I’ve taught, my classroom has been teacher-centered. Students facing the front. Me talking. Next year my classroom will be different.

How We're Cultivating Inventive Thinkers in the Middle Grades

by | Jul 5, 2011 | Less Teacher, More Student, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

Guest blogger Chris Preston shares three unifying concepts identified by his team during a year of action research around inventive thinking: The learning experience must be (1) authentic, (2) connected, and (3) collaborative. “At the conclusion of our instruction,” he says, “many students commented that they would approach solutions to questions much differently in the future: ‘It changed how I look at projects,’ one said, ‘by really opening up my surroundings to more insightful sources of information, and not focusing just on knowledge I can find here at school.'”

Constructing History in Our High School Project-Based Classroom

by | Jun 30, 2011 | Less Teacher, More Student, Making The Shift, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

“This past school year,” writes guest blogger Margaret Haviland, “our exploration of World War I was designed to enable students to construct their own knowledge and their own meaning within a framework established by myself and my intern. This framed, project based, self directed approach was our method all year.” The task before her students: “Figuring out what they needed to learn, both to answer the questions we generated together and to understand the topics they wanted to more completely understand.”