Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students
edcampPDX is free, democratic, participant-driven professional development. It’s an unconference built on collaboration and dialogue, not keynotes. I’m at the edcamp and also documenting the event via the hashtag #edcampPDX. This Storify will remain as an artifact long after the tweetstream flows on.
The event is being held at La Salle Catholic College Preparatory. Portland Oregon. August 18, 2011. Link to edcampPDX wiki Next edcampPDX set for Nov 11.
I recently blogged from the 2011 US Innovative Education Forum (IEF) sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning. Here’s a guest post from, Kelly Huddleston, one of the teachers I met at the competition. For more on the competition and guest posts click the IEF tag. ~ Peter
Note: This was first posted on Kelly’s blog “To Kick A Pigeon and Other Musings” For more samples of her students’ work and the rubrics she used click here.
I saw an ad on Facebook for the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum, a conference hosted by Microsoft at their headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in July. They were seeking educators who could demonstrate how they used Microsoft products in their classes in unique, innovative, and real-world ways.
Microsoft experienced the highest number of applicants ever for this conference, and I was selected for one of the 100 slots. I am also the only educator in the entire state of Tennessee attending this all-expenses paid, two day, whirl-wind conference. I am quite excited and deeply honored.
Several have asked about my submission so I thought I’d detail it here.
For lack of a better name, I simply call this project “Create a Business.” Students in my Tech class, mainly freshman, do this project each semester, and I’ve been doing it for about eight years. It continually evolves and changes, but this is where I’m at now with it.
Basically, students create a business—as much as is feasible in four months and for high school freshmen. They can work with a partner or go solo. There are many things we leave out due to time constraints such as talking about incorporating, licensing fees, legal/liability issues, creating a shopping cart for their website, etc.
My only guidelines for the types of businesses they may pursue are:
If you are interested in the details of this project for your own use in your classroom, or if you are interested in Kelly’s perspective on the Innovative Education Forum, please contact Kelly via her blog. For more about Kelly click here.
Last week, I blogged from the 2011 US Innovative Education Forum (IEF) sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning. See my post “Following the Backchannel at Microsoft IEF.” I was inspired by the 100 great projects presented by teachers from across the country. What impressed me most was the great diversity of work. Some projects were very complex in scale, others were elegant in their simplicity – presenting one great idea for the classroom. They also varied in subject matter, grade level and technology. And no, you didn’t have to use a Microsoft product to get in.
I had the chance to interview many of the teachers at IEF. They’ll be sharing project “how-to’s” in future guest posts here at Copy / Paste.
Educator Colin Horack and student Anthony Sablan (left) won first place in the Collaboration category for their creation of Project Unite, developed to combat bullying on campus. Franklin Pierce High School; Tacoma, Washington.
Eleven winning educators from the IEF will represent the U.S. and advance to compete against educators from around the world at the Partners in Learning Global Forum, Nov. 6–11, 2011 in Washington, D.C.
To get a sense of the energy at IEF take a look at this short video. My wife made the video cut (20 seconds in – great red earrings)
…alas, I did not.
I’ve been thinking about the educational implications of passage in Tom Friedman’s recent editorial The Start Up of You. Here Friedman quotes a comment made to him by LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Hoffman.
“The old paradigm of climb up a stable career ladder is dead and gone,” he [Hoffman] said to me. “No career is a sure thing anymore. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”
So does that mean we’re supposed to prepare our students to become hi-tech startup entrepreneurs? I don’t think that’s realistic, or wise. But I do think that it should remind us that we need to craft learning environments that ask students to increasingly take responsibility for their learning – products, process and evaluation – and the type of deeper thinking and reflection called for in the Common Core standards.
“I want kids behaving like a journalist, like a scientist… not just studying it, but being like it.” ~ Larry Rosenstock, High Tech High
Unfortunately, most of our students get a steady diet of force-fed information and test taking strategies. We’re giving a generation of kids practice for predictable, routine procedures – and that happens across the “bell curve” from AP test prep to meeting minimal proficiency on NCLB-mandated tests.
If LinkedIn’s Hoffman is correct, it makes you wonder how our students are getting prepared for “uncertain, rapidly changing conditions?” School mission statements claim to foster “life-long learning,” but walk in most classrooms and you’ll see students hard at work on a task that’s been scripted by their teacher. Most likely they’re working to replicate a final product that’s already been prescribed (with rubrics) by their teacher.
If students are going to be productive in a dynamic society and workplace they will need to be agile, fluid learners. Students that are encouraged to explore their own approaches and reflect on their progress. Students who can work collaboratively with their peers to plan, implement and evaluate projects of their own design. As Larry Rosenstock of High Tech High put it, “I want kids behaving like a journalist, like a scientist… not just studying it, but being like it.”
Every summer, teachers get to re-invent themselves – to rethink their instructional approach. Here’s your essential question for the coming school year – “How can I stop scaffolding every task for students, and have the courage to be less helpful?” Does this seem like a crazy idea? Asking student to “figure it out themselves,” when every time you’ve given an assignment, you’ve been bombarded with trivial questions like, “… How long does it have to be? … What’s it supposed to look like?”
I think students have been taught that they work for the teacher and the grade. I’ll bet the most “what it supposed to look like” questions come from the “best” students who have learned that their averages are based on faithfully executing assigned work.
For a more on the benefits of “figuring it out for themselves” see my posts Don’t Teach Them Facts – Let Student Discover Patterns or The Four Negotiables of Student Centered Learning
So be courageous – remember, the same students who seem to be unable to function independently in school are highly motivated by the uncertainty of video game. You can retrain them to “figure it out” at school, as well.
Looking for a few practical ways to start? Here’s four ideas from “Student-Directed Learning Comes of Age: Teachers Adopt Classroom Strategies to Help Students Monitor Their Own Learning” by Dave Saltman in Harvard Education Letter, July/August 2011 [Summary courtesy of The Marshall Memo – a valuable weekly round-up of important ideas and research in K-12 education]
Moving Students Toward Directing Their Own Learning
“An insistent drumbeat of research findings, as well as newly adopted curriculum standards, continues to sound out a message to educators that the work of learning must be shifted from teachers to the ones doing the learning,” says teacher/writer Dave Saltman in this Harvard Education Letter article. “That’s because research and anecdotal evidence suggest that when students manage their own learning, they become more invested in their own academic success.” Saltman describes four approaches that develop self-direction:
Continue reading “Teachers, Have the Courage to be Less Helpful”
The Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is holding a one-day fundraiser. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift today, as part of their day-long May 7th “Money Cascade” to support the March. They’ve set an initial goal of $2500.
I just made a quick $10 donation – will you match me?
Click here to go to their donation page via Paypal
Here’s more information from Save Our Schools March
“The march is being held in response to recent destructive ‘reform’ efforts which have undermined our public educational system, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation. Something must be done – and it must be done now!
Please join people from all across America as they gather to participate in the Save Our Schools March on Saturday, July 30 in Washington, D.C.
The Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is calling on Americans everywhere to demand:
- Equitable funding for all public school communities.
- An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation.
- Curriculum developed for and by local school communities.
- Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies.”
