Okay, so I've only been here since just before 9am this morning, but I'm still excited and think I thought be blogging just a little bit. Twitter is all awesome and stupendous but sometimes 140 characters just doesn't cut it.
I'm in a session on the SOLO taxonomy and we're rattling around a bit in this huge room. I think people are still digesting the keynote. Now, I'm pretty excited about this spotlight because I'm all about the learning outcomes. I try to have really clear signposts for learning in a lesson-by-lesson fashion and also on a longer scale. But many of my longer term goals are a little... well, punk, in the sense that I value a bit of a rough and ready, diy, homegrown kind of learning. Sometimes, I don't talk about them too much. It makes people nervous.
But I am enjoying the slow unfolding of the SOLO taxonomy. What I'm seeing so far is an interesting, deeper take on the rather dirty version of learning I use: "I know nothing", "I know something", "I know many things", "I can do things with the things I know" and "I can create and explain new things with the things I know".
You know, I'm thinking more about self-assessment matrices and how our department uses them. I think we need to work more on developing what those last two criteria look like for students. In particular - and I know this will go down like a lead balloon at my school - we need to focus on what application and creativity looks like for girls in subjects that are traditionally considered to be boys' subjects. I know I am influenced by being a physics teacher, but it is definitely a concern for me.
Right. More thinking. More listening. More link making and integrating.
(More dirty outcomes? You bet)
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
So excited that I might need more caffeine
So, I have posted a lot about the integrated scheme we've got going with the junior science classes. I had a crisis of faith late in the holidays about whether we were making the right choice in abandoning a traditional model to go for something so unusual.
However, in the last week, I have collected some anecdata that has really reassured me that we've made the right choice. I'm confident that our test results and more formal surveying will bear out this confidence.
Most importantly, we've had success with at least two students who have, in the past, been notoriously hard to engage in learning. They enjoy the idea that for each bite of learning - about scale diagrams or the particle nature of matter or whatever - they do an activity that celebrates and consolidates that learning, and they get to display the artefact from the learning. What they do in class is what we base our assessment on, and these students are responding really positively to that.
On a less important, but enjoyable note, I managed to create a lesson (around mixtures, compounds and elements, with the beginning of an introduction to separation techniques) that uses mashups. In particular, it uses DJ Earworm's United State of Pop 2009. There is a video, which I've embedded below, but - even better - there is a colour-coded lyric sheet which shows the different artists who have been integrated into the mashup. So my students can watch the video and try to identify all the artists and songs, then use the colour coded sheet to see how they did. Then, we're going to show, on Audacity, how we can do things like that ourselves, making mixtures of audio clips. It's going to rock.
Of course, not nearly as much as this does:
However, in the last week, I have collected some anecdata that has really reassured me that we've made the right choice. I'm confident that our test results and more formal surveying will bear out this confidence.
Most importantly, we've had success with at least two students who have, in the past, been notoriously hard to engage in learning. They enjoy the idea that for each bite of learning - about scale diagrams or the particle nature of matter or whatever - they do an activity that celebrates and consolidates that learning, and they get to display the artefact from the learning. What they do in class is what we base our assessment on, and these students are responding really positively to that.
On a less important, but enjoyable note, I managed to create a lesson (around mixtures, compounds and elements, with the beginning of an introduction to separation techniques) that uses mashups. In particular, it uses DJ Earworm's United State of Pop 2009. There is a video, which I've embedded below, but - even better - there is a colour-coded lyric sheet which shows the different artists who have been integrated into the mashup. So my students can watch the video and try to identify all the artists and songs, then use the colour coded sheet to see how they did. Then, we're going to show, on Audacity, how we can do things like that ourselves, making mixtures of audio clips. It's going to rock.
Of course, not nearly as much as this does:
Monday, February 15, 2010
Fail person is fail?
Recently, I have been teh fail when it comes to blogging. I would like to blame any number of things, but I think it mostly comes down to the heat drying out my brain. Seriously. Northland is in the grip of the worst drought in years and it's miserable.
However, being back at school is not all doom and gloom. For one thing, I am excited about how the new junior schemes are going, even if it is only early in the term. Of course, the fact that I am getting to set up a crime scene on the front desk may have something to do with it - and the entirely spurious transcript of my 'interview' about it. I love this sort of creative work.
Hopefully, I will have resources soon. That is also exciting. I love the diy ethos we've got going in our department. We make things up and recreate them in different shapes and formats. We fix things and break things. It's refreshing, to work in a department that takes risks and works hard to make them worthwhile risks. I'm pretty happy, all things considered.
However, being back at school is not all doom and gloom. For one thing, I am excited about how the new junior schemes are going, even if it is only early in the term. Of course, the fact that I am getting to set up a crime scene on the front desk may have something to do with it - and the entirely spurious transcript of my 'interview' about it. I love this sort of creative work.
Hopefully, I will have resources soon. That is also exciting. I love the diy ethos we've got going in our department. We make things up and recreate them in different shapes and formats. We fix things and break things. It's refreshing, to work in a department that takes risks and works hard to make them worthwhile risks. I'm pretty happy, all things considered.
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