I really enjoyed listening to Sal Khan speak in the TED Talk video this week.  I have used Khan Academy in my classroom and my students like the videos.  Khan said that we can use technology to humanize and flip the classroom.  The concept of flipping a classroom was new to me but he makes an excellent point.  There is a significant amount of time spent with the teacher in front of the room teaching a whole group lesson.  This leaves little time for a teacher to interact and conference with students to assess how they are doing and to clear up any misconceptions.  Additionally, with the use of a Web 2.0 tool such as Khan Academy, the student can continue to work on a concept until he/she reaches a level of mastery; that doesn’t always happen in the classroom. In a traditional classroom the teacher introduces a new concept through lecture, modeling, and guided practice.  Students are then sent to either practice the new concept with a small group or independently.  After a few days an assessment is given and then the next day the class moves on to the next concept.  At my school we allow students an opportunity for “second chance learning” only if they do not pass an assessment, but that is it.  Then we move on.  Khan compares this to teaching someone to ride a bicycle, allowing them to practice and then assessing them.  After giving them a grade of 80% the student is handed a unicycle without clearing up misconceptions or reviewing the 20% he did not know.  He said it sounds ridiculous.  He’s right!  His analogy of the bicycle and the classroom are also correct.

Additionally, the use of Web 2.0 technologies can help students to become active participants in the creation of their learning while promoting social interaction.   Hsu, Ching, Grabowski state “Web 2.0 technologies open up individual knowledge construction, organization, and regulation for group review, construction, organization, and regulation.”  (p.355). Take for example a lesson created on Google Classsroom on picture graphs that includes a link to a video from Khan Acadmey to use as a initial introduction or as review.  Using features such as docs, slides, forms, or even sheets students can gather data from their classmate to use to create their own picture graph.  Graphs can be posted in Google Classroom where the teacher can provide virtual feedback in the form of comments and peers in the class can post comments as well. This will allow opportunities for self-reflection or group reflection if the students worked in small teams. Having students engage in these various activities they are becoming the creators of their learning by assessing the information they received from the video, conversations with peers, and evaluating that information to draw conclusions to share.

Second, I would like to use this opportunity to reflect on my post from last week.  Thank you for your kind words about the PBL project that my students have been working on.  It has been such a rewarding experience for both them and myself.  Thinking about the comments I received allows me to reflect and focus on how to improve for next year.  How can I make my project more interest-driven?  At first, I thought there were definitely elements to the project that centered on students interest.  such as, the students choosing what business to have and who they would like to be business partners with.  They choose their name, logo, slogan and even the model that they presented.  I had students writing and recording commercials, creating info-graphics on Canva, creating and displaying flyers and brochures. What I have learned in the first 5 weeks of this class is that there is more to connected learning than student choice.

In the text Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy at the K-12 Level: Issues and Challenges, Hin and Subramaniam suggest that due to so many instructional possibilities using Web 2.0, teachers should become familiar with the technology they want to implement in their classroom.  They state “It is always a good idea to practice with the new technologies before adopting them for learning or teaching in the classroom.”  For me, this is one of the most important things an educator can do beginning the journey and becoming a 21st century teacher.  This year I implemented a few new technologies in my classroom.  The one that changed the way I teach is Seesaw.  Seesaw is a student driven digital portfolio that allows students to share their work with parents and families.  I had dabbled with it a bit last school year and saw it’s potential for 21st century learners, however I wasn’t ready to start using it with my students.  Over the summer I enrolled in the Seesaw Ambassador program and completed training to learn the program on my own.  It was so worth it!  Before the students begin to add to their portfolio Seesaw provides step by step mini-lessons on the features in a “Seesaw Student Challenge.”   Embedded in the challenge are lessons on digital citizenship.  For my young learners we focus on the importance of what is and is not safe to post online.  We also look at how to appropriately comment on another students work.  What I would like to do that I did not this year is create a classroom blog.  On pages 364-366 of Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy at the K-12 Level: Issues and Challenges  the authors discuss the learning opportunities of blogging in the classroom.  I would like to use my class blog to create learning communities that students can connect with through “Seesaw Connected Blogs.”  Through this feature they can collaborate with students in other schools, and perhaps this can be one way to improve my PBL next year.

A student’s post in Seesaw.