Teacher's Role in Challenge Based Learning (Part 2)

The professional development groups at Mercy have continued to focus on the teacher's role in Challenge Based Learning, but teacher absence, and school day cancellations have created some continuity issues for this theme.  Nevertheless, I tried to emphasize a few major points in the part 2 sessions:

1) It is paramount that a shared document should be established by the team at the outset so that they can continue to make progress through the CBL process without needing face-to-face meetings for every step.

2) Group goal setting is a helpful way to initiate the assessment piece of CBL.

3) Teams should not be allowed to "short circuit" the guiding questions phase.  In all my CBL experiences with both students and adults, teams have been tempted to focus too early on solutions or technology.

4) The guiding activities/resources phase is my favorite aspect of CBL.  Teachers can collaborate with teams by encouraging, suggesting, and getting excited by outside of the box research possibilities.

Here are the slides which supported our most recent discussions:

PCG #9 Teacher's Role, Part 2

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Slide photo by permission of nikki.jane

Challenge Based Learning Webinar

Tuesday, I'll be in Cupertino for a live broadcast of an Apple Education webinar on Challenge Based Learning.  I will join three of my CBL mentors, Katie Morrow, Don Henderson and Mark Nichols.  My piece of the presentation is "CBL in Action".  With 2700 registrants as of last week, this is pretty heady stuff.

I can't help but think that it was less than four years ago that I began to investigate educational technology seriously in my own classroom (It all started with podcasting).  Less than two years ago, I taught myself Keynote for making slides.  And only Fall '09, I did my first serious presentation outside of school at Mame36 in Traverse City.

The educational technology trip put me on a career arc I could never have anticipated.  And nothing has been more professionally transformative for me than CBL.

There is still time to register for the webinar (November 30, 10:00 A.M., PST).  However, I've been told that it will be archived after the event.  If I don't royally embarrass myself, this should be a great new experience.

Learning with Apple: Challenged Base Learning Webinar

Four Friday Quotes from TED

Lots of people are used to having a spiritual tribe or a church tribe , a work tribe, a community tribe. But now thanks to the internet, the explosion of mass media . . . . Tribes are everywhere. The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead, what it's allowed is silos of interest. . . .People on the fringes can find each other, connect and go somewhere. . . .What we do for a living now, all of us, I think, is find something worth changing and then assemble tribes that spread the idea [until it] becomes something far bigger than ourselves. It becomes a movement.

Seth Godin, The Tribes We Lead, TED Talk, Feb. 2009

Organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve enormous effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead-- a very different model than our default model for large scale group action from the Twentieth Century.

Clay Shirky, How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World, TED Talk, June. 2010

The story that Americans tell, the story upon which the American Dream depends, the story of limitless choice. . .promises so much-- freedom, happiness, success. . . . It's a great story, but when you take a close look, you start to see the holes. . . . Americans have so often tried to disseminate their narrative of choice. . . .but the history book and the daily news tell us it does not always work out that way. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone, everywhere. Moreover, Americans theme selves could benefit from incorporating new perspectives into their own narrative, which have been driving their choices for so long. . . . It brings us so much closer to realizing the full potential of choice, to inspiring the hope and achieving the freedom that choice promises but doesn't always deliver.

Sheena Iyengar, The Art of Choosing TED Talk, July. 2010

There are things that we are enthralled to in education . . . one of them is linearity. It starts here, and you go through a track, and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. . . . We have become obsessed with this linear narrative. . . .[However,] human communities depend on a diversity of talent, not a single conception.

Sir Kenneth Robinson, Bring on the Learning Revolution, TED Talk, May. 2010

Baker's Half-Dozen

There is . . .growing support for experimentation: in March, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, released a draft National Educational Technology Plan that reads a bit like a manifesto for change, proposing among other things that the full force of technology be leveraged to meet “aggressive goals” and “grand” challenges, including increasing the percentage of the population that graduates from college to 60 percent from 39 percent in the next 10 years. What it takes to get there, the report suggests, is a “new kind of R.& D. for education” that encourages bold ideas and “high risk/high gain” endeavors" -- Sara Corbett

These days, the homework I give isn't based on some arbitrary idea of how much work a kid should do 'at home' to reinforce something we did in class, but rather it's a matter of asking the students to do something necessary to prepare themselves for the next class. Homework becomes an act ofpreparation -- and hopefully sparks some anticipation not for seeing what you 'got right or wrong', not for seeing if you can jump through that next hoop, but anticipation for taking part in the next day's discussion, activities, and learning. -- Shelley Blake-Plock

A music minister in a local catholic church in my area was in an
article in our state Arch Diocese publication. He uses an iPad for
all of his sheet music. No more lugging around binders and cases of
music. It is all contained on his iPad which fits nicely on his piano
music rack. -- Gabriella Meyers

I lean toward seeing a future where self-organized learning rules, and that the role of school is to develop the passion, motivation and skills necessary to help kids become amazing learners as opposed to pretty good “knowers.” - Will Richardson

"No one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) "scalable" -- easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains." -- Robert Samuelson

“All power corrupts; Power Point corrupts absolutely." --Edward Tufte

iPad Meets the Supremes

I read with interest a recent piece about the Supreme Court in The Washington Post.  Liberal justice Stephen Breyer was quoted as saying,


"If I'm applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there's an Internet, and there's Facebook, and there are movies like ... 'The Social Network,' which I couldn't even understand. . .  ."


The same article described conservative justice Antonin Scalia'suse of technology:


Antonin Scalia told an adoring audience at the Federalist Society convention Thursday night that he not only had an iPod, but does his own downloading. . . . Not only that, but he has an iPad that his staff loads with court work. "I don't have to schlep the briefs around," Scalia said, adding with a laugh, "Oh, it's a brave new world." 


I read this with amusement, because I have observed that some of my most politically liberal friends and colleagues are the most conservative about adopting technology for personal or professional use.  Other than age, have you noticed any other personal attributes that might be associated with willingness or unwilingness to adopt consumer technology?

PCG #8 The Teacher's Role in Challenge Based Learning (part 1)

We have reached a point at Mercy where many teachers --- if they have not already begun implementing Challenge Based Learning projects-- can see themselves doing so in a coming semester.  Consequently, the time has been ripe to discuss the nuts and bolts of CBL.


We did not get very far-- I can already see that this is going to be a three part roll-out.  But our slow progress was for all the right reasons.  We discussed the CBL launch (How much information to share?) and team formation (Should students choose their own groups?).  And then we had great discussions about the first steps concerning how much direction the students should be given.  Of course at every juncture we are discussing the teacher's role.


More next cycle!

Slides for Teacher's Role in CBL, part 1

21st Century Letter of Recommendation

I had a new experience last week which points to the changing nature of my courses and my role in them.  I wrote a college letter of recommendation for a student who would be the first to admit that she did not stand out on conventional testing of the course "material."  Nevertheless, she stood out, as I explained in my letter

We formed a unique sort of collaboration following our time together in the American
Government course. Jill sought me out for a suggestion regarding a web site for hosting
her work and portfolio. I recommended a site another student had used for a CBL. We also
consulted a graphic design teacher in California and were joined in our project by a Mercy art
teacher.  Besides yielding Jill's domain www.-----.com, our
exploration also yielded a special licensing agreement for Creative Commons music between
our high school and Magnatune.

I referenced the student's experience in my course as well-- but almost exclusively in terms of collaborations and projects.

A milestone, I think.
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"Untitled Collograph" Frickr Creative Commons photo by Vaultboy