Image by: Nimages DR @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/11452351@N00/2048034334
One area my teaching and use of social media has lacked in this year has been enabling a self-sustaining and independent learning network to develop in my classes. Now, I believe I've facilitated my students becoming more active learners - they seek answers and ask questions, but my weakness is that they are still looking to me for those answers. Next year (since these particular classes only have two weeks of school left for the year) I want to change that.All weekend I've been fielding emails from students filled with questions their peers could answer for them - if we had an active online network happening my inbox may be less full and they may feel more supported (faster answers, given by peers that are going through the same thing).
In order to make that really happen I'm going to have to overcome some inherent resistance in the system - try and push some of those walls back a little and that sort of thing. It'll be a challenge, but one that will be so worth it.
2 comments:
Please let us know what changes you make to managing a network for your students. Perhaps you could identify a few students to spearhead the conversations and be the go-to people in the network.
Thanks for posting your thoughts.
Lisa
This is an interesting post Mobbsey, first of all thankyou for your comment on my blog- fun mixed with learning. I'll tell you a little about myself...My name is Tanuj and I'm one of Lucy Gresser's student. I’m student in Australia, currently undertaking PBL (project/problem based learning). In our school this was first year that something like this has taken place, many different sorts of technology was bought to make learning enjoyable. But the main problem our teachers faced was that they would describe and clarify the project to students by giving us an Entry Document, yet they would find Students asking answers to various question, which were required from them in order to complete the given project. At this teachers sat together and came up with a solution. Solution was that - for students to complete a given project, teachers would set out few smaller activities which would then later lead onto the final product. In these smaller activities if student had problems, then teacher would simply show him/her the direction or the pathway he/she can take in order to complete the given task. Showing the pathway could be as simple as giving a list of Internet sites and telling the student that your answer lies somewhere within them. This in my opinion was and is much better than giving a straight answer....Maybe asking this problem of yours to teachers who already have faced such things, would be a nice start…
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