I believe in 1:1 learning. I also acknowledge the difficulty inherent in differentiating instruction for multiple classes of 30+ students a day. I envision a school system in which students learn to take ownership of their work and acquire essential skills and understandings through self-directed curricula. I think we need to scale up models [...]
This week three girls took up what might be the most ambitious project I’ve ever suggested to a student: create a World War II museum in LittleBigPlanet, a PlayStation 3 (PS3) game. None of us has any idea what to expect (apart from students somehow sharing the unit’s content through visualization and gameplay) – the [...]
This week we spent some time Thursday coming up with teamwork and game-play strategies for our Friday Wii collaboration contest.
Results of our strategizing were mixed with only half the groups improving from last week to this week. At this point I’m wishing I had taken a research-design course sometime in the past decade so I [...]
Our impromptu two week vacation at the beginning of February did little for our teamwork. It seems like we need to be together to practice cooperating.
Or, really, do we? If we had a social network (or better used our existing Edmodo network) or virtual day set up, couldn’t student teams compete with [...]
Here is today’s leading #edchat question:
How does the internet change the role of content and prior knowledge?
It doesn’t. Kids still need a personal stake in both to create meaning. While everyone can learn content and has prior-knowledge, school-valued content and prior knowledge remain commodities that some have and some do not. I would further [...]
This Monday we dedicated a station to analyzing our data from last week’s small-group gaming.
Students used a formula to determine each group’s live lost to levels won ratio.
Students analyzed the differences in observed and noted behaviors between the groups with the highest and lowest ratios.
Students analyzed their own behavior to see if it aligned more [...]
Here’s a quick post on an imperfect start to using video games in the classroom for teaching the soft-skills necessary for collaboration in a manner (hopefully) authentic and relevant to students’ media experience.
Teams of 3-4 students played New Super Mario Bros. Wii at a classroom station.
Teams were asked to win the most levels possible with [...]
The explosion of Web 2.0 and social media has given us and our students a prodigious number of tools to use for collaboration. We have an exponentially growing number of Plans B-Z to use when something doesn’t work. This week, our end of the Skype book club we’ve created with Karin Perry’s (@kperry) students fell [...]
[Author's note: I love Foyble.com and its potential to add relevance and voice to students' community service. I greatly appreciate the opportunities I have to work with Foyble.com, but I am in no way compensated by the site.]
Monday night I Skyped with Brian Foy (@Foyble_org), a co-founder of Foyble.com, and Jack King (@drjackking), founder [...]
Today we had a great time introducing ourselves to Laura Oldham’s (@engltchrleo) new reading classes via Edmodo; our small-group Skyping cohort also happily reconnected with Karin Perry’s (@kperry) students to discuss James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. We used 1:1 iPods Touch and m.Edmodo.com for our introductions; we gathered around Skype on a MacBook for our book [...]
Chad teaches humanities at a charter school and blogs on reforming classroom practice and democratic education.
