From Now On is Dr. Jamie McKenzie's blog on educational technology for engaged learning and literacy. For my Project-Based Learning class, we linked to one of his blog articles about engaging students in attempting to answer questions of import - and to move away from copy-and-paste assignments.
To me, this is such an important task to get students to do, but so difficult for us as teachers to employ. On the surface, it seems so much easier to grade and evaluate factual assignments - those that have a "right" answer. They're easier for students to complete as well, and I don't mean just because they often can copy-and-paste. When a right answer is easy to identify, it's a clearer goal to achieve. You don't have to think so much about it.
The last couple of years at my school, we've been focusing on trying to get teachers and students away from this, and towards more open-ended thinking. What does it look like when you ask students to "show what they know" in their own way? How much more difficult is it - really - to grade a wide array of projects that are of much higher quality than the Powerpoints you were assigning before? What sorts of questions do we need to ask students to have them stop Googling for the right answer and attempting to answer it on their own?
These issues are taking form in a variety of incarnations - BYOT, project- and problem-based learning, the maker movement, and so forth. It seems to be a concept that most teachers would agree with - that we need to teach students less about answering and more about thinking - but needs a solid framework to implement. I think it will be very interesting to see how this develops in education over the next decade or so.
Stay tuned...
To me, this is such an important task to get students to do, but so difficult for us as teachers to employ. On the surface, it seems so much easier to grade and evaluate factual assignments - those that have a "right" answer. They're easier for students to complete as well, and I don't mean just because they often can copy-and-paste. When a right answer is easy to identify, it's a clearer goal to achieve. You don't have to think so much about it.
The last couple of years at my school, we've been focusing on trying to get teachers and students away from this, and towards more open-ended thinking. What does it look like when you ask students to "show what they know" in their own way? How much more difficult is it - really - to grade a wide array of projects that are of much higher quality than the Powerpoints you were assigning before? What sorts of questions do we need to ask students to have them stop Googling for the right answer and attempting to answer it on their own?
These issues are taking form in a variety of incarnations - BYOT, project- and problem-based learning, the maker movement, and so forth. It seems to be a concept that most teachers would agree with - that we need to teach students less about answering and more about thinking - but needs a solid framework to implement. I think it will be very interesting to see how this develops in education over the next decade or so.
Stay tuned...
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