I wanted to highlight a couple of things from the students in
the interactive map. I'm not sure how this will encourage converstation,
except for compelling other users to bring attention to what they see as
important aspects of the students discussed in the interactive map (bad
sentence for an english teacher).
Malcolm,
The text on
Malcolm talks about his Dads schedule, but it made me think about how DL
could help students that have culturally important seasonal activities.
Can we let students take weeks or months off of school to trap, harvest,
hunt, brand cattle?
The DL framework could help Alberta go
beyond the anachronistic school year. Summers off is a strange idea that
I'm sure is here to stay, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense
anymore. Even the farm kids I work with have busier seasons than
July/August, so I'm not entirely sure why the year was ever arranged
this way, but I digress.
Malcolm, or another student like him
could take the time off of school to trap with his father and uncles,
learning more than he could in school, and not be penalized - you have
to catch up on two weeks of work.
Again, I don't believe this
will encourage discussion, but it may be a chance to say what you like
about the student examples (God I'm a nerd)
Replies are closed for this discussion.
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Reply by Steven Greene on October 26, 2008 at 11:39am
Sara,
the idea of cross-discliplinary projects is exciting. teaching is one of the only professions that I can think of that embraces generalism. we have the luxury of learning outside of our chosen discipline. designing cross-disclipine units is a great idea. who gets this job? i want this job. Or I at least want access to the final product.
Does anyone know if this has been tried elsewhere? I believe I have heard of some failed projects where entire schools tried to get rid of "subjects" for wholistic classes.
One question this brings to my mind, that comes up quite often here, is how will Ab. Ed, alter it's accreditation process. Will there be an opportunity to earn Math, Science, and Language credits through one "unit" "course" "module" (how is this being done?)?
Why not write your Bio lab in French or Cree and earn for two classes?
Why not incoroprate a statistical pop. analysis or economy unit into a study of The Grapes of Wrath?
But how can the learners earn deserved credit for this?
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Reply by Noel Jantzie on November 3, 2008 at 6:12am
At one time there were a substantial number of schools who were teaching Social Studies and English as part of a combined Humanities course. Why is that no longer the case? One problem was the difficulty in finding teachers who were able to resist the tendency to teach the course based on their particular subject area expertise (rather than humanities, you got an enhanced English Course with some Social Studies supplementation or vice versa). A second problem was the ratcheting up of the pressure to perform well on PATs and the Diploma Exams. Schools tend to become risk averse in high stakes testing regimes.I think the second point is a good one to consider in the context of moving schools towards distributed learning models.
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Reply by Steven Greene on November 3, 2008 at 12:29pm
I think that the reason that the combined humanities courses failed could be alleviated by the DL model. The problem in the example you discuss - one teacher.
I know that if I were to design a unit around a novel like Brave New World, that I could assess with the student whether or not the ELA outcomes were met, but I would need a Biology or chemistry teacher to help the student/teacher group determine whether or not (or how to do it in the first place) the Bio 20 understanding of genetics were met (is that even in the bio 20 curric.?).
Anyway the point is - multiple discipline approach at the design level, consultation with student level, and evaluation level. This would mean we would need multiple discipline teachers at every level. This may be expensive at first, but after some success it, and some easy to recognize standards established it should get easier/cheaper.
The pressure of dip. exams. - It's my least fav. part of my ELA 30 class, but we spend a great deal of time in exam prep. and practice. I don't philosophically disagree with standaradized testing, I think that it takes away from valuable learning experiences, but I think they are very easy to plan and prepare for.
The easiest planning load for the DL process would probably be the "teach to the test" exam prep. Give students access to past exams, give study guides that are exclusively designed for exam prep. This would definitely take time away from more meaningful projects, but at least they aren't every year.
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Reply by Lesli on October 28, 2008 at 11:21pm
Hey Steve that is exactly the purpose of the vignettes, what is life like for these students at various levels on the continuum. How do we respond to diverse learning groups, considering socio-economic, demographic, geographic...all the "graphics" within a provincial approach to DL. How does it impact students, teachers, the current education system and so on....
If you are a nerd...I am a nerd! Welcome to our club!!
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Reply by Dr. Eugene G. Kowch on October 30, 2008 at 11:36pm
You remind me of some of the research we've done on technology supported learning environments - students are rarely involved in the policy making and design stages - because we are often well pretty consumed by planning to take good care of them in all environments. I like the vignette with student voices - it will be important to hear from students in the design phases of DL, methinks.. (and hey, we're all nerds at some level, Steven). I sure enjoy your posts!
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Reply by Christel on November 3, 2008 at 2:04pm
Hi Steven, it's a ghost from PLRD past! I agree that cross disciplinary projects would be exciting for both students and teachers. The trick is finding teachers who want to collaborate and create at that level. Not everyone enjoys working with other teachers that closely for a wide variety of reasons. Our system doesn't always give the flexibility to do so either. Way back in the stone age, I worked at a school where four of us designed our units together and team taught in a variety of areas. We had the support of admin and because it was primary, a bit more flexibility in curriculum. It was fantastic for students, us and the parents thought their children were getting the best of all worlds and personalities. We worked in this type of environment for three years and then scattered to work elsewhere. It was some of the most rewarding teaching I'd done. By the way, our students excelled in reading and other subjects because we all worked hard to find ways for students to succeed. We also knew our outcomes! Take care.
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Reply by Steven Greene on November 3, 2008 at 4:04pm
And there we have the DL capability for the ECS-gr.8 student group. Home room teachers collaborating with Ab. Ed. teachers. Or simply helping teachers connect to other teachers around the province on collaborative projects. Difficult, but rewarding.
There would be a leadership deficit for the first few years, because we all know that the demands placed on the primary educators are large enough.
Perhaps a DL facilitator at schools with a large enough student body to make it happen. This would be a temporary need, once teachers see that using DL created connections, ideas programs actually decrease the work load of classrooom teachers the facilitator could slowly disapeer.
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