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What Does a Great School Year Look Like? Ask the Students

July 14, 2011 | 1:08 PM | By

Shelley Wright

Shelley Wright's class constructed a complete Holocaust Museum as part of a school project.

This past school year, Shelley Wright, a high school educator in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, made a number of big changes in her teaching practice. The class went paperless and used a Wiki, she incorporated project-based learning and collaboration into her lessons, she experimented with “vessays.” All along the way, she documented everything on her blog Wright’s Room — not just operational information, but how those changes affected her view of learning and her relationship with her students.

It took a lot of courage on Wright’s part to just jump in with these new practices. Since her blog already reflects her own opinions about the changes, I wondered what her students and the students’ parents felt about them. I asked Wright to send out a query, and here’s what we learned.

“I couldn’t rely on the teacher anymore, I had to rely on myself and my classmates; which is a lot harder than you think.”

First, here are some responses from students about the class’s built-from-the-ground-up Holocaust Exhibit, the epitome of project-based learning.

  • “It was a great experience for me to learn different kinds of work. For example, painting, sewing, sound system, and working with different peers each day. I think that I could learn as much from a textbook but it for sure wouldn’t be a fun and enjoyable way of learning. Before this, I thought that learning and school was that you sat in a desk for the day and wrote paperwork and math equations and different types of exams. I see now that school subjects can be taught in a more unique, fun, and enjoyable way for the students. It will help the students think positive about school and they will want to come and learn.”

  • Shelley Wright

    Students work on the Holocaust exhibit.

    “We were given the opportunity to go into any aspect of the holocaust. We weren’t told to study certain things and had limits on what we wanted to learn. People just went into what interested them most. I wouldn’t have been able to learn as much as I did if we were only using textbooks. Sure, they put the important ‘stuff’ in there everybody needs to know, but with the Internet, anybody can put things on it. So you can research anything and somebody will have something about it. Like, who would have thought that not only the Jews had stars. I definitely see learning differently after that project, because during the entire project I was kinda my own teacher. I wanted to know about something, I researched it and I was able to teach others what I learned and vice-versa. Usually I learn things only for the test and then after that, it’s out of my mind two days later. But for this, what I learned doesn’t get out of my head, because it’s all things that interested me and I actually wanted to learn.”

“Usually I learn things only for the test and it’s out of my mind two days later. But for this, what I learned doesn’t get out of my head, because it’s all things that interested me and I actually wanted to learn.”
  • “Suddenly the information wasn’t just information – they were real stories – this project has made a lasting impression for me. Before [this project], learning consisted of novel studies — reading a book and answering comprehensive questions. During this project we read novel(s), then got into groups and researched what we were interested in learning more about (compiling our information onto a shared Google Doc) and finally as a class we came up with a way to present everything we’d learned. It was a great experience and opportunity.” Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, passion-based learning, project-based-learning, Shelley Wright, Wikis

Teachers and Students Create Their Own Curriculum in Alaska

November 10, 2010 | 12:11 PM | By

By Sara Bernard

The Bering Strait School District (BSSD) in Alaska –  which spans a swathe of land and sea the size of Great Britain — is one of the few districts in the nation that has replaced textbooks with online content that can be modified by any of its teachers, students, parents and anyone who wants to participate. The school district uses the same user-generated software as Wikipedia — an open-source, online interface that allows everyone in the district (and outside of it) to access and edit learning standards, curricular materials, and projects.

John Concilus, educational technology coordinator at BSSD, told me about the district’s Open Content Initiative and offered his views on the future of open source materials in education.

FAST FACTS:
PROGRAM: Instead of textbooks, the Bering Strait School District uses modifiable, open source software for learning standards, curriculum, and student projects.

COST: Free (after the initial labor investment to build the infrastructure and original content of the wiki. The site is hosted on free virtual servers).

BENEFITS: Allows users to contribute to a growing body of knowledge and resources that benefit students, teachers, and community members around the world.

CHALLENGES: High learning curve for using the software and fear that an open environment will lead to misinformation or inappropriate posts.

ADDRESSING CHALLENGES: Intensive teacher training and implementation of a new, more intuitive interface (the same one used by Wikipedia).

Q: How and why did BSSD begin its OpenContent Initiative?

A: Roughly five years ago, we got the idea for this from a really well-known treatise by someone named Eric Raymond. He was part of the original open source software movement. He wrote eleven precepts about how and why open source projects should be built and why it’s better to use a “bazaar,” or free exchange of ideas, versus using a “cathedral,” or top-down, regimented approach. When I read it as an educator, I was really interested in its application to school curriculum. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Bering Strait School District, Inspired Ideas, open source software, Wikis

Teachers Customize Textbooks Online

October 28, 2010 | 2:33 PM | By

Flickr: Arvindgrover

By Sara Bernard

Once upon a time, textbook writers would write textbooks and teachers would teach what was in them. Teachers would make up their own lesson plans, and if they were willing, shared them with their colleagues.

But technology is changing the scenario. Now, not only are educators combing the Internet for lesson plan ideas, they’re able to create the curriculum — and the textbooks — themselves, as well as share, edit, and customize them for use in their own classrooms.

Wikis (a.k.a. collaborative Web pages) and nonprofits devoted to enabling open-source curricula are springing up everywhere. One of the most well-known, Curriki, encourages teachers to both publish and download materials — anything from a vocabulary quiz to a full biology textbook — and vets its content through member ratings and incentives such as the annual Summer of Content Awards, which offers grants for specific contributions.

Other open source curricula sites out there include:

Connexions: A place for teachers, students, and professionals to search and contribute scholarly content, organized into “modules” or topic areas instead of entire textbooks. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: digital textbooks, Open Source, Technology in Schools, Wikis

College Professors and Students Jump into the Wiki World

September 10, 2010 | 5:04 PM | By

Picking up the thread of the past few days about Wikipedia‘s standing as a reliable source of information, more news surfaced in the past week surrounding the issue.

USA Today reported that nine professors from prominent colleges including Harvard and Georgetown “agreed to make creating, augmenting, and editing Wikipedia entries part of their students’ coursework.”

The idea is to capitalize on student access to journals and reference materials in college libraries that are not widely available to the public. To that end, professors at Harvard, George Washington, Georgetown, Indiana, and Syracuse universities will assign different Wikipedia-related projects as part of their courses.

Expanding on the idea of teaching critical thinking skills in this era of collaborative information-creation, Carol Ann Dwyer, the public affairs instructor at Syracuse University and a participant in the program said:

“The social media trend is something that students have definitely latched on to, and regardless of what everyone else thinks, they’re going to continue to be involved with it. I would prefer, particularly if they’re going to become ‘Wikipedians,’ that they do it properly.”

And an article in Science Daily reports that students are tasked with explaining graduate-level chemistry to the general public as part of their coursework.

“In the process, students learn teamwork and improve their communication skills while mastering chemistry,” [the professor] says.”

There’s still a lot of work to be done before Wikipedia entries will be accepted as credible sources by the academic community — and with good reason. But to me it’s interesting to note that while the word wars wage, some members of the respected academic world are opting to collaborate with Wikipedia to elevate and validate its content. And that’s exactly what Web 2.0 is all about.

FILED UNDER: Wikis

Milton Chen and MindShift on KQED’s Forum

September 8, 2010 | 1:35 PM | By

In a discussion with Michael Krasny earlier today on the KQED program Forum, Milton Chen and I discussed a wide range of subjects, including Milton’s new book “Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools,” the role of open-source information such as Wikipedia in the classroom, and how technology affects creativity in kids, among other subjects. Here’s the audio file for the radio program.

FILED UNDER: cyberbullying, Innovation, Social Media, Tech toys, Technology in Schools, Wikis

Wikipedia: a student’s trusted source?

August 18, 2010 | 1:01 AM | By

Is Wikipedia considered an accepted source of information for school research? It might soon be the case, according to a recent CNET story.

“When things have shaken out, it may be a world where free-for-all online information hubs are accepted–or, if proponents of ‘collaborative knowledge’ have their way, even embraced.”

What’s more, sites like Quora and Facebook Questions will be tools for  students to help with homework, the story says.

FILED UNDER: Facebook, Wikis