Discovery!

Why do children come to school when they can learn anything they need to from home? Well some do stay home and learn, and that is ok. Children need to be in an environment with their peers and discover things with them. They need to learn from each other (yes, children their own age) and from other adults. They need variety, a safe place to grow, and a nurturing environment. In my first grade classroom we will be using a lot of technology to discover new and exciting things. I will hopefully open my student's minds up to the world of learning around them. I want to incorporate the engaging principles of technology as I do so. Inquiry learning to me means that children want to know something, so I give them guidelines and tools and they discover it.

 As I think about my mini-lessons I am little overwhelmed. I do know that technology will be in every lesson. For one of the lessons I will definitely have my students using the curated list of plagiarism tools. I would also like to do an activity where they are putting together their own inquiry-based curated list of information, but maybe have a Wordle-type thing to tie it all in together. They could do a project on something science related, like seasons. We study those early on in first grade. The third project could be related to social studies when they study where they are on the map. It could be a lesson on culture where they have to look up information on Galileo for kids. Then they could use a Web 2.0 tool to create a presentation to show what they found. I'm sure that my ideas will change five times before I finally finish the mini-lessons, but that's the life of a teacher, right? :)

Revisiting Learning Goals

At the beginning of my class, I set a few learning goals. They were how to effectively use research-based practices when it comes to digital tools, how to implement and immerse my students in technology-enhanced learning experiences, and how to develop a daily use of online and blended learning networks with other professionals. I honestly feel like I am accomplishing them pretty well. I feel like I have a growth mindset of online resources. I have been learning how learn different Web 2.0 tools such as Blendspace, easel.ly, Blogger, Netvibes, and otheres. Having to be immersed in them myself for this class has given me a desire to have them in my classroom. I find myself checking different tools now without being given an assignment. I also think that using Twitter and developing a blog and professional learning network has helped me reach another goal that I had. I am connected to other professionals via learning networks. I also find myself using them daily as well. Overall I am really happy with my growth and my achievement of the goals that I set. I plan to continue on and keep growing in my experience. 

Letting Go

A recent article that I read really got me thinking. The article talked about learning and the two lessons that we can learn from learning. When I walk into my classroom, I do not want my students to only walk away with the knowledge of what I have taught them that day, but I also want them to walk away with how to apply that knowledge in the outside world. I do not want them to learn how to use a protractor on a piece of paper to draw angles, I also want them to be able to take the protractor that they know how to use and use it to help build a chair with the knowledge of how to appropriately measure the angles. (I recently helped build an Adirondack chair and had to remember how to use a protractor.) I want my students to TRANSFER their knowledge. This is taking all that you have learned and applying it to a situation. When a student gets to a test and has to talk about angles, I do not want them to only be able to do problems similar to the ones that we did in class. That is too scripted. I want them to be able to think about the problem, what they know, and say "hey, I think I can take this and apply it here and it will work out." That is transferring knowledge. Sometimes we as teachers are too scripted. We expect to teach by the book and expect our students to respond like the book says they will respond. In reality that happens 0.8 percent of the time. We need to be teaching our students how to live in the everyday world with the knowledge that we are giving them. We do not need to them to freeze-up when a situation arises because it was not exactly the way we taught it. They need to be flexible and we need to be flexible. We need to let it go. I need to let it go. I need to allow my students be creative and use the skills they have in a variety of ways. This ties into inquiry-learning. They decide what they want to know, we hold their hand for a little while to get them steady on the right road, and then we let them go. This ties into instructional technology. I can guarantee their brains are more high-tech than mine. They will be able to do far greater things than I will ever be able to do with technology. I will help them for a little while, and then I will let them go. They will have the skills they need to be able to soar. This makes for great teaching (or at least I hope it does). I will give them the skill set they need to be able to do what they want to do, and I will let them go and watch as they flourish. First, I need to let it go though.