Connected Learners: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Global Classroom

My thoughts on engagement

Every educator wants to experience the moment of “flow” when all the goals are set and understood and work is moving along easily and naturally. When we read about engaging students in the classroom using technology and social media, authors often leave us with the impression that this work will flow gentle as a stream. When talking about motivation and learning in school, grit is most often left out of the conversation. Yet, according to Daniel Pink, the best predictor of success is grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long term goals.

Our published book proves that when you find the right project — one that really involves all the students — they can find the grit and do what it takes to reach the final objective. Extract from the PLP post.

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• Twitter chat

 

Press release and Twitter chat!

On  May 21 we will issue a press release and you will be able to buy our book at the Powerful Learning Practice bookstore.

At 7 pm EDT – New York City time we will be hosting a Twitter chat.

Ann Michaelsen and her students will lead a Twitter chat about Connected Learners, using the hashtag #plpnetwork. Learn more about the chat, the book and the students’ activities at the Connected Learners blog.

More info will be posted here! In the meanwhile we are proud to show you the book cover!

press-release-cl

 

Ken Robinson: How to escape education’s death valley

Why you should listen to him:

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Source: Ted Talks

Quotes by Ken Robinson

• If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.
• All kids have tremendous talents — and we squander them pretty ruthlessly.
• Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
• I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.
• You don’t think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? He was seven at some point. He was in somebody’s English class, wasn’t he? How annoying would that be?
• Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.
• “The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.

 

Connected learners

Sharing and learning online

Seems like almost every week our national newspaper will post articles about using technology in school. Turns out Norway is the country in the wold with most technology in school. The question to ask is what are we getting out of this? According to the ESSIE The Survey of Schools: ICT in Education report Norway has the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. And yet we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.Norwegian teachers should be among the top 5 when it comes to using ICT in education.

Norwegian teachers should be among the leading experts in the world. We should be well used key note speakers and work shops leaders. I don’t think we are! The question to ask is why not? We have the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. Even so we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.

Connected learners

My class has recently been occupied writing a book about this and if we were to share one take away from the way we have been working with technology this year it would be this; work and learn together, collaborate online, find others online to learn from and share your work. Too many students are using their personal computers with emphasis on the fist word, personal. Sure, most students in Norway are sharing online. Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Instagram, you name it. But they are not sharing their learning. And if they are, they are not sharing enough. That is where the teacher has to step up. If the teachers start sharing their work, the students are more likely to do so too. Teachers need to show them how to. Teachers can do this by writing  on blogs, sharing ideas on Twitter and writing in Notebooks with the students.  Share documents on Google and share videos on how to learn. Make your own videos or use some of the thousands of videos out there!

VideoNot.es

As usual I find a lot of useful links following “Free technology for teachers“. The latest is VideoNot.es. You can use this if you post a video on YouTube for your math instructions. (Flip the classroom.) The students log on to VideoNot.es and take notes while watching the video. The document with the video and the notes is saved to your Google drive. You can share it with your teacher with your questions, or you can share it with fellow students and ask them to contribute as well. Have the whole class add notes to the document. When you write down the notes they are tied to the exact location in the video. Pretty smart! Look at the illustration below to see what kind of videos you can use.

 

Help Primary Students Connect with the World and Share Their Learning Using Blogs, Twitter, Skype and More!

“Kathy Cassidy (is) a shining example of what one teacher with some grit, curiosity and passion
can do to realize the powerful potential of computing and technology in the classroom. And
she does it with 6 and 7 year olds.” –Dean Shareski, Community Manager, Discovery Education
Canada

There is a change in pedagogy in the lower grades these days. In Norway many preschools are using iPads and tablets to teach digital skills and to learn. In the lower grades at school many teachers have started using Smart boards and tablets. To really make the change in your classroom I recommend that you read this book and share it with your colleagues! The shift to connecting your classroom is not that hard if you know how to do this. If you already have a Smart board and computers online, what are you waiting for?

In her new book Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades, primary teacher Kathy Cassidy makes a compelling case for connecting our youngest students to the world, using the transformative power of Internet tools and technologies.The 120-page eBook is the first in a series of solo-author works published by Powerful Learning Press to support teachers and school leaders as they make the shift to digitally infused, inquiry-driven teaching and learning, fueled by students’ own passions and creative interests.

Tweet about Connected From the Start! Join Kathy and Powerful Learning Practice CEO Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for a one-hour Twitter chat on Sunday, April 14 at 7pm EDT. Use the hashtag #plpnetwork to follow along and participate!

 

We are all Clark Kent!

No limit to what young people can do!

I found this story on my Facebook page today and I think if fits in nicely with our latest project at school, writing a book. My students laugh when I say we can sell a lot of books, not really believing, but I think the message from Brad Meltzer’s TED-Ed is a good one:

1. Dream big
2. Work hard
3. Stay humble

If we all can follow these three simple rules and be creative, believe that we could actually change history!

Even famous change-makers — like Martin Luther King — had concerns like everyone else. They worried about failure and were lonely sometimes, but that didn’t stop them from changing history.

To follow these seemingly simple bits of advice, people must fight through failure, continuing to work hard even when the first attempt at a big idea doesn’t work. And, perhaps most importantly, good ideas often require other people’s help.

Great message to inspire our youth. Source: Mindshift

 

What most schools don’t teach

Learn about a new “superpower” that isn’t being taught in 90% of US schools. Why aren’t more students training to be programmers? Interesting thoughts from successful people in the field of programming. Who wouldn’t want to be the new “Mark Zuckerberg”! 

Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi.

 

Using Social Media to Connect Educators, Students and Experts Worldwide

Learning Station Session : Global Collaboration Project

Sunday, 6/23/2013, 7:00pm–8:30pm
Ann Michaelsen, Sandvika vgs, Norway 

I’m pleased to be able to attend ISTE again this year. Here is what I will be talking about and below you can read more.

Learn how to use Twitter, blogs, and Skype to get in contact with students and teachers from other parts of the world and build a global classroom.  Recommended by ISTE’s SIGOL

Purpose & Objectives

Purpose: Show participants how social media like Skype, Twitter and the writing blogs can be used to get in contact with students and teachers from other parts of the world. By using examples from my own class I will show how my students communicate and learn from peers in the outside world using social media. By modeling own practice from the classroom I hope to encourage the teachers to start this when they get back to school.

Objectives: To be able to use Twitter, Skype and blogging as tools to connect. And to introduce new material to the students on personal blogs using authentic material like videos from Youtube and TED-talks. Curriculum goals are the basis for learning, not textbooks, and students learn how to cover the curriculum goals using different tools and by connecting with students, other educators and experts on those specific fields. Questions and challenges are set by the students with help from teachers, not the other way around. Students offer feedback to fellow students. The goal is self-paced differentiated learning where every student can progress individually and the teacher can keep track of this. We explore how it is possible to use digital age learning in an authentic real-world practice, modelling real-world problems.

 

Teaching how to reflect on your book

Why Double Entry Journal?

This is a great task to use in class after the students have read their novel. Every student should be able to do this task. It is a lot more challenging task then just writing a summary or answering questions that you find in a textbook or you as a teacher give the students. Using the double entry journal the students are forced to reflect on their reading and to give examples of sections in the book that are important and explain why they think they are important.  This will also test the students’ understanding of the text.

How to write a double entry journal

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  miss peregrine’s home for peculiar children / ransom riggs (Photo credit: sonyazombiee)

  Use a table function to make two columns. You can do this on your blog as well.

• In the first column, students should choose a quote/paragraph from the book that relates to a certain topic given by the teacher.
• In the second column, students should write why they chose that particular paragraph, and explain its significance.

Lesson plan:

1. Write an entry on your blog. Call it my reading of…..(name of book)
2. Make a table and in the left hand column write 4 different paragraphs from the book from each of the following topics: Theme, setting, plot and character development.
3. In the right hand column write why you chose that particular paragraph and its significance in the book
4. End the blog post by writing a small summary of your impression of the book! Make it out as a review and post it on Amazon! Would you recommend this book to others? Link to the review on your blog.
5. Use this rubric to self-assess and grade your performance RUBRIC FOR JOURNAL

 

Teaching literature

Reading in class

Cover of The Book Thief

In Norway during the first year of high school we have two competency goals concerning literature

1. Discuss and elaborate on English texts from a selection of different genres, poems, short stories, novels, films and theater plays from different epochs and parts of the world
2. Discuss literature by and about indigenous peoples in the English-speaking world

Looking closely at these goals it seems to me that it should be voluntary for students if they want to read a novel in class, and if they do they would be smart to choose one by and about indigenous people.

I’m giving my students a choice here and among the suggested literature discussed at our last network meeting I have listed these books. Regarding literature by and about indigenous people suited for high school students, I have to admit I’m at a loss and need some help! Please comment here if you have any suggestions.

1. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
2. The book Thief, Markus Zusak
3. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott
4. Twice Toward Justice, Claudette Colvin
5. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
6. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
7. White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

Lesson plan

1. Click on the links above and read the book descriptions, check out related media and read at least 2 of the customer reviews. Based on your research choose one of the books and write a short post on your blog explaining your choice and your expectations for chosen book
2. See if the writer has a Twitter account and send a short message to the author with a link to your blog post!