http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/wp-content/uploads/Learning%20to%20Learn
%20Online(1).jpg
Yesterday in one of my classes I observed the coolest thing. This was the last class before a unit test on trigonometry. We had started by solving a couple of challenging trig word problems together and then the students were working together or independently to prepare for their upcoming test by practicing. As I was walking around, I observed that one of my students (who was on his own computer) was looking up trig word problems online, looking for extra word problems that had explanations and were more challenging than the ones in the book. That was the first time that I had actually seen a student do that during class! This year I’ve gotten used to them referring back to my screencasts online, but I hadn’t seen them looking up more problems on their own. Is this the start of students developing their own personal learning environments (PLEs)? Maybe I need to start posting suggested websites for further exploration on Moodle along with my screencasts. But maybe it’s more useful if my students learn to find these themselves. I’ll have to think about that a bit. I really like the individualized concept though of PLEs as described in the Horizon Report (p. 24). That “the goal is to give the student permission to make their learning as effective and efficient as possible” (Horizon Report, p. 25) seems like this tool is helping students not only learn, but how to learn.
It’s been an interesting year of flipping. I now have many more students asking their friends how to solve problems before they ask me (not all of them, but a lot more than in the past). Now I see students taking charge of their own learning and looking for their own problems. What’s next?
http://www.teachhub.com/teachers-twitter-its-all-about-hashtag
I still need to work on the collaboration outside of the classroom and collaboration outside of the school community. I’m trying to imagine my students using twitter hashtags to search for math help like I do to find help with flipping.
Great to see your class progressing with the flipped model. I have been playing with flipping my own class but haven’t fully dived into yet. My students have not gotten to the point where they are looking up their own problems and instead always refer to me when they have a question (can’t wait for that day to happen).
My initial response was trying to improve my class website so they would have the answers to the questions they needed but soon realized I needed them to take own ownership in their learning. Developing their metacognitive skills will not only help them succeed in my class but also throughout their studies. I’m glad to see your students starting to do this and I know I need to be more purposeful in this aspect of flipped teaching.
Dan, I wish I understood better how to encourage more of my own students to start looking up their own problems. Trust me, many are still wanting me to provide what they need. I suppose, though, that it took them years to get to this “helpless mode” that they’re in. We can’t expect them to take charge overnight.
I think, much the same way I got you all started in COETAIL, is that you can recommend people for them to follow hashtags for them to follow. Give them a starting place to build their PLE from. They dont’ have to keep those feeds, but at least it’s a start. Would be good too that somewhere in Moodle you had a section for kids to share their best “learning feeds” whether they be youtube videos, websites, podcasts, etc. Would be cool to start a discussion topic per unit of study where kids could share and swap their best PLE resources and help each other build from there and become each others own PLE nodes.
I love the idea of having the students swap their best PLE resources on Moodle. I’ve got a couple of updates that I have in mind, now I just need to jump in and try them without over-thinking them.