On the weekend of March 8th and 9th, 2014, Melissa and I attended the Google Apps for Education Summit in Charlottesville, VA. Saturday's Keynote Address was by Rushton Hurley founder of Next Vista for Learning. This was intended as an inspirational talk designed to get teachers to try something new. Here I'm going to repeat an illustration he gave, restate the suggestions he made, and then list a few resources which were given by him or others in the room who were having a "back channel discussion" using TodaysMeet.
Mr. Hurley used circus elephants as an illustration. When the elephant is young, his leg is chained to a stake. At first this may be a traumatic experience for the baby elephant as it tries to escape but learns that this effort is useless. In a few days the elephant learns that if he doesn't struggle, it doesn't hurt. In a short while the elephant's attempt to escape cease. Eventually the elephant grows to the point where pulling up the stake or braking the chain would be a simple matter--however, he long ago stopped trying. Therefore, the chain which is really binding him is in his mind.
This illustration poses the question; "What are your chains?" In other words, what "chains" are in place that prevent you from changing your classroom mechanics.
Mr. Hurley went on to offer seven general suggestions for spicing up ones teaching. Here they are:
- Break your chains by shooting for the moon.
- Use visuals
- Use what others have done (citing the sources)
- Collaborate
- Give your students choices
- Get feedback so that you can improve
- Learn something new.
Now to be a bit more concrete and give you something you might be able to immediately use....
The suggestion was made that instead of having all your students take notes (during a lecture) why not have a "primary" and "secondary" note-taker and let the other students listen intently (the way students do). The role of the secondary note-taker is to edit the notes taken by the primary note-taker--making sure nothing of importance was left out. At the end of class display the notes and ask if anything major is missing, then simply share these notes with the whole class. If you are using Google Drive, that would be the easiest way to accomplish this. However, at this point, with only a few ACPS teachers using Google Drive, DropBox and DropItTo.me might also be used as well as a host of other sites which any of the ITRTs would be happy to introduce you to. Next year, with ACPS "going Google" using Google Drive/Docs will be possible.
A specific way of implementing suggestion five above, would be to let students make their own assignment. While in the classroom, for roughly every third assignment Mr. Hurley gave, he would give students the option of making up their own assignments provided they covered the right material and involved as much work as the "default assignment" (the assignment the students would do if they didn't want to create their own.)
In reference to numbers two and three above, he stated his conviction that the students would work harder and produce much higher quality work if they knew they were creating something that would be "published." If the student knows the teacher is going to look at his/her work s/he makes it "good enough", but if the student knows classmates or a wider audience will see the work s/he makes it "great". Additionally, when a student makes a video they know they have something to contribute. Rushton's site, Next Vista for Learning (NextVista) routinely offers student video contests. This site now hosts a library of over 1200 videos by and for students and teachers. You'll find NextVista's search box for locating useful videos, or for submitting your own videos, here. NextVista also provides links to many other useful resources here.
Be sure and leave a comment below if this post brings to mind anything useful you might like to share with others. Now that you've been motivated and inspired, if you'd like help trying something new please contact your friendly, local ITRT.
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