Cultivating a Learning Environment

I love David Warlick's blog. In a recent post he lists six suggestions for cultivating a learning environment. I'm going to use these as a guide for any meeting I chair or any tech project that allows me some influence. I also hope to add to the list and have a list of my own specific examples by the end of this year.

Here are his suggestions taken from his post:

1. Fill your school(s) with learners. When interviewing prospective teachers, ask “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now that is not related to your teaching – and how?” Find out how proficient they are at network learning.
2. Be a public learner. Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it. Include in the daily announcements some piece of interesting knowledge that is obviously new. “Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to sell electricity from outer space? Make frequent mention of what you’ve learned from your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read. This should not be limited to job specific topics.
3. Introduce new ideas that are not necessarily related to school. Share links to thought-provoking TED talks or other mini-lectures presented by interesting and smart people. Ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents.
4. Make students’ outside-school-learning part of the conversation. Find out what their passions are and ask them what they’ve just learned about it. Suggest that they write something up about it for the school web site or annual research publication.
5. Make your school a curiosity lab. Plant around the school (especially in the library) intriguing questions that might provoke curiosity in learners (How many steps does a centipede have to take to travel a foot? Who was the youngest person to sail around the world?). Reward students who answer them and video their explanations of how they found the answers for the school’s web site. With the help of creative teachers, invent a mystery for your school and plant clues around the school. Require student-participants to research the clues they have discovered in order to find their way to the next clue.
6. Make all school stakeholders public learners. Ask members of your staff to write essays about their latest vacations or hobbies and publish them on the school web site or annual research publication. Ask teachers to devote one of their classroom bulletin boards to information about a personal passion of theirs, sharing their latest gained knowledge and achievements. Suggest that they produce TED style multimedia presentations about a topic they are especially interested in and post them on the school’s web site or perform them at PTA meetings. Learn about the hobbies and travels of the parents of your students and ask them to share what they are learning and how they are learning it through essays, videos, Skyped-in conversations, etc.

Other versions of this list can be found here and here.

Video Game Programming for the Classroom

Last spring I discovered Gamestar Mechanic through the Scholastic Level Up! materials. It's a promising resource for bringing the excitement of video game creation to the classroom. More things are in the works for this fall too.

As for the Level Up! resources, I wasn't too impressed with the superficial blending of video game creation and course content, so I created a short math lesson for 5th graders based on the site. I worked with two teachers and 12 students in my district testing out the project as part of my graduate program.

Overall, I can say the students really got excited about the program. It takes them awhile to work through the levels and acquire enough skills and resources to make a decent game. It might be a little difficult to justify that amount of class time, especially if there isn't some clear course content being learned as well. One of the teachers had the students do most of this at home--as if we could have stopped some of them! I wasn't completely successful with my own attempt to integrate math and programming, but it gave me some hope that it's possible.

From what I've been told, there will be a teacher community introduced this fall and from there, these issues can be addressed. I've been asked to submit my project in the next week as they prepare for the launch. Based on the enthusiasm for authentic learning that I see from this group's leaders, I am excited to watch where this will lead. Be sure to take a look at what's there now and keep coming back to check on developments.

I should add that I introduced this site to my kids at home. My daughter is going into 7th grade and my son will be in 6th. They both have a lot of fun creating the games and acquiring new sprites, tools and even the badges. There was much excitement when one of my son's games was featured and it generated some buzz in the associated, very safe online community.

Helping students at home

I remember about 12 years ago trying to use a chat room on my website to help a student with homework questions. That frustrating exercise was probably the only time I regretted having an eager learner in my class.

About seven years later a former student contacted me on Facebook and asked for help with some derivatives. We exchanged comments about each step back and forth on his status. It was just as difficult as the chat room, but at least he can refer to it still if he would want to. (Can you believe that somewhere disk space is devoted to all those Facebook comments?)

Well, now us math teachers have something that will suit our needs better. A colleague in one of my courses pointed out this site to me as one she uses when tutoring students over the internet.

Scribblar

So far I have only tested this with my wife to see how easy it is, but I really like the possibilities. Accounts are free. Yes, there's still the old fashioned chat room feature, but you can turn on audio and talk directly through your computer's microphone. Best of all, though, there's a "whiteboard" space where all participants can draw or write anything. You can even turn on a grid for graph paper.

I'm passing this on to the math department in my district. Please let me know if you find this useful for long distance tutoring.

Where Do You Find So Many Games?

Even though board and card games are growing in popularity in recent years, I still get asked from time to time about where I find so many unique games. I usually direct them to the Boardgame
Geek website. It's an amazing collection of information on all these games that never make it to the shelves of Wal-Mart.

I just put up a "geeklist" there about my flipcharts too. Check it out if you want to get started researching the games that those flipchart activities are based on.

This or That? Game

This is a great game for the beginning of the school year. By playing just a couple minutes a day, each student will get a turn to be in the "hot seat". There they can express their preferences and get a chance to see how well the other students know them.

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Donations are accepted
This flipchart game has been my most popular.  I hope you enjoy it!  If you find any resources on this blog useful, please consider donating $1 to $3.  Any money I receive this way will be used in my district to purchase resources for technology integration. I and my students greatly appreciate your support!  I would love to hear how you use the resources too.

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Details for how to play are found in the flipchart, but essentially the student who's "it" draws some random pairs of words like "Talk" or "Write". The student secretly records which one most fits his or her personality. The class votes on which one they think will be selected.

The flipchart has two slides, one showing three cards and one showing just one card. I like to play it with three, but if you want a quick round or if you're playing with Votes instead of Expressions, the slide with one card works well.

Some possible modifications to the activity are:

• Don't use Expressions or Votes. Just have students write their guesses down and the student who is "it" can tell them what he or she picked. One teacher in my district played this way and the class loved it.
• Remove words pairs that don't work well with the ages of your students.
• Make new word pairs about things that are specific to your school or community. Also, you can make words that fit what you're studying. How about a version based on the book you just read or on the social studies lesson you just completed?

The activity is loosely based on my party game Take Your Pick, published by SimplyFun. Since 2006 it has been one of their top selling games. I have played that card game with students for years and it has always proven to be very popular. In 2010 I created an expansion for the game called Take Your Pick II with Melinda Newcombe, an English teacher at the high school where I work.