Hi,
Been a great week in my classroom, this week as the shackles are off following the end of exams!! Woohoo!!! This week I started a mini PBL with my “life skills” class. This is a lesson I have with a mixture of children from different classes and I see them twice a week (80mins total so not a lot of time). Our school conducted a survey of students recently and it found that children feel bullying is a problem so we decided to address this. Our big question is “How can we solve bullying in our school?”. They have had two lessons to work on it so far and it has just been great to see the inquiring, questioning and planning happening among the groups. One group is creating a video, another has decided to use SurveyMonkey (independently of any suggestions from me which is great!) to ask more specific questions about more bullying and another group is researching how other schools have dealt with bullying as well as creating an “Anti-Bullying Squad” and designing badges. The children are really engaged in the project so far and it will be interesting to see how it develops. I will update in my next blog and add some pictures and hopefully a link to a completed survey!
Flipped Learning
flickr photo shared by azmichelle under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license
This week has been interesting as I am always looking for ways to do things a little differently in the classroom. I love Jeff’s blog where he takes responsibility for a class or talk been boring. There are times where I have taught a lesson, known it was boring and my first instinct was to blame the content, when really deep down I know it is my responsibility to make that content interesting and relateable. I love the idea of providing resources to people who are going to be “off-task” during a talk I think this is something that is often used as a SEN strategy, however, maybe it could be applied to the larger class group once the “off-task” options were chosen carefully and it is a good opportunity to use flipped learning- they mightn’t want to listen to me but they might want to learn it another way. However Jeff’s article also mentions the thing that has always held me back from commiting fully to the flipped classroom idea
The students then for homework go and research what it is they want to learn more about around that idea, person, place, subject, etc.
My worry has always been about the students who don’t go home and research, maybe due to lack of resources at home, parental support for motivation. These children, who may be behind the class to begin with, then become further behind and demotivated as a result.
I have used flipped learning a couple of times in my classroom with mixed results. I have found it is better to use it once a topic has been introduced as children are more motivated to engage with a video if they are interested in a topic. The flipped classroom can work really well but as mentioned it is important that students and parents are on board so that all students engage in the material. I enjoyed this Edutopia article which points out some pros and cons of flipping your classroom but points out that it is important to ask Why? you are using it rather than just flipping your classroom because it is the “in” thing to do!
Gamification
flickr photo shared by Luca Zappa under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license
Reading about gamification has been very interesting this week. This Techcrunch article provided some useful apps to use in the classroom and shows how this style of teaching is here to stay! I tihnk when we look at the key game concepts, as outlined in this Glover study, such as goal focused activities, reward mechanisms,and progress tracking it is clear how it could carry over into education. This Mindshift article states that video games are becoming the new “gold standard” of learning and outlines 5 key principals why they are such excellent learning tools.
Some of the supposed negatives of gaming are shown to be questionable in this TEd talk by Daphne Baveller (which I would loved to have been able to show my mum when I was a child!!) Although obviously bingeing is never good!!
flickr photo shared by Emilio_13 under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license
Reading all of these articles led me to a lot of how?? questions. Ok so I want to gamify some learning but how do I even start!! Thankfully this article on how to gamify units as well as this one on how to plan instruction using a video game model were very helpful! From these articles. i have learned that I am already using some aspects of gamification in the class without realising but now it is just a matter of implementing it fully! Easier said than done I think! One of the problems with implementing gamification in the classroom is that good educational games are hard to design and find. However we can use some simple gamification tactics in our lessons such as rewards programmes. I love the idea from this article of setting up a medal scheme in class. Children award each other medals for helping each other learn in class. Medals can be awarded based on subjects so children can track whether they are being more helpful in particular subjects than others. I think this will be my first step on consciously using gaming tactics in my classroom.
And lastly as a gamer myself, you just have to believe that games can save the world!! Otherwise what was my childhood spent raiding all those tombs all about!!
Cheers,
Paul