It is a GO!

I went to the first meeting for creating a digital curriculum for a sixth grade social studies curriculum around Minnesota Studies.  (I sat next to one fabulous teacher from Buffalo that I know I am going to love working with.)  I just recieved official word that the District 287, the organization that is sponsoring this project, has approved all who attended the meeting!  I am so excited, it means that I get to participate in a project for writing a curriculum for the whole group of teachers in the entire state of Minnesota to use as a resource.  Coolest opportunity ever.  So, I got my first Dropbox account.  And next week I am going to practice making a Moodle for strategies for reading informational text.  Yahoo!   

Creating A Culture of Learners

I recently found a handout from some sort of workshop in our house.  With two professional educators, something the one is doing often grabs the attention of the other and vice versa.  I found a document explaining the viewpoints of David Warlick.  He has identifies a number of qualities of our children's "outside the classroom" information experiences.  Those qualities are,  

· That the experience is responsive

· It provokes conversation

· It inspires personal investment, and

· It's guided by safely made mistakes.

He has created a set of transformative question for creating learning experiences and environments that are more relevant to our learners 'native' information experiences and skills. 

1.  How might I alter this assignment or project so that it "responds" to the learner?  How can the experience "talk back?"

2.  How might I plant barriers within the assignment that force learners to "question" their way through, the value the "questions" not just for "answers?"  (This is my favorite question!)

3.  How can I ban silence in my classroom, provoking "conversation" with my assignments and projects, expecting learners to exchange ideas and knowledge?

4.  How can I make their learning worth "investing" in?  How might the outcomes of their learning be of value to themselves and to others? 

5.  How am I daring my students to make the "mistakes" that feed the learning dialog?

In planning a new curriculum for/with new technology I would gladly welcome having a dialog with other educators about what these question mean for a 21st century learner and a classroom experience that "flips" teaching and learning.

It is Not About the Tool!