In the online K-12 conference, I was excited to view e-portfolio link, but was disappointed by the white screen with the English gentleman's voice in the background. Did anyone stick with it? Anyhow, I quickly moved on to Robin Beaver and Jean Moore's "Bridging History Using Web 2.0 tools." This video grabbed my interest since Jean teaches 7th grade history and ELA.
In the introduction, Jean has created a short video clip that looked a lot like the Xtranormal videos that we created some weeks back. She then moves on to explain her transformation to the web with some of her units. She focused on her Red Scarf Girl project during her Chinese history lessons. She initially used Webquest for the entire unit and had students create powerpoint presentations as the culminating activity. Today, she has moved on to Glogster because it had fewer limitations for her and for her students. I loved the concept of the virtual museum and I think my students would be equally intrigued by an activity like hers.
As I dream, though, of creating digital projects with my students, I feel slightly overwhelmed. How do teachers find the time to create the Webquest and then how did she decide whether to use Glogster versus Moodle versus a Wiki? Jean had some advantages in that her technology teacher, Robin, seemed to co-teach or at least cross plan with her on this assignment. With all the other demands placed on teachers today, there is so little time to plan cross curricular assignments. Interdisciplinary work has definitely taken a backseat to all of our meetings and MCAS demands. I am hopeful that I will find the time to create small steps towards creating a project like Jean and Robin's. However, I also realize that 21st Century Skills, if it becomes a priority, will require release time for teachers of all disciplines to collaborate and create.
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It's not just the planning time, although I agree that that's major. It's also the time with the students, as you alude to. I'm in the middle of a big interdisciplinary project involving reading, writing, art, and technology. The Art teacher was just telling me how great she thinks it is, and I basically agree, but I also keep wondering how much time is really OK to put into it. We've completed the reading and writing parts, but the art and recording parts are taking a while, and where is that time supposed to come from? The principles of 21rst century teaching and learning say to teach in project-based ways, but projects necessarily have some time-consuming components that don't all involve the key standards tested on the MCAS. How do you strike that balance? And, how do you predict when administrators are going to value the projects and when they're going to prefer that more time be protected for more traditional activities?
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What a wonderful conversation. The richness of your wondering is worthy of a future cup-of-coffee conversation with the administrators with whom you work. I know I'd support your disciplined innovation. I'm sure they'd like to discuss other innovative projects or instructional ideas you have and the related questions that percolate up. Learning organizations thrive on this type of thinking; keep it up - even after the corse concludes.
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