Capstone II Session 3

Sometimes I wonder why I can't take a simple idea and turn it into a cash cow like the folks at Big6 did. The process they came up with is what most people go through anyway. They just managed to translate it into words and create a whole bunch of things to help students work through it.

Next up in this session was an article entitled, "Evaluating & Using Web Based Sources," by Glenn Bull, Gina Bull, Kara Dawson, and Cheryl Mason. It is a ten year old article that is already dating itself to some extent; however, it does include some interesting bits of information. One such bit of information was the process for evaluating web sources. It looks like this:

1. Identification of Potential Resources
2. Evaluation of Appropriate Resources
3. Integration into the Research Paper
4. Citation of the Resource
5. Verification by the Instructor

The article does not talk enough about focusing ones search for information on good sources rather than scouring the net for information. In today's internet its more about figuring out where to go to get information rather than trying to evaluate what comes up in a Google search (which the article does not even mention). I do like how this article breaks down the evaluation of a web source into three areas authority, domain, and consistency.

I had not really considered before how important it is for the teacher to back check all web based sources. I see how important it is to make sure students are citing good sources and to correc that if not; however, this adds a huge time burden to teachers already hectic schedules.

The next article, "Connecting Depth and Balance in Class," by Matthew Kuhn explored how educational technology is matching up with some traditional learning taxonomies.  Much to my surprise my own school district and team was mentioned as having partaken in the authors study on this subject.  This of course took place prior to my joining the team.  Basically his take is that technology is going to make it easier to teach across multiple intelligences and to address the variety of levels in Blooms taxonomy.  Nothing earth shattering in this article. 

Continuing through this session's reading list I found "The Personalization of Reading and Learning," by Tyler on the On Our Minds Blog on Scholastic's website.  The premise of the post is that the spread of technology is requiring schools to do more to customize individual learning experiences.  My issue with using this for a class, which my Capstone II course just did, is that it does not say anything else of relevance in the article. 

Hoping to find something more engaging and exciting I turned to "Personalized Learning Puts Students In A Class of Their Own," from the Science Daily website.  I am a HUGE supporter of the idea the article mentions when it says, "In fact, the image of classrooms as 'knowledge factories' has not changed much since the Industrial Revolution, despite the major advances in teaching methods that have occurred.  This model holds that teachers input information, pupils process it, and out comes the learning in neat little packages."  I would add that those neat little packages are grades.  The article even mentions how the shift to standardized curriculum makes it harder to offer personalized learning experiences.  After all that exciting introductory material things get decidedly less exciting as they begin explaining the iClass project.  As far as I can tell the project allows teachers to set goals, sub-goals, and suggested studies and then it sets the student free to meet them.  For an article on this project, it does a great job of not really telling you anything about it. 

So now I am left with the last article for the session.  Will it redeem the session or continue the trend of poor articles?  The article comes from the website Tech&Learning, which gives me hope.  The article is called "Creating a Technology Climate Where the Self-directed Learner is Nurtured," and it is written by Rickey Moroney.  As I began to read things were looking good.  The article was talking about how a teacher uses rubrics to help students self-evaluate their work as they progressed through a major project in a middle school social studies class.  I really liked the idea of assessing students understanding of the project itself.  It makes sense that for large complex projects students might not understand all that we ask of them.  I also like the way the author focuses on securing multiple sets of data to find answers to the questions he asks about how well is project is working.  While more detailed then necessary, I think this was a good practical example of how major projects can be effective teaching tools in the classroom.  With all such ideas, my only major concern is the time required to do something like this is significant and can possibly interfere with the need to cover a set amount of content prior to a high stakes test. 

As to the prompt that asks, "Is the iClass model from the ScienceDaily article a realistic model for the lesson you are creating?"  I say that the article did not provide enough information for me to model anything after it. 

The finaly question prompt says "What are realistic expectations for self-assessment by the students who will participate in the lesson you are designing?"  With the lesson I am designing I think the opportunities for reflection plus the voting at the end of the lesson will serve as good measures of self-assessment by the students.