So I’ve been having a boo at all the great work many of you are doing with your students through your digital projects, and it really makes me miss a classroom environment! Fortunately, I recently got a Mac that I get to play with while I work with teachers and students from Lindale School through a pilot project that Dean Shareski organized. I haven’t had much time to dabble just yet, but I’m certainly excited to get engaged with some of the tools available on the Mac. That Garageband alone may steer me to my true dream of becoming a rock star yet!! LOL…
I realized that I haven’t reflected on my digital project at all to this point, and while we will be sharing them shortly, I became acutely aware of the difference between what many of you are doing and what I’m working towards.
For most of you – you’ve had the kids engaged and involved, working with the tools we’ve been learning about in this class – experimenting, becoming frustrated, having some success and experimenting some more no doubt.
My project is very static at this point, and has the potential to remain very static unless my intended audience truly buys into it’s purpose and engages with it. As I listened to D’arcy Norman and Brian Lamb’s discussion of repositories again recently, it occurred to me that I was possibly creating the very same thing – and I’m not sure I really want to!!
Without describing my project in it’s entirety, suffice it to say that my goal is to create the following:
- first and foremost, a collaborative workspace where our Grade 1 ELA teachers can discuss best practice, assessment and instruction.
- a place where they take control of their own learning – creating spaces of inquiry where they can work with their colleagues to work towards improved student learning
- a space to house resources (documents and multi-media) – downloadable and modifiable for teachers
- a space to house model lessons, exemplary student work and resources that will support student learning
Because some of the documents being housed in this space were created with Sask. Learning and we are not yet sure about copyright issues, I need to keep them private at this time, so I am using our division Forum site. While I am grateful that it will mean the documents remain private – I am concerned about the ease of collaboration. I think a wiki would have likely been a better avenue, but for now this is what I will work with. (The whole privacy issue is also something I’m struggling with, but I’ll save that for another post!)
My greatest fear, though, is that teachers won’t take the initiative to collaborate. And I’m not sure how to deal with that. I’m hoping that if I even get a handful of teachers who buy in, perhaps there will be a snowball effect. Of course I could subscribe to the old adage “You can lead a horse to water…” – but that feels like a bit of a cop out. Having said that, I know that unless I find something useful, I won’t subscribe to it – so this space needs to be user friendly and purposeful.
Time will tell….
April 1, 2008 at 7:34 am
That was my frustration too! I began a wiki two years ago hoping that it would be an avenue for teachers to collaborate. I had demonstration lessons and online documents for teaching reading comprehension strategies available and was hoping that teachers would make the wiki great by sharing their strategies and documents. I had no luck. Even my consultant equals at the district level did not collaborate on it. For example, one of the wiki’s was on reading assessment. The process first made known by Faye Brownlie, where one uses grade level text to get information about student’s reading comprehension allows teachers to assess their whole class in a small amount of time. I was hoping that educators would seek and find their own passages from current materials in schools and add them to the wiki as well as fine tune the student response and rubric. I was actually quite disappointed that there was no buy in. I thought that this was a terrific opportunity for educators to participate in creating a wonderful reading assessment tool.
That is one of the reasons I got into administration….to work at the school level on curriculum and instruction. To date, I have been able to achieve more at the school level I think than I was able to achieve at the district level. Since I can work with the students and the teacher, I see more of a buy in by teachers. For example, I did two sessions on blogging in our school space just before report cards. I had five teachers attend at this busy time and more are asking for repeats. Out of the five, five are now using their school blog on a more regular basis. They will often consult me when they run into difficulty. I think they see me using it myself and with kids and it motivates them to use it with their own students.
April 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think you have found how it is difficult to initiate some new projects and then battle the political spectrum. With any idea, one has to think it through as much as possible, which can be tough at times. I think you have a great idea and once a few buy in, it can take off. I think that is the same with most stuff. The collaboraion in this class has been great and a learning experience for me.
April 9, 2008 at 11:22 am
I take a different spin on your post. It is unfortunate to think that sometimes in order to be a change agent in a school you must be in an admin position. Unless you have an individual in a school that as a teacher models advocates these practices, I can’t see any other answer.