Posts Tagged "Resources"
If I See Another PowerPoint Presentation I’m going to screammmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Image by Clover_1 via Flickr
This is a very dear subject to my heart. As a business and economics teacher I really do hate seeing 28 presentations on a topic which all say the same thing and all look the same. Recently I presented at the Qsite Conference and I was extremely surprised at the number of people who hadn’t really thought about this. I get bored easily. I want to see students put their own personalities into their work. If I want to see the same 28 presentations I could just watch my own over and over and over again.
Why do teachers find it so hard to let students use their imaginations? I have seen some amazing examples of letting students go nuts with their imagination and a multi-modal piece of assessment. Radio interviews with Mother Nature to explain Global Warming, Students bringing in Row Boats to explain the concept of Imports and Exports, Websites, Trade Displays, Role Plays, Sock Puppets…
The best part is the learning which takes place without theme even realising it!
Here are my presentations from the conference on the Multi-Modal Assessment. I have had to remove the student examples due to privacy. Happy to discuss this further…
Multi-Modal Assessment Presentation
Multi-Modal Assessment Handout
Related articles
- Practice what you Teach (saskateacher.wordpress.com)
- Technology Integration – Presentations (tracyfeltonbportfolio.wordpress.com)
- No PowerPoint (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
Peanut Butter and Lettuce – Who Said They Don’t Mix?
I have just returned from Expanding Learning Horizons (ELH11) where I presented a paper on Problem Based Learning (PBL). I love teaching using PBL as it means I can take a step back and allow the students to take control of their learning.
Here is the description of the session…
At a time when we need to let go of the need to be the sage on the stage and give students control of their learning come and find out how to set up and assess students through Problem Based Learning. This presentation will focus on the who, what, when, where and how of PBLs – software, options, set up and how to find the resources you need.
And while your at it give Peanut Butter and Lettuce a go – it’s surprisingly good…
Presentation
Support Materials
Sharing is Caring….
Image by Jens Rydén via Flickr
I am a firm believer of sharing resources. And as a result I have shared all of the resources which I have ever made or used in my teaching career. Lets face it as teachers we are time poor. And if there are thousands of teachers around the world who are creating fantastic lessons why should we all reinvent the wheel? This week I have struggled… I have struggled to understand why the Teacher Association I belong to is having to discuss the end of its resource sharing magazine. And we are having to discuss this because we cannot get our members to share their resources. It saddens me to see that teachers won’t share their resources. Let’s face it by sharing resources, the resources can only get better as we use the collective teaching experience to make them better. At the end of the day its our students who would benefit. Most of us are in teaching to better the kids we teach?
The other reason we are struggling is the whole copyright issue. Teachers, especially teachers of economics, use copyrighted materials all the time. And even though for education this isn’t an issue because we are able to use the materials for educational purposes the Teacher Association is not an educational institution. As a result we cannot publish the materials.
So I guess my question is how do we get more people to share the resources they have created? I know there are lots of fantastic teachers out there creating fantastic resources. If all the teachers just shared five resources imagine the lessons we could produce as a result. And heaven forbid the learning which might occur!!
Related articles
- Sharing Resources using Twitter (ukwebfocusdaily.wordpress.com)
McDonalds and Culture in the Same Sentence?
Our Year 6′s are about to study a unit on Culture and among discussions during planning the conversation moved towards what definition or concept of culture were the students going to look at. Being an inquiry based unit the decision was to go with what ever definition the student decided to go with would then lend the student to creating their own assessment piece. One of the more interesting or open definitions of Culture is
Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people. -http://www.tamu.edu/classes/cosc/choudhury/culture.html
This led to an intersting conversation which ultimately ended with the idea that McDonalds in itself is a culture. I decided to investigate this further during my Spring Break. So here is my interpretation of “The Culture of McDonalds”. Would love to see or hear yours!
Please feel free to use this as stimulus in your classroom.
Read MoreTo Share or Not To Share? Is it really a question?
- Image by 姒儿喵喵 via Flickr
I have been teaching for 6 years plus my 7 years of study (yes I know I took my time!) and during this time I have created many resources. During my second year of uni as I stayed up late one evening trying to find a better way to teach an economic concept as every uni student does I turned to Mr Google. I was struggling and I figured that many teachers before me had taught this concept I should be able to find something. Did I find it? You guessed it I found nothing.
Why as teachers do we constantly reinvent the wheel? Why when we all teach from similar syllabi’s and courses do we not share our resources? How much time would we save?
Ever since my evening with Mr Google I have openly shared my resources figuring that what goes round must come round and the resources will eventually be shared back with me. It has taken 10 years for something to return. When I first started teaching in the classroom other teachers didn’t understand why I was sharing my hard work. Why was I making them look better by doing all the work? My response was quite simply we are all teaching the same skills and content why are we wasting precious time creating the same resources? Slowly my colleagues have come around.
Over the last few years with the take off of PLNs through platforms like Facebook and Twitter the sharing has become prolific. You find something useful you share it. So why are some educators still too scared to share?
In the age of social networking and content creation (Web 2.0) there is no question. Everything we create as educators should be shared no matter how small or insignificant we think it is.
The answer is To Share.
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