PBL Gemara Day 1

A great start! I greet the students as they enter. I walk to the front of the room and I say “I have no intention of giving any exams this year, you don’t want to take them and I don’t want to grade them.” Gemara Honors erupts in applause. I explain we’re going all in PBL, group projects and presentations with content, collaboration, and presentation rubrics (will post all soon). The class is all on board and we are only five minutes in.

First groupings are based on student seating (I have 15 students and my classroom has four round tables in it, no desks, I will post a picture. So the tables the students sat at when they walked in are the groups they are stuck in for unit one, until I get a better handle on who is who in the class. For the non math teachers out there, I have 3 groups of 4 and one group of 3.)

Admin Team has decided that I am to start from 72a, Mishna of Ha’Ba B’Machteres, so I put this on the board: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ac8ZgXf14TzCzwRmCQhqNyBywiILAp_dzkLG56fhNRs/edit?pli=1

I have a student read it aloud, no questions allowed. Next, five minutes to talk it over in the groups, again no questions allowed. Next I take all the questions about the project. I remind students that I want assigned roles of research tomorrow, and we still have 20 minutes or so left, so we start the learning in their groups. Some of the students break to beis medrash to get chumashim, some use their laptops. I circulate listening to students decode pesukim, a mishna, and start the gemara. (FYI the list of sources on the Doc is not complete, I will be continuously adding to it until the end of the unit.)

So Day 1 is in the books. No frontal teaching, an excited group of students, and a PBL Gemara class off to a great start.

A PBL Tefilas Ha'Derech

Our school (MHAFYOS) is making a shift to project based learning in an attempt to focus on 21^st century skills. I have found that the videos of projects you see at school meetings are lovely, but incomplete in two ways. First, they fail to demonstrate how the learning happens, meaning they show a culminating project, but leave out the part where the students learn the skills needed to create that project. Second, they are almost never about a text based course, and I teach Gemara. So, I am teaching the eighth perek of Sanhedrin this year and I will try to have a project based classroom.  I will be using this blog to explain what I am doing, and reflect on how it went. I will post the projects and scaffolding I give the students in an attempt to demonstrate how the learning happens through the project.  As I begin the journey a Tefilas Haderech is most certainly in order: “May it be the will of Hashem that no mistake come from my hand, that I not falter in a matter of law, and that my colleagues be pleased with my work. May Hashem make the words of Torah sweet in our mouths so that we and our students continuously enjoy studying His Word.” My thanks to Rabbi Noam Stein who is my teammate on the journey.

A year of EdTech

I am still not great with technology and I still wish I could trade in my Windows Phone for an older flip phone without text or email. After spending the past year researching and experimenting with different technologies and their application to education I still believe that the teacher is the most important resource a classroom can have. The lesson will only be as good as the teacher who has prepared and gives it, with or without technology. That being said, the world has changed and is still changing in terms of the way information is taught and learned. There is more information available to today’s students in seconds than was available to past generations in days. Students use more technology, they are communicating in different media than generations past and we have to adjust our teaching to allow students to maximize their potential and prepare them with the skills necessary for future success in the world. Technology is helpful, but the more important factor is to update our lessons to incorporate Twenty First Century Skills.

Webspiration

I like to use Prezi more than PowerPoint to make presentations because I think in flow charts and Prezi is more intuitive for me. I have been playing around with Webspiration, and I think it could be a good planning tool for students who think in flows. From my early trials Webspiration is pretty much a mind mapping tool. What is nice about it is tat it allos you to share your map with others and work collaboratively on it, thus allowing a group of students to chart a project before embarking on it. It should also serve as a good template from which to start putting data into a Prezi, giving you a picture of the whole before starting to create a Prezi. Try Webspiration, http://www.mywebspiration.com/,  and see if you think I am right about using it before Prezi. Also see the sugya I started to chart on Webspiration http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/launch.php.

Ya But...

I just watched Collaboration Fluency: Creating a Learning Environment for the Digital Age Classroom by Lee Crockett with 21st Century Fluency Project. You can find the session from the 2011 ISTE Conference at http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=60754937&selection_id=77398005&rownumber=7&max=54&gopage=

I was disappointed by this session. Crocket opens claiming that in the past he and his partners have focused on the challenges, explaining that in the 21^st Century we are facing a different kind of student. In this session he claims “We are trying to move past the talk … and explain how you do that, how do you teach that.” He mocks the field of education claiming that no field ignores their own research more than teachers, indeed, it is “Ironic that we are over a decade into the 21^st century and we are still trying to define what 21^st century skills are.” He suggests that he will present the process of integrating these skills into the classroom. I felt let down because I didn’t see where he did that for collaboration. I felt this lecture was just more talk about collaboration, exactly what Crocket said he wanted to avoid.  

In his discussion of what he believes 21^st Century skills are, Crocket dismisses teachers who present ‘Ya, buts…’. I however was left with a large ‘ya, but’ at the end of this session: Ya, but you didn’t move past the talk, you didn’t give any examples of how to engender collaboration amongst students.

In the hours long lecture Crocket uses only four minutes (from 32-36) to present the 5 E’s of collaboration which compose the process of collaboration fluency. Establish the group, the roles and responsibilities, the norms, and the group contract. Envision what the groups goals are. Engineer how the group is going to reach its goal, and how the goals will be evaluated. Execution of the plan. Examine the process and determine if the goal was achieved and how the process could be improved.

This seems to be a reasonable process, but without the examples of how it is done it is little more than more talk.

Wiki vs. Apps

This week Edtech 102 has been looking at Wikis. There are three advantages to the Wiki. Fist, it allows students to work collaboratively on the same canvas, both adding their own content as well as editing other’s. Second, Wikis retain older versions of the work allowing edits to be easily undone. Third, they track each individual’s additions to the Wiki, enabling the teacher to monitor each student’s progress within the group Wiki. These features make Wikis a fine place for constructing collaborative work.

I am trying to figure out when it would more appropriate to use a Wiki and when it would be more appropriate to use Google Applications. It appears to me that Google Docs and Google Sites should give you the same functionality as a Wiki. It appears to me that they are similar softwares and one’s comfort with the different programs will dictate which to use.

One life seems like enough

I am having a hard time understanding the value of second life. The only thing I can come up with is that teaching through gaming can make education more fun for kids. That being my understanding, I don’t think that SL is the best platform to send students. There may be an advantage to virtual worlds in that they can show us things we cannot easily observe. For example in a virtual world you can visit foreign or ancient countries, but again I think that many of those experiences can be had using technology and real students.  I am not really up to date with the social media trends, and I do not even have a facebook account, but I really do not understand, what is the allure of hiding behind an avatar and meeting people who aren’t who they claim to be? What is to be gained by using this vast virtual world which cannot be gained by using real software and educational games?