Archive
Making Lectures Less Painful
http://www.duq.edu/cte/teaching/lecture-strategies.cfm
As every good teacher know, students have a very short attention span (specifically 10-15 minutes according to Sally Brown and Phil Race). However, we cannot seem to cut out lecturing entirely from our lessons because it is one of the most time efficient ways to get information across and students need to hear the correct information the first time so they are not practicing false information. Brown and Race are suggesting that teachers break their lectures into mini-lectures. These would include short 10 to 15 minute lectures that would keep students engaged by using anecdotes and stories to help students make a connection to the material and remember it better. In between these mini-lectures, you could do group work, think-pair-share, discussion, or worksheets. Students have less to digest at a time and will most likely be able to retain the information better. The authors call these mini blocks that will save your voice and engage student learning.
Palloff and Pratt also encourage the use of mini lectures in the online classroom setting. They of course take on a different look because they are in fact online classes. They discourage the practice of posting lectures and notes because the students look at it as “just one more thing to read”. Instead, they suggest “that lectures begin and end with questions; the beginning questions help frame the lecture as a way of trying to make sense of a topic, and the ending questions encourage the students to continue the inquiry. They also give out the idea that teachers could assign the mini lectures for the students to do and then form the discussion questions themselves. I think this makes students take responsibility for the content and their learning. When they get directly involved, it becomes more meaningful and is remembered better.
“Logging on to Staff Development”
This article discusses the some ideas that the Mobile County Public School District used to teach their staff to use technology effectively. The School District received a grant call Enhancing Education Through Technology, EETT, or E2T2. The purpose of the grant is to teach students to use technology efficiently, but you can not really do a good job of teaching students something that the teacher herself does not really understand. EETT put guidelines into the grant to use 25% of the money for staff development.
The school district decided that they would encourage teachers to take online classes put on through the grant. The teachers would take them for continuing education credit or graduate credit. They would also receive other incentives such as new personal computers. The district also had the instructional technology teachers take the classes along with the classroom teachers so that they would have someone close to direct their questions to and to get help from before they fell behind.
The school district also saw the need to offer other options for professional development since not all teachers would be on board with taking an online class. “Since teachers, like students, have different learning needs, we have not focused all our resources on online courses. However, despite being convenient in terms of time and accessibility, online courses are not for everyone. While some teachers can learn effectively via solitary study, others need more face-to-face interaction to better absorb information.” To remedy this situation, they offered a blended approach much like we have here in our program, workshops, and on-site consultations.
So, by having the opportunity the train the staff at Mobile County Public School District, the district equipped their staff to effectively teach using technology and then could meet the standard in the NCLB act that says that students should be technologically literate by the age of eighth grade.
Palloff and Pratt discussed some of the obstacles faced by teachers trying to meet together to receive training or to meet together to discuss new ideas. This idea of having the school provide online classes to train teachers is very effective. They are expected to teach using technology and to have their students able to use it as well. What better way to learn how to do something well than to be immersed in it? That what these teachers are able to do while engaged in their online class.
Logging on to Staff Development. Bush, Gloria, T H E Journal, 0192592X, Jun2005, Vol. 32, Issue 11.
“Helping to Make Online Learning Less Isolating”
Oddyssey Charter High School is the high school curriculum made available to students solely online. The students still attend their school in the building, but go to an area where they do all their classes online. The teachers at OCHS thought that the students were not getting enough social interaction time, so they started using Facebook groups for their classes to interact. They found that there was no incentive for the students to join the group and they could not regulate a lot of what was going on their or insure the safety of their students because the students controlled the privacy settings on their own pages. After giving Facebook a try, the teachers turned to Ning, a site where they had more control and the students were safer so their parents were more apt to allow them to join in the conversation. The students participated in discussions of different topics, shared photos, and helped the teachers plan the upcoming units. They also formed groups to help each other study. These functioned as online learning communities where the students asked questions, discussed topics of study and presented each other with information for the class.
“There were three main goals of the the success of the Ning project. The first was to create an environment where students could collaborate without interference from outside influences. The next was to address social isolation by providing a place for students to discuss their personal and academic experiences with peers. The third was to employ dynamic technologies that students were utilizing outside of school as a way to motivate them towards school.”
I see this as a very positive example of how we can begin to implement these types of technologies into our instruction to help form learning communities for our students. They are already spending a great deal of time online statistically, so we should be looking for a way to tap into that interest. I love that these students formed groups to help each other study for tests and assignments. What a great way to build skills that are so necessary for the workplace!
LaDarrah Krogh 