Written by The past few months have been a blur. The Cohort21 experience has been enlightening and invigorating and I left the first session ready to incorporate a variety of new things in my teaching. The upside was that I had lots of ideas I wanted to implement. The downside was that I had lots of ideas I wanted to implement!
Take 1: Flipping the Puzzle
I initially decided I wanted to focus on providing more authentic and engaging math activities and flipping the classroom was the way to go. I went all in. I created a series of videos of my soothing voice going over examples of the various topics in the Unit and uploaded them to EdPuzzle.
BAM! I was ready! I would show up to class ready to set my students loose on a project. They would all be keen to watch my videos and come excited and prepared to learn up a collaborative storm of mathematical goodness….right? Nope. I still ended up having to teach the lesson and the original plan was out the window. I still use EdPuzzle quite a bit, though more for review rather than a replacement for content delivery.
Take 2: The Twitter Saga
I’ll keep this one short. 140 characters or less:
“Idea was to use Twitter to capture “ah ha!” moments the boys have via student generated tweets which would appear on a live-feed screen in class. Issues: 1. students don’t tweet anymore! (yep…it’s all about Instagram and Snapchat these days) 2. privacy 3. sustainability. This idea is still on the shelf”…..That was WAY more than 140 characters! I still need practice Tweeting! #noob
Things were spiraling out of control. I felt like I was in one of those Tasmanian devil tornados. Trying to do too many things at once..while being REALLY enthusiastic about it!….but not achieving the end result I wanted. I’m also pretty sure I sounded like THIS (skip to 0:10) to the students I was teaching.
As the third F2F was approaching I was getting increasingly anxious. I had yet to narrow down my Action Plan into something I thought was feasible and meaningful. Luckily, thanks to the always welcoming environment and happy faces….and other people in the same boat as me, I quickly felt better and was ready to sponge-up all the information from the many great educators I was lucky enough to share tables and Tim’s with.
Where am I now? Well…I’m a little more focused and thinking a little clearer. While I’d still like to incorporate all the great tech out there into my practice, I’ve decided to really focus on re-vamping how my students tackle their science fair projects. I aim to use Googledocs and docAppender to track their progress more effectively. I’d like to use the design-based thinking ideology and methods to really tease out some great ideas from the boys and hopefully end up with some great, problem-based projects.
I would love any tips from anyone with experience with design-thinking, problem-based learning, the Googledoc world…..anyone really!
I’m hoping that the dust has settled and I’m now ready to take on this challenge with gusto! Which, incidentally, is the name of a great Italian restaurant in Toronto! Try their truffle pasta!
-P
Hey Paul,
It was great to chat with you at the last F2F to hear about how things are going. Being in boarding and teaching is an experience in itself and throwing C21 into the mix can be a lot, but you’re not alone! @aconnelly is also in this boat and it was great to hear the differences and similarities between our programs!
Have you looked at the DesignThinking for Educators toolkit? It’s a nice place to start when introducing DT to students. In my experience students have difficulty defining the problem and in the ideation phase – some are single solution focused and there can be pushback but in the end, the more they do it the more comfortable they will be with it.
@jweening is looking to use DT in her classroom, so make sure you touch base with her. How will you be using Forms and DocAppender? With respect to Edpuzzle, have you asked your students why it wasn’t working for them? Edpuzzle is a great tool for revision but perhaps you could get at deeper understanding if they had time to process the content overnight or over a couple of days?
I look forward to reading more about your actionplan as you implement it!
Best of luck,
D
Paul,
I’m looking forward to listening to the implementation phase of this plan. I have found Design Thinking works in so many parts of our curriculum that I have a burning desire to use it in every class! I resist. Barely. 🙂
Probably even more exciting for me is to explore how you track with google forms and docappender. They are both tools that I have used in the past but could always use a refresher or a new way to use them!
So many great things to look forward to on Friday! Don’t forget to post your final blog with a link to your presentation.
Danielle
Great work Paul! You are very much in the midst of embracing ambiguity in the sense that you are unsure of where this will lead you and your students. It’s an exciting time, but know that you are in great company with @blng and @magostina too – among others listed above 🙂