Written by Last year I was honored to become a member of the #Cohort21 Season 5 group.
It was a year of learning, networking but above all discovering a hunger of finding ways to innovate at school.
After lots of help and input from a great number of the Cohort21 facilitators/coaches and other members of the group I was able to settle on my HMW Question
“How might we create more meaningful content for students”
My goal was to create a program for my communication technology course focusing on the specific learning needs of each of my students. By creating this goal I wanted to have a program with full engagement for my students.
I started the year with two main objectives.
- Have students create and manage an online portfolio where they could reflect on their work, show their achievements through the year and also be part of my observations and conversations. We used Fresh Grade to create the portfolios and we even used them to support our parent/teacher conference.
- Create a project-based learning program for each of the units in TGJ. As the year was progressing I was reading and listening to my student’s conversations and reflections and even though I was happy about how things were going I was not close to my goal. So, I created my own HMW Question for the second part of the year.
“How might we create projects that meet the learning needs of each student”
I turned to my PLN created on Twitter during Cohort21 and started reading and looking at different examples of work from lots of different sources. I will try to compile and share them all later on. One word came out of most of those readings ” CHOICE”.
Give students the chance to take ownership of learning. This is what I really wanted to try.
So, I changed the last three units of TGJ this year. Filming, Animation and Videogame Creation. Instead of me creating the project, choosing the software and the assessment. Students could pick from a variety of topics related to each of the units. Students also had the choice to pick the software and the style of learning they wanted to use. We as a class created a Google Site to upload all the different topics and the materials students were using to learn so everyone in the grade could share their findings.
The feedback on the Filming and Animation units was very positive as students could pick projects from a variety of levels and types.
What is the next step?
Working on my next HMW question…….