Lessons Learned » Class Management http://lessonslearned.edublogs.org Teaching History in Morocco Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:43:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Efficiency and Depth of Learning http://lessonslearned.edublogs.org/2007/11/10/efficiency-and-depth-of-learning/ http://lessonslearned.edublogs.org/2007/11/10/efficiency-and-depth-of-learning/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:10:08 +0000 David Carpenter http://lessonslearned.edublogs.org/2007/11/10/efficiency-and-depth-of-learning/ My several weeks teaching MS humanities reminded me of how much teachers and students spend time and resources (paper and ink) handing papers back and forth to each other. I know that I was spending several minutes a class on some days collecting and handing papers back to the students. Clearly, a well-managed classroom virtual learning environment turns this into a digital exchange that is much more efficient. I also subbed for a very digitally minded high school teacher who managed several online tools that allowed for a total digital collaborative environment for his students. I spent no time handling papers in his class.

I taught a fifth grade class that past week. I was in school today reading their journals (as opposed to carrying home 20 notebooks) and typing up responses to be printed and placed in the notebooks (my handwriting is not readable). My responses were questions and prompts to lead the students to rethink and revise their writing. I will give them time on Monday to react and write in their notebooks.

The barrier to this dialog continuing and being differentiated (some students will need much more of my attention) is the back and forth traveling of the notebooks. I think about those days when I would have some unexpected time to look at the journals of a couple students but am at home and their notebooks are at school.

We know that wikis, blogs, Moodle, Google Docs, etc. offers the virtual 24/7 environment for digital journals (not blogging as these journals are just between the student & the teacher) to provide the efficient way for students and teachers to connect with their writing. And what about really having a dialog via my posting of voice files into the students’ digital journals? One way I am prompting a few students to develop their writing is to have them mind map out the characters of the books they wrote about. It would have been nice to model this in Bubbl or Mindmeister depending on where we had set up a class account to then just put a link in the student’s online journal.

Students could also do their peer commenting online while parents have constant access to participate in their child’s writing or other school work. The main barrier is access to the computers at school as all the students can connect at home. I look forward to the day when my sons will carry a small laptop with them as opposed to the notebooks and books they use now. :)

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