When I dropped a 10th grade class earlier in the year, as our EdTech needs grew, I felt really bad about no longer working with the IST class who I’d pioneered most of my Web2.0 ideas with the year before. When I interviewed Suzanna, she hadn’t used Web2.0 in her classrooms. In fact in her previous school she was teaching English. So I wondered what the boys would make of it, and if indeed, they would continue to use Web2.0 at all.
I dropped into some of the kids RSS feeds today, and look what I found. An amazing teacher, who has taken on board the methods we’re using in Project Based Learning environment, and not only kept on using Web2.0 with the class, but has extended what I was doing with them to include a solid Ning group, developing a classroom learning network.
In a difficult topic (programming), shes been using Alice, Ruby, Pascal and Visual Basic! – and transformed the old topic (Logo/VB) into a dynamic trip into a range of languages and programming concepts.
The Ning is alive with students posting comments to each other in conversational writing. The forums are allowing students to post questions with her, well outside the classroom. Her own blog is being used to scaffold their learning – abandoning the LMS that is available from ‘head office’.
The students are selecting and using a range of Web2.0 tools – from presentations in Zoho to organising them with Slideshare. Their blogs are showing continued development as independent learners and reflective writers.
All this in a term!, and with no direct PD at all. This 2 year course has been completely reinvented and supported with Web2.0. The skills these students now have can’t help but facilitate better learning for those moving to the HSC, and for those leaving school – they have a greate ePortfolio to show how well they can use technology – and that as learners or potential workers – that they make a consistent effort.
While I was still thinking about a comment on my last post about ‘teachers are independently developing their own models of PD’ – this is such an appropriate illustration of that fact. The other conversation this week was around teachers ‘not having time’ or ‘access to PD’ – again, how amazing is the professional development here! – and Suzanna has a very young child at home – so certainly has no more time than anyone to put into this.
She’s supported their learning, supported what I started – and taken it even further – without saying a word. No wonder the students speak so highly of her as a classroom teacher – and it’s never easy picking up someone else’s class mid-semester. Wow, I am blown away by this and really hope that she can find the time to take part in the Powerful Learning Initiative with Will and Sheryl. Just amazing – but I said that already!
What she has achieved speaks volumes about Suzanna and her teaching philosophy as well as the students who probably supported her when she began in the class. It also highlights the processes, structures and understandings that you must have had in place with the class. I see this as a real team effort, PBL in action for both teacher and students. Congratulations to all involved, and more power to Suzanna and her students.