Connected Learners

With the 2013-2014 school year came district-wide initiatives of forming strong and caring relationships with and between students. Think of your classroom. There are many opportunities that you allow students to make connections and build relationships with not only one another but also with the content you are teaching. If you're considering integrating technology into this, consider this goal in mind of redefining your classroom practices to connect your students.

Think about how you can inspire learning to continue beyond walls the of your classroom. Too many times when integrating technology into educational practices, we forget that our goal is not to have the students "master" the technology tool but rather it is that we enhance their abilities on the skill(s) being taught. Think about what you want your students to do. What do you want them to get out of the learning process? In this case, we want our students to become thoughtful collaborators and communicators in order to become connected learners. Technology can help get our students there when it is effectively integrated into this goal.

Before we unleash a plethora of tech-strategies to our students, we need to be comfortable with letting go of control and allowing for students to harness multiple paths, paces, time, and places for learning. For information more on blended learning strategies, see Top 10 Reasons Why Blended Learning is Worth the Hype and Blended Learning Demystified.

Here are a few suggested classroom strategies to build off of before you're ready to fully integrate the additional tech tools. Once you're comfortable, consider the quote below... :)

Once you've established opportunities for students to establish their own paths, paces, and places for learning, consider integrating these three tech tools to create opportunities for authentic audiences for your connected learners. With a 1 to the World approach, students can experience instructions that blends the traditional structures of learning in order to expand their learning beyond the classroom.

Just as you would create rubrics to assess student work or classroom management expectations, establish guidelines for use when students are interacting with others online for educational purposes (consider Digital Citizenship here, too!).

Information courtesy of: https://sites.google.com/a/thecollegepreparatoryschool.org/dr-anderson/autobiographies/discussion

• Sustained point
• Originality (interesting, thought-provoking ideas)
• Quality of comments
• Textual references (the more specific the quotation, with reference to specific page and paragraph numbers, the better)
• Reference/Connecting to other works
• Accuracy of comments
• Clarity of comments
• Questioning

• Listening to other students or "checked-out"?
  
• Comments fit (follow the flow of the discussion)
  
• Ability to reference comments (refer back to the person who formulated an idea originally, ability to "tag" onto others' comments)
  
• Comments show listening (student does not repeat ideas already raised, doesn't misrepresent comments made by others)
  
• Student does not inappropriately interrupt others

• Consistency in participation
  
• Leadership (does student help others enter discussion?)
  
• Empathy
  
• Ability to learn, adjust to the dynamic of the class
  
• Humility
  
• Politeness/respect for all members of the class
  
• Reference (speaks directly to other class members, address them by their names, or addresses the whole class - not just teacher and/or friends)
  
• Patience with the process (it takes some time to develop a group dynamic where everyone feels at ease)
  
• Preparedness (books and articles marked, responses written, questions prepared, etc.)
  
• Risk taking (prepared to ask questions that seem obvious or silly or will provoke dissent) Willing to state own ideas even if different from those of other students or the teacher

Email: tesmert@woodridge68.org
Website: http://techd68.blogspot.com
Location: Woodridge, IL
Phone: 331-444-2699
Twitter: @TesmerTechD68