Who Owns the Learning? #cyberPD Part 1

Our Event
Cathy, Jill, and I are thrilled to be hosting our third annual #cyberPD event this year! Each week will be hosted on one of our blogs, so be sure to add your link in the comments section. It will also help if you tweet out a link to your blog or whatever way you decided to share you thoughts! Be sure to include the #cyberPD hashtag. This week is being hosted by Cathy over at Reflect and Refine.


My Thoughts
In the new school year, I'll be walking in to a 3rd-5th grade building where every student has a Kuno tablet. Although I've already begun making changes in my first grade classroom in recent years, reading books like this one have become even more important to me now.

I found it so powerful that November refers to Daniel Pink and his Drive book.While I haven't read it myself, I've heard bits and pieces from it. I really appreciated how Alan shared Pink's most important predictors of high-quality work (autonomy, mastery, and purpose.) Wow. Do we provide opportunities for children to excel in environments where they are expected to master content but have the autonomy to learn in ways that best suit them? Do students understand the more global purpose in their learning?

Alan really got me thinking more about traditional learning spaces. Society has changed so dramatically since the years of that "one room schoolhouse." And yet, so many of our schools and classrooms look identical to the days when I was in school (just a few decades ago!) :) It always confuses me when kids are handed a device (tablet, iPad, iPod, whatever) but they're expected to work alone, quietly, at their desk. Shouldn't our learning spaces reflect the "new ways" in which we all learn? The last paragraph on page 17 illustrates some possibilities for what these new spaces might look like.

My mind is spinning after reading chapter 2. Especially with having 1:1 tablets in my classroom, I am intrigued to see how my 4th graders might be able to take on the role of Tutorial Designer. After years of teaching, I've seen how powerful it is for students to explain things to each other. Not only does it solidify their understanding of a concept, it also helps students to hear it from another person's point of view. Actually, this chapter had me thinking more about thinking. I'm wondering about ways in which my students can share their thinking and show their understanding with their classmates and with the world. I know their individual blogs will be a key part of this, but I'm curious to see what other tools emerge to help us. This chapter also reminded me that I've had the book Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, and Independence for All Learners in my TBR pile for quite some time. I might just have to move that one to the top!


Links
In this article from MindShift (Feburary 2013), Alan revisits some of the key points from his book. It was a good follow-up and refresher after reading the beginning of his book.

Modern learning spaces have been on my mind for a while now. Actually, I've created a Pinterest board to capture some ideas for what these new classrooms might look like. You can see the board HERE.


Next Week
We'll continue the discussion (July 10th) over at Jill's My Primary Passion. We'll be thinking about chapters 3 & 4.

And now, I'm off to start reading what other people have posted about the beginning of Alan's book!