Step 8
Self-initiated, lifelong-learners
Why is this important?After over twenty years of teaching and ten of raising children, I believe students should be served by K-12 education is three main developmental stages. Although the grade divisions are somewhat arbitrary, the flow of learning holds:
primary - "Sponge & Wonder = Knowledge"
Young children have a natural joy of learning. They are also sponges ready to soak up knowledge. These are the years to encourage wonder and exploration. Through the process learners develop a foundational body of knowledge. Our job as educators is to keep this joy alive and to help them see the context and relationships among what they are learning.
middle years - "Running the Show"
A natural outcome of "knowing a lot" is expressing it and feeling its power. It makes sense then that somewhere around fourth or fifth grade students are ready to take over control of both their learning and classroom activities. You can see the effects on children who are forced to "Play School" when they really should be in charge of the place. Apathy, "going through the motions," and rebellion are all reactions when students' aren't allowed to grow up. Our job as educators is to create an environment and culture where people feel the consequences of their actions and take responsibility for the "cause and effect" of life. A vibrant classroom is a great place for students to learn first hand how the world works and their place in it.
secondary - "Taking on the World"
Once students learn through trial, error and mastery how they learn and relate to life in their families and schools, high school should be full of authentic connections with the real world. As teenagers explore who they are and their place in the world, we need to give them opportunites to take significant action and make contributions.
Step 7
Unfold WebQuests
Why is this important?It's never been anyone's intention to have all students using WebQuests as the ultimate integration of the Web into classroom learning. The WebQuest model is based on the aspect of schema theory that says that if we want to help novice learners to perform beyond their current capabilities, one statistically effective way is to scaffold their learning. In short, we look at what experts do and "chunk" this behavior into a discernible process and then prompt learners into these more expert activities.
Ultimately, we want students to internalize the more expert process and make it their own. This way they can apply or transfer it to any similar learning task. Thus, once students become used to the WebQuest process, we want to provide less and less scaffolding. Here are some examples of what this might look like:
- Rather than provide a Big Question, students generate their own.
- Rather than be assigned roles, the class identifies the key perspectives on the topic and choose their own team mates.
- Rather than be given a task that prompts construction of new meaning, students develop their own learning products (this will likely be the last scaffold to be removed as it is the most challenging aspect).
- Students find their own Real World contacts from which to receive feedback.
- Students use the product of their WebQuest to develop their own ClassPortals
What this means for You
Our ultimate goal is to help students become Self-initiated, Self-motivated Learners. Not only is it good educational practice, but our students deserve as much as they take their places in the New WWW, where personal devices entreat them to have Whatever they want, Whenever and Wherever.
Model - Webquests in a Web 2 World
Step 6
Scaffolded WebQuests
Why is this important?Bernie Dodge outlined his notion of a "WebQuest" in 1995. At that stage and for the next three years, Tom March enjoyed a fellowship at San Diego State University under Bernie's mentoring.
Since then Tom has gone on to develop and evolve the WebQuest by creating them, working with teachers, and writing articles. In 2002, he launched BestWebQuests as a place to celebrate "true" WebQuests (those that prompt transformation of information into new understanding, not mere knowledge acquisition or research).
Here are examples created by Tom March (in chronological order):
- Searching for China (updated version)
- Does the Tiger Eat her Cubs?
- The Tuskegee Tragedy
- The Big Wide World WebQuest
- Little Rock 9, Integration 0?
- Look Who's Footing the Bill!
- Crool Zone? -School Safety WebQuest
- Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?
What this means for You
WebQuests are a great process to integrate many "best practices" like novice-expert scaffolding, motivation theory, schema theory, cooperative learning, service learning, differentiated learning, and authentic assessment. As teachers integrate these strategies by facilitating WebQuests, they enhance their pedagogical expertise and develop their professional capacity to provide students with individualized learning experiences.
Article - What WebQuests Are (Really), by Tom March
Article - Why WebQuests?, an introduction by Tom March
Flow Chart - The WebQuest Design Process
Web 2.0 Update - WebQuest Design 2.0 (pdf)
Tool to create true WebQuests: Web-and-Flow
Matrix of exemplars: BestWebQuests
Portal: The WebQuest Page
Step 5
Subject Samplers Galore
Why is this important?As discussed in the previous step, knowledge acquisition is but one facet to the jewel that is Real, Rich and Relevant learning. Another that virtually all classroom teachers know to be important is the affective domain: how students feel about what they are learning and how motivated they are to engage in activities. Tom March created the Subject Sampler as a bridging activity that use compelling resources from the Web to open students to explore the subject from their own personal perspective. Here are some examples:
What this means for You
Besides the obviously motivational aspect of an activity focused on establishing relevance to learners, Tom March suggests 5 reasons why teachers should make Samplers their most frequently-used Web-based activity:
- Samplers can be used in a typical computer lab setting (or as a group Learning to Look activity)
- Samplers take advantage of the Web's best features: multimedia experiences, human interest stories, interactive tools, and quirky perspectives.
- You only need about 6 - 10 links.
- The questions / tasks for each link follow the same pattern so they are easier to write that knowledge acquisition questions.
- A Sampler can be used in one class period as opposed to Hotlists for research or WebQuests for creative construction of meaning.
Remember, we've always used ice breakers and motivational activities to activate student interest. The Web makes this so much easier and more powerful.
DetailsArticle - The Six Web-and-Flow Formats, by Tom March
Only two sites help teachers create Subject Samplers:
Step 4
Hunt if you Must
Why is this important?For good or ill, a main educational endeavor is knowledge acquisition. Found on the low end of Bloom's Taxonomy and acknowledged by the likes of Piaget to be a labor intensive practice, learning things with the intention of storing them in long-term memory is the focus of many classroom activities.
A growing number of educators question the usefulness of acquiring what can sometimes be disconnected facts when we find our selves in the midst of an Information Explosion. More important is to learn how things connect, to develop increasingly sophisticated conceptual understandings and, above all, to know how to learn in ways appropriate to a present task.
This said, students will frequently need to acquire information to develop foundational knowledge before deeper learning can occur. When using the Web as the resource for such information, it's important to tap into the Web's strengths and avoid its weaknesses. The strengths are the ability to access current information and to draw from a less digested array of materials, such as difficult-to-find primary sources.
Here are some examples:- What Can We Learn from the Net?
- Crool Zone? - Knowledge Hunt on School Safety Issues
- Black History - Past to Present
Remember than such Knowledge Hunts can descend rapidly into "Copy-Paste Masterpieces" unless the task is purposeful and connected top Real, Rich, and Relevant Learning.
What this means for YouWhen you do want to support student acquisition of knowledge, there are quite a few online tools designed to help teachers create and post Web-based information retrieval activities. Tom March has developed two, Filamentality and Web-and-Flow. Others are sites like Quia, QuizStar, and a host of course management systems like Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle.
Remember, just because a lot of people do something doesn't mean it's good. A better use of the Web and student enthusiasm are Subject Samplers which are explained in the next step to developing Self-initiated, Self-motivated Learners.
DetailsArticle - The Six Web-and-Flow Formats, by Tom March
Step 3
Class Act Portals for All
Why is this important?In brief, a Class Act Portal is an online space contributed and maintained by a group of students with a mentoring teacher. This might be a whole class or many groups working with the same teacher. The purpose of Class Act Portals easily and powerfully address several key needs:
- Model passionate learning
- Practice with "Habits of Mind" - (example)
- Involve students in positive action (example)
- Promote students as contributors of learning (example)
All of these promote a Real, Rich and Relevant learning experience that "ticks along in the background" of daily classroom life. Some groups might make their online space the focus of their learning, others may check in with the subject every week or two. Either way, the learning is ongoing, evolves, and deepens all year and then - gets passed on to the incoming group of students!
Typical Class Act Portals may take the form of Blogs, more comprehensive Class sites, Directories of links to other sites, and Galleries of drawings, photos, and multimedia files.
A more complete description of Class Act Portals was published in Education Quarterly and is available at ozline.What this means for You
One of the best ways for students (K - 12!) to experience the deep joy of learning is to be involved in meaningful study. As a classroom teacher, you can share your passion or tap into the interests of your students.
Details
- ClassActPortal.com - Classportals Help site
- Article - Class Act Portals, by Tom March
- Article 2 - Why Class Act Portals?, by Tom March
Step 2
Learning to Look as a Class
Why is this important?Adults know that the Web is unlike anything that's ever come before. That's because we were alive before the mid-90s and see the Web in contrast to TV, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedia, etc. The children we teach grew up with the Web. For them it seems like computerized versions of all these things and more.
The difference is that in the Web's unregulated and flattened hierarchy, The BBC is the same mouse click away from The first male pregnancy and even The BBC (*).
The point is not to only go to valid and reliable Web sites (NO, please, don't do it!), but to see this as a wonderful "Learning to Look" opportunity. In an Information explosion, our students (we ALL!) need to "understand," more than we need to "know."
What this means for You
One of the best ways for students (K - 12!) to develop greater sophistication is to join in a shared looking activity with an adult. As infants they sat in our laps as we read picture books together. In schools, we use a computer and a data projector and an interesting Web site.
As part of the 2nd10, Tom March and ozline.com has launched Look to Learn, a directory of such Real, Rich and Relevant resources and related thinking prompts where you can find sites like these: Details
- L2L - Look to Learn - http://tommarch.com/l2l/
- About the Look to Learn Strategy
- Thinking Prompts
Step 1
Easy Hotlists for Richer Resources
Why is this important?As WWW comes to mean "Whatever, Whenever, Wherever," children will need adult support to empower their lives with technology, not to drift blithely into "amusing themselves to death." The way to begin this process is to make significant Web-use a daily aspect of learning and life in classrooms. The easiest way to get started is to add Web resources to every topic we are studying with children.
Background
In 1996, Jodi Reed and Tom March created the first version of Filamentality. We designed it to help teachers and librarians do three things: 1) Provide templates to guide teacher use of the Web, 2) Automatically shape the work into a Web page, 3) Immediately post that page on the Web. We hadn't even thought of the best thing: for all these years, terrific and dedicated educators have been using it to create Web-based activities for their students. And we can access their work!
What this means for You
If you are looking for Web resources on just about any subject, you can bet another - only slightly harder working - educator has already done some work in the area. Here are some sample links:
Now try it Yourself!
- Clusty - http://clusty.com
- Quintura - http://www.quintura.com/
- Nexplore - http://www.nexplore.com/
Click the step again to make the information disappear and view another level.