3.1 Classroom Management & Collaborative Learning
Candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources. (PSC 3.1/ISTE 3a)
Candidates model and facilitate effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources. (PSC 3.1/ISTE 3a)
I created the Engaged Learning Project my first semester in the ITEC program for the 21st Century Learning class. The goal of the project was to design and implement a learning experience at the highest level of the LoTI Framework for student engagement. In order to reach the highest level of engagement, according to the framework, students need to act as and work with experts to create a product that is meaningful to stakeholders. Since publishing for a wider audience than just the teacher or the classroom was a big requirement of the project, I decided to have students draft and peer review writing about an education concept that matters to them. Then I had them share their editorials with a global audience on the app Pen Pal Schools. After receiving the opinions and perspectives of students in a different country, student revise their writing once more, taking this new viewpoint into account, before sharing their project with the school community. I designed and implemented this project with the guidance of peer and teacher feedback.
The artifact represents my mastery of Standard 3.1: Classroom Management & Collaborative Learning. I effectively model and facilitate classroom management by incorporating multimedia into each phase of learning in order to increase student engagement. For example, in the lesson, I plan a hook, a TedTalk, where I ask learners to identify a problem facing education today. Next, I ask learners to research and contextualize their problems. Ultimately, this lesson is meticulously planned with multimedia and collaborative technology tools at every stage of the process. When students work with the end in mind, they will be more engaged in 21st Century Learning. My strategy for classroom management is to give students voice and choice of their topic and the original product they create.
Additionally, students work collaboratively at several stages in the project: they test initial ideas on each other in person, they peer review writing using G Suite word processing tools, they share their thoughts globally with an authentic audience via Pen Pal Schools, they present their work to the wider community (student choose medium), and they use LMS tools to reflect on the experience. This project thoroughly covers many different collaborative tools for in-person and online student learning. The collaborative strategies included in this artifact not only leverage technological learning tools to increase engagement, but they also help increase rigor, since students synthesize what others have said to create a new product. They have voice and choice about what this product looks like and how it is presented.
From creating this artifact, I learned the importance of collaboration and authentic engagement in classroom management. When students are stakeholders and see their work as an important resource to the community, they are more likely be on task. I had never considered “having an authentic audience” part of classroom management before. After sharing this project with instructional technology students outside the district, I decided to add in the Pen Pal Schools publishing opportunity. I felt that it increased the LoTI level of the lesson. I could improvement the quality of this lesson further by including rubrics as well as work that models my expectations.
This work impacts the school because not only have students created meaningful products, but also they have shared them with stakeholders in the school community who can learn from the research students did for this project. The impact of this lesson can be assessed by interviewing community members who have viewed student projects and asking them what they learned from them. Additionally, the impact on student learning can be assessed by view their final products and reading their reflections about the experience.