Digital Portfolios

I did some reading this week on digital portfolios. It was inspiring as well as frustrating (as are most things regarding curriculum). The inspiring part comes from my wanting to take on such a project for my students. The frustrating part is the complete lack of technology in my school. Without the proper technology a molehill can certainly become a mountain. Let me just explain how tricky it is. I have one computer in my room that is about 4 or 5 years old. It mirrors the ones in our lab too. I do not have access to a laptop unless I bring my own from home. There is one digital projector in our wing (to share with four teachers) and one teacher has commandeered it. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I love my job and I think that we have the potential to improve our situation, but for now? Digital portfolios are not in my realm.

On a more positive note, I will pretend that all my students had access to internet in their houses and computers in the classroom. Digital portfolios would be a phenomenal way to keep track of student progress and growth. I can also see using them as a tool to help with student led conferences. What a powerful tool to have students share their own work digitally with their parents. A girl can dream, right?

For now, it is just that, a dream. I will not let go of it though, and eventually, I might be able to make it a reality.

Action Verbs: Educating for a Sustainable Future

I just enjoyed Chapter 10 in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. The chapter was written by Jamie P. Cloud and dealt with the idea that our world and the way we are living now is unsustainable. According to the author, "A practice (or a set of practices) is unsustainable when it undermines the health of the very systems upon which it depends and therefore cannot be continued or sustained over time (p. 168)"

Thinking about sustainability in terms of education is an interesting concept to me. I knew that we were doing our students a disservice by teaching them in the same old way we always have, but I hadn't thought about how it is effecting the world as a whole. Our current students are going to have to deal with a planet that is sick from misuse and abuse and they are going to be the ones to have to come up with solutions. The way we are educating them now is not giving them the practice and the skills to be able to rise to this task. According to the chapter, 70% of students feel hopeless about the future and "disempowered" in their lives. My answer to this is, we need to provide them with choices and opportunities to get that power and hope back!

The Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education is a program that inspires educators to teach meaningful content to create a sustainable future. On page 181, the author makes several statements about what students will do in a service learning project following their program. The statements all started with an action verb: develop, explore, discover, investigate, envision, document, research, and scan. What powerful words!

Up until now it is almost like we have had our heads in the sand. We keep telling kids that since they are our future, they will have to help us fix the mess our planet and its inhabitants are in, but we never give them the skills or opportunities to do so. We need to take action and tap into our resource of the young!

My Ideal School

I have always operated under the assumption that all kids can learn and it is my job as an educator to find a way to reach them and their potential. My school would be a place where every student is expected to learn and perform at their own pace while still meeting standards and improving themselves in order to become successful and productive citizens. I envision teachers and students working together collaboratively instead of teachers being the “keepers of knowledge”. I see students being engaged in their learning and having ultimate choice over what they focus on. My school would focus on making our students happy, well adjusted individuals who are confident and motivated to be lifelong learners.
The curriculum would be based on skills students would need to know for the ultimate goal of being successful and productive citizens. Instead of focusing on specific facts they need to know, I would instead focus on teaching them how to find out new information and delve deeper into things that interest them and things that come up as they year progresses. I have experienced several times when current events have come up that I wanted to share with my students, but I couldn’t teach them because it didn’t fit into my curriculum plan. If the curriculum is open like this, it allows for changes based on student interest and new things that are introduced frequently into our lives.
My school would be structured using flexible grouping based on the need of students. I would like them to be responsible for their own learning and be able to see their own progress, so I would have them be in groups until they mastered a specific skill. These groups, by nature, would be multiage and not limited by time. Students could move as fast or as slow as they needed in order to really grasp a concept. Graduation and commencement would not be limited by age so students that needed to move on faster or slower would not be limited by social norms.
In my school I would keep student to teacher ratios low so that student would get more individualized attention and instruction. In addition to employing people trained as teachers, I would also contract the help of experts in various fields to provide authentic learning experiences for my students out in the community. Adults would be seen as resources for more knowledge instead of someone that either knows everything or spends their time forcing kids to sit down and be quiet.
I see all students and adults working both collaboratively and independently, based on the task at hand. All learning would be project based or internships with students creatively showing their learning in a way that works for them instead of a high stakes assessment with the ultimate goal being a “meaningful diploma”.
Physically my school might not look too different from a current school layout. The classroom sizes would vary depending on what the room is being used for. I would repurpose spaces so that students would have more opportunity to engage with technology and different forms of learning. I would have rooms set up with tables so that work could be spread out and looked at by groups of people. My one school would house grades K-5 in a traditional elementary school setting but the actual students would not be divided as such. I think that having the school divided by departments/subjects would be best for collaborative working among students and staff. For example, I would have a wing just for science labs, where students could work on experiments and scientific research, regardless of their “level” and have access to all the materials my building has to offer.
In terms of virtual space, this is a question I have a hard time answering. I know that I would ultimately like to have access to the latest technology and allow students to explore it and use it to both help them and display their learning. I could say that currently I would like them to make use of global learning by connecting with students across the world and that they would be exposed to publishing via blogs and podcasts. Beyond that, I would hope to stay up to date with budding technologies and make them available to students to work with in creative ways.
I wonder when I can start building...

Antiques

Reading Heidi Hayes Jacobs' new book, "Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World" has been interesting so far. One thing that struck me while reading was the idea that curriculum has pretty much looked the same for the past hundred years. We all have them, the dreaded three ring binder chock full of papers with the dictated curriculum typed on them in the order you are recommended to teach them in. No one likes them, the teachers hate storing them, the curriculum coordinator hates typing them, and the secretaries hate copying and collating them. WHY then, do we still maintain this antiquated form or curriculum planning and reporting?

In Jacobs' book, she talks about curriculum mapping, something that can be done online through a computer in a more user friendly way. It takes up no space, it is more friendly to use, and people can revise it at the drop of a hat without having to create a new document and distribute it to everyone. I like also how an online curriculum map would be visible to a lot of people and there could be more opportunity for collaboration.

So, long story short, I hope that in the near future out dreaded curriculum binders will become a thing of the past and we will be seeing them hit the shelves of antique shops. I'll give anyone interested a really good deal on one if you're in the market. It's been hardly used, but I at least keep it dusted :)