Blog Post Assignment #10: What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

The assignment this week is to watch several teachers that Dr. Strange has recommended and write about what I learned about teaching and learning. The three that I learned the most from were Paul Anderson's Blended Learning Cycle, Sam Pane's Building Comics, and Dean Shareski's Project Based Learning.




Paul Anderson is an AP Biology Teacher in Bozeman, Montana and he gave a short video on his Blended Learning Cycle. By blended he means that as a teacher you blend online, mobile, and classroom learning while in the classroom. He uses a mnemonic device, QUIVERS, to plan out his learning cycle. QUIVERS stands for question or good "hook", investigation/inquiry, video (podcasts for direct instruction), elaboration, review, and summary quiz. The aspect I like best about this learning plan is that in the review stage, he meets with his students, usually individually, to discuss what they have learned. While they are discussing, Mr. Anderson is asking the pertinent questions to see if they learned the concept, as well as having them tell him what they learned. He requires all students to review with him before they take the quiz. Another aspect I liked about Mr. Anderson was on his Flipping the Classroom video on his blog. In this video he discusses flipping the classroom, but he also reminds teachers that every classroom is different, that teaching is personalized, and what works for one teacher may not work for another. This reminded me that teaching is an art and it has to be developed because there is no exact formula like flipping the classroom that will work for all teachers and all students.




Sam Pane's video Building Comics was a fun way for 4th graders to learn digital responsibilities and safety in order to become a super digital citizen. In this learning project students used a program on their laptops to create a superhero. Then the students used that superhero to create a comic that was a narrative story to teach digital responsibilities and safety. The students got very creative and even included pictures of themselves in the comic. Lastly, Mr. Pane had the students walk around the classroom for a "gallery walk" where they evaluated and commented on their peers' work. This was a great example of PBL because the students learned the lesson while creating with technology as well as presenting their work to the class in the "gallery walk."




Dean Shareski's Project Based Learning was the video that I liked the best. In this video, Mr. Shareski goes into a high school classroom in Canada where History, English, and Information Processing are all taught in one class. The class is three hours and has a teacher for each subject working together. The best part about this learning plan is that the students see how the subject are related which is more like the real world. The teachers he interviewed stated that this class is a better use of time because they are able to blend ideas and content, are able to go deeper in learning, and are able to give quality feedback. They also said that the students' projects are better due to having more time and for the students, better projects produce more pride in their work. I'm not sure how easy this is to facilitate, but I would love to see this happen in schools in my area.