The Big Questions...

This has been a week of some challenging questions for all of us.

Question #1 - If your class can be recorded and then put online, why should anyone bother coming to class?

This question will pose a greater and greater challenge for teachers as time goes on. Students like the idea of using the internet, and in many cases would prefer just to learn in the comfort of their own home. So how do we, teachers, get students to come to class? As teachers, we need to make our classrooms positive and engaging places, no more just stand and deliver. We need projects and activities that will engage our students and that they actually find beneficial. Students are more likely to enjoy projects that engage more than one learning style, as well as allow them to engage in activities they enjoy like making videos, or blogging.

Question #2 - What questions must we ask differently in assessment?

Factual questions are still relevant, but of less importance now, since it is so easy to just Google an answer. Questions should challenge students to think beyond the material, looking for connections, real world applications or the big picture (how this fits with my life). This is a shift that has started in assessment, moving towards more authentic assessment, but we are still not there yet.

Question #3 - Do I have to keep this?

School work needs to have value in students' eyes if we want them to keep things. This might mean finding ways to have them share their work with more than just the teacher, so that they then feel a sense of "people are going to see this, so it should be great". There are several ways that this can be done, schools can set up a online display of student work that is accessible to members of the school community like a password protected page on the school website. Students can also be asked to make digital portfolios that they can use for their entire school career highlighting work and growth.

To wrap up another overly long blog post, teaching is a changing world, and we,teachers, have to keep up. Or we might just end up in front of an empty room.