I den anledning har jeg satt meg tre mål som jeg håper å nå i planleggingen og gjennomføringen av undervisningen min:

1. Aktiv og kritisk bruk av sosiale medier i undervisningen. Mulig Facebook etter modell av Liv Marie Schou og St. Hallvards norskside på FB.
2. Papirløst kontor og klasserom. Kommer ikke til å klare det 100%, men skal forsøke. Blogg og epost til kommunikasjon, Google Dokumenter og digitale arbeider til vurdering.
3. Fortsette arbeidet med å videreutvikle samt forbedre dokumentasjon- og vurderingsarbeid av elevprogresjon.

Et godt skoleår ønskes alle!

How do you engage students to discover good reads, use digital tools, talk in front of their peers AND teach them some Japanese phrases? All in one day?

Today I had a very good day as a teacher. I had four lessons of English as I had to make up for two lessons I lost to P.E. last week, and I had planned to challenge the students with a literary task. As we are reading Lord of the Flies at the moment, and some students love it while others find it a bit tedious, I decided I wanted to take some of that criticism and frustration on board and created a literary challenge for the students where they had to produce a stunt presentation under time pressure.

Stunt Presentation
Every student had two lessons to prepare a stunt presentation on one of their favorite reads. They could choose the way they wanted to present it. Here are some ideas I gave them:

a reading
a glog
a blog entry
a powerpoint
a poster
a dramatization
a stand-up
a a photo story
a drawing
a diorama
a poem
a painting
a multimedia presentation
a song

After one and half hour of intense work among most of my students (some struggled with their creative inspiration) they were ready to present. Some students had made ordinary posters (among them Wolf Brother, while other had made Google Presentations (for easy sharing and swift transitions) or glogs. I have permission to display this one for instance on Before I die. One student even made a quiz using Google Forms. She had chosen the Harry Potter-series and explained them briefly before she went on to engage her fellow students in an interactive quiz on the Smartboard. Very popular indeed!

Learning Outcome
In terms of language all students got to use their oral skills in their presentation, but also their written English in presentations, posters, glogs or other products presented. They also had to use literary terminology when they had to convey to their fellow students why they liked their book of choice, and they also used their digital competence.

Students expressed afterwards that they enjoyed the four lessons as it was creative, fun and they learned about 20 other books they either hadn’t or heard about before the presentations.

One of the students presented a glog on the Young Warrior-series where the student taught students some Japanese phrases and then a glog on 13 reasons why which really challenged the students as the topic of the book is suicide. What is appropriate literature for teenagers? Luckily I have planned a topic later this semester on Teen Literature – that can get interesting.

• språk (rettskriving, grammatikk, godt språk)
• innhold (evne til refleksjon, argumenter…)
• struktur (avsnitt, anslag, oppbygning, spenningskurve, rød tråd, formatering og skrivekonvensjoner)

Alle disse momentene danner grunnlaget for vurderingen, med hovedvekt på innhold og struktur. Jeg tenker at språket burde naturligvis være i stadig utvikling i takt med elevens modningsprosess. Men allikevel så kommer vi tilbake til generelle og gjentagende problemer med enkle skriveregler og rettskrivingskonvensjoner.

Da elevene fikk sine rettede norsktentamener tilbake ba jeg de gå gjennom mine rettelser. Jeg delte et dokument med de på Google Dokumenter hvor jeg ønsket at de skrev inn alle de ordene de hadde skrevet feil med korrekt staving. Dette førte til at jeg på få minutter fikk prosjisert et dokument med alle ordene som er typiske ord vi skriver feil. Elevnene opplevde dette som opplysende og interessant ettersom noen av de fikk noen a-ha opplevelser (“Skrives sjelden sånn?”) og vi diskuterte forskjeller mellom norsk og engelsk. Stor bokstav i språk og nasjonaliter er en gjenganger og det samme gjelder orddeling.

Til slutt la jeg inn alle ordene i Wordle og genererte en ordsky med alle de ordene vi staver feil.

Networked learning: The power of ten working interactively will almost invariably outstrip the power of one looking to beat out the other nine. (Edurati Review)

I am very excited about using wikis in subjects like English and Norwegian this next school year. I have set them up in accordance to the curriculum and hope to assign homework assignments and challenge the students to create content – and collectively we will produce a wiki together.

Wikis ca prove a vital tool in teaching and training students in accuracy, collaboration, critical use of sources as well as enhancing their digital competence when publishing using Wikispaces. Credibility is a goal in itself.

Learning is shifting from issues of authoritativeness to issues of credibility. A major part of the future of learning is in developing methods, often communal, for distinguishing good knowledge sources from those that are questionable . . . We find ourselves increasingly being moved to interdisciplinary and collaborative knowledge-creating and learning environments in order to address objects of analysis and research problems that are multidimensional and complex, and the resolution of which cannot be fashioned by any single discipline. (The Edurati Review: 10 Principles for the Future of Learning)

Hopefully students will learn more about how sites like Wikipedia are created and the advantages as well as the dangers. We will continue using blogging as a tool in our lessons, but I am keen to see how wikis will work out for my students, my colleagues and myself. I have made myself six teaching objectives which I hope to succeed in with the students.

Objectives:

• Students will learn how a wiki works and how to use them
• Learn the value of collaboration and produce and publish together
• Learn the importance of citing sources and creating links
• Review own and classmates’ production and work to improve through revision by making the most accurate and best product as possible
• Understand and feel the value of publishing
• Enhance overall digital competence

During the test students had problems or questions and they addressed me through the Chat app. This worked seamlessly. Of course, students can also chat with classmates and this can be distracting, but even though it did occur it did not seem to distract, but rather serve as another person to ask.

Taking questions during the test.

The texts they produced were two to three pages long and the benefits are they all are conform, they are available online (by invitation) and students don’t lose their work.

In terms of improvement I will look definitely continue using Google Docs for creative writing workshops, and even bring in the collaborative element which is the greatest asset of Google Docs.

Lot of ideas to be found over at Tom Barrett’s blog, especially this entry.