Daily Structure
Getting their attention and outlining the target-
My students have drafted an agreement that has come to be called, "The Concentration Act" which gives me 3 minutes of their undivided attention: no phones, no inside jokes, no giggling. Just 3 minutes of undivided attention. I set my timer for the 3 minutes and in that time I get their attention tell them what they are going to learn and discuss the activity for the day. If I go over the 3 minutes I lose 30 seconds the next day. If they interrupt me or somehow get distracted I immediately get 30 additional seconds.
Learning activity
During the concentration act time I outline for students a skill or concept that I want them to learn. During the learning activity time they figure out as a team how to accomplish the task. The task should take no more than 15 minutes to accomplish. A task might be how to embed a screencast tutorial into the team website, or how to edit a picture using Pixlr. I tend not to do any "teaching" during this time. Instead I ask questions:
- What have you tried?
- Are there any buttons on the screen that give you clues on how to accomplish the task?
- What does that link say when you hover over it?
- Do any of your teammates have an idea on what to do?
- What other tools or resources can you consult?
Choice time and the teacher assistance project
After all students have completed the task they have a choice of what to do next. If the task was something that got them intrigued they can continue to spend time learning more details or they can pick up their progress on a Teacher Assistance Project.
#TIL
Near the end of class we take some time to gather as a team to share ten words (theoretically the length of a tweet) on what they learned today. I compile a list of the #TILs for use on Techtorial Tuesday (explained below)
Weekly Structure
The week plays out as follows:
- Mildly Inspirational Monday
- Techtorial Tuesday
- Independent Reading Wedensday
- Throwback Thursday
- Figure It Out Friday
Mildly Inspirational Monday
On mildly inspirational Monday I show TED talks and then we immediately apply something we learned. Last Monday we watched Jane Mcgonigals Massively Multiplayer Thumb wrestling and then played a full class thumb wrestling session.
Techtorial Tuesday
On Techtorial Tuesday I take the most intriguing or helpful #TILs and encourage students to make screencasts on that topic or to make screencast tutorials on things they are working on in their Teacher Assistance Projects.
Independent Reading Wednesday
On independent reading Wednesday we take 20 minutes to read a book of our choice. I'm experimenting with the idea of the task to be having students create book reviews on the books they are reading. I may assign them to read a children's book and then create a book review video or book trailer to share in our Destiny Catalog. So far though we have been reading and working on Teacher Assistance Projects.
Throwback Thursday
Thursdays are reserved for taking some of the old computers in our school and getting them cleaned out and loaded with Linux.
Figure it Out Friday
We focus our time on Friday looking into our progress on the various teacher assistance projects and how we can get better at supporting the teachers in our school with technology
Reflection
The first several weeks of the course I did not have this structure and to some extent I still don't have it fully implemented the way I have it written down here. Most students have appreciated the structure. Now that I have written down I will have some more points to ponder as the structure is implemented.
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