ISTE 2011 Digital Learning Farm: Students As Contributors

Alan November from November Learning discussed about six highly motivating learning jobs: tutorial designers, official scribes, researchers, global communicators, learning documentary producers, and solvers of real problems.

This session demonstrated how students can serve as positive collaborators to fellow students in learning new lessons or reinforcing lessons that students had difficulty in mastering.

Mathtrain.tv contains different videos as tutorials to different topics in Math. It was interesting how fluid the videos are and the rendition or delivery of the content that have been developed by students. Alan November explains that students learn better and collaborate more when they are given opportunities to become problem solvers, content contributors, critical thinkers, creative writers and developers, and be inspired to do more meaningful work.

Dgh.wikispaces.com focuses on social studies topics where students who have graduated three years ago continue to contribute to the 7th grade history content. When students are motivated to become active participants in a lesson, and not merely as passive learners, more meaningful and lasting learning occurs.

Apcalc.blogspot.com also shows active participation of students as content contributors of this blog. Students not only post lessons that fellow peers read, but they also provide quality videos, audio, images, etc. that make every lesson more interesting. Students who have ownership in their learning will be more willing and motivated to collaborate, communicate, create, and contribute to real learning.

Alan says don't forget the kids. Better yet, don't underestimate the kids! Children, as young as they are, are willing learners especially when their curiosity is sparked with new ideas. This is a great opportunity to share more in-depth learning with the use of technology in an effective and efficient manner.

Alan shares too that whenever he visits a campus, he asks about the district's mission and vision to see if it contains the district's technology learning and expectations. Then he checks on the district's policies to see if the policies and regulations support the district's mission and vision.

Every librarian should be a master teacher. Every campus should have a twitter hash tag to connect faculty together especially in sharing ideas and collaborating together.

Additional Resources:
-- Novemberlearning.com
-- Mathtrain.tv
-- Apcalc.blogspot.com
-- Diigo.com
-- TEDxNYED; TEDxTalks in YouTube