21st Century Classroom

During the month of October, I had the opportunity to attend and present at three conferences, each very different in their focus but at the same time all discussed the same thing: 21st century skills and teaching. The first was just in our West Des Moines school district attended only by WDM staff. Each fall teachers spend a full day in staff development, usually at our individual schools. This year, the district decided to shift their focus away from bringing people into the district to train us, to showcasing the innovation that is happening within our district. Teachers volunteered to put together presentations on using technology in their classroom and Marzano's work with essential elements of instruction. I discussed teacher and student blogging and the Flat Classroom Project. Then, I attended ITEC, Iowa Technology and Education Connection and learned about technology innovation, adaptation, creation.... Here, the Beijing Babes presented their experiences at the Flat Classroom Conference and I presented my diversity curriculum. Finally, I attended the Risky Business focusing on at-risk education, put on by the IAAE, Iowa Association of Alternative Education. I presented my use of technology in the classroom, specifically in wikis, blogs and social media. While the focus was on alternative education, many of the discussions still circled around technology and 21st century skills. In my humble opinion, I believe that if more schools shift their thinking from traditional models of teaching to a 21st century teaching model, we will see more student achievement, less drop-outs and more students moving onto higher education. If, for no other reason than they were engaged in their learning; they were allowed to be creative, independent and take charge of their education.

I started out this school year attempting to do just that, create a 21st century learning environment for my students. I teach all four social studies core classes in an online format, using a wiki as a homepage, giving students the tools to create projects and the ability to show them to a world-wide audience. Since I already know my intentions with the online class, I decided to get feedback from my students. To do this, I used a form that was created by Shawn Holloway, a principal in a northwest Iowa school. In a recent blog, he discusses characteristics of effective instruction and shared a quick checklist that he uses during his walkthroughs to determine a teacher's strengths and weaknesses in the area of 21st century instruction. I gave my students each a copy of this check list and defined the "teacher vocabulary" to help them understand what they were reading. As expected some students just checked every box as fast as possible, but I was thrilled to see most of the students take their time to give me honest feedback.

In a very informal analysis of the results, I was very pleased to see that in "Student Centered Classroom" all of my students agree that "students are at the center of learning, teacher is facilitating the process," "students have choices," "students are engaged in challenging work," and the "teacher leading students to the answer not giving it out." I had an excellent discussion with one student after he completed his form about "cooperative or collaborative learning taking place." He would like to see more collaboration within the classroom, but we both agreed we did not know how to make that happen. I teach four to five different classes each block and the students are at all different spots in the curriculum due to attendance, different start dates, work ethic, etc. He acknowledged that I was not opposed to him working collaboratively with his peers, as he spent all last quarter working through the curriculum with a peer that started at the same day and had the same attendance and work ethic values. Any advice as to how to create more collaborative projects in this type of an environment would be greatly appreciated.

As for the rest of the criteria, most students seemed to agree that I "taught for understanding," "taught for learner differences," and have "technology infused" throughout the curriculum. The area that I have the most room to grow is "assessment for learning." All students agreed that the "essential concept and skills is clear and evident to the students" and "assessment for learning takes place during instruction." However, I have not been able to provide examples to my students and did not provide criteria for quality work. I struggle in this area for two reasons. I do not want to stifle creativity and I do not want copy cats. It is a constant worry of mine that if I show examples of the low and high quality work students will not strive to be better only to match that. I also worry that if I provide too much criteria students will only see their assignment as a checklist, rather than an opportunity to expand their learning and go beyond my expectations. Now that I have taught the course for a semester, there are student examples for other students to follow on the wiki, but I need to reflect on exactly what I want my students to accomplish with their projects and create a rubric for them to follow. I have a VERY generic rubric that I have been using and shared it with the students on their syllabus, but from the feedback received, it is not enough.

Picture obtained from: pathubert.wikispaces.com