I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about guiding questions, which Prensky terms "the primary link between partnering and content." I am coming to believe that coming up with good guiding questions is one of the most important things we as teachers can do. I appreciate greatly his advice (e.g., pair why/how), but I'm still struggling. I spent a huge amount of time coming up with a question for a new unit, but try as I might to tweak it, I just didn't like it. I put it aside for a while, but then discussed it with a colleague. (Obviously, it wasn't very far from my conscious mind!) Within a couple of minutes, my colleague came up with a wonderful suggestion -- something that resonated with me and that I think will engage students and get them on the right track in terms of the content. That led to this week's epiphany -- I need to partner with fellow teachers as well as students!
I loved the new technology tools our classroom colleagues presented last week. I've already done one screencast and see an important use for it in an upcoming lesson. (Thank you, Alisia!) I've also created several animatos. I'm trying to pull together a multigenre research project assignment and that will be one of the genres students can use to demonstrate their content mastery.
It's with continuing amazement that I see how far I have come in terms of my understanding and embrace of technology as a core instructional tool. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I thought this class was going to be something I just had to "get through." Oh, I was so very wrong. I'm stretching and growing and feeling excited about putting what I'm learning into practice.
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