What will you do differently with students next year?

After attending NECC 09 in Washington D.C. I determined to consider my next year’s teaching. In the process, I realized there were some changes I wished to make in how I work with my students. Perhaps the most important of my changes is a desire to allow students to choose the most appropriate tool to use when doing an assignment. As I thought about it, I realized I wanted to see what others might consider important as well. I posted the following on Twitter:
What will you do differently w/ students next year? Plz RT ... (personally I will allow more choices of tool 4 assignments)

I received the following answers and determined I should share them with others in my PLN. Enjoy.

@wmchamberlain @gardenglen I finished the year giving my students options and it worked very well. New position this year, don't know what will change....

@barbaram @gardenglen I really like your flexible use of tool idea. Been hovering there. Will think about how to build capacity from the past year.

@janellewilson I'll add true interactive science nb & addtnl projects & choice. RT @gardenglen: What will you do differently w/ students next year? Plz RT

@plnaugle @gardenglen That is what I'm working on too. Allow them to explore the options. Want to do digital storytelling project and they choose how.

@jeffmason @gardenglen more open-ended research

@cfanch @gardenglen I'll be adding Oral hmwrk/quizzes/tests answered via podcasts occasionally. Also, taking a bigger interest in learning styles.

@hrmason @gardenglen I want to move toward PBL and big questions. Let students have more control over my classroom.

@SciTeach3 @gardenglen Have students collaborate on & turn in assignments digitally. Have students text in answers & questions 4 class discussions

@mrwashy @gardenglen definitely more online collaboration and posting for projects and labs!

@chrisludwigRT @gardenglen What will you do differently w/ students next year? Try a pseudo 1:1 laptop classroom w/ MacBooks, Online texts for #apbio

@amorrill @gardenglen try to add more social studies/science units that start with essential questions, leading to more student directed research

Comment by Sean Nash on July 12, 2009 at 12:46pm: This is nice Glen. A very atypical post... and a very effective one.

Isn't it great how we can use the expertise of others in our Twitter network to deliver such distilled advice as compared to blind web searches. I love how Twitter brings back a bit of true social into the web experience. I see it as my "human RSS feed."

Thanks for adding this,

Sean

Comment by Debra Garcia on July 13, 2009 at 7:16am: Glen- I meant to post on to you on Twitter but here I can write more than 140 characters. Two major things I plan to do but each plays into the other so I guess it is really one. Options and Creativity. I began messing w/ both in the second semester of the past school year so it isn't really a change but more of a yearlong purposeful focus. I plan to give more options about the types of assignments I give and the tools that can be used. I hope that by providing more options, the students can use their creativity to make it their "own" and become more scientifically literate in the process. The options and creativity really hit home for me after watching Sir Ken Robinson's video on creativity (see the video on here-thx David Williams). They were further imprinted in my mind when a student wrote in English class that he was glad that I gave students choices for a plant project. He could choose what to write about and what to create.

Sean- I practically use Twitter as my only RSS feed at this point. Is that bad?

Comment by Sean Nash on July 13, 2009 at 11:12am: @Debra - Noooo.... not bad at all. I use two things for 95% of the blogs I read: 1) Twitter updates. (people will tell you when they've got new stuff) and 2) i troll my blogroll when i get 15 minutes to spare and i want to be inspired.

What I DO use RSS for, is following other content, like the tag "instructionaldesign" in delicious. here is the feed: http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/instructionaldesign?count=15

Comment by Glen Westbroek on July 13, 2009 at 1:07pm: Here's Sean's RSS feed link (I think he was rushed again) :)

Comment by Terri A. Grosso on August 10, 2009 at 9:26am: It's exciting to see the things that people are planning around. This was a great post!

My school has only recently given us access to moodle, a CMS. Last year I mostly used it just for posting and accepting homework assignments. I hope this year to use it to facilitate more collaboration between my students outside of class.

Comment by Colin Matheson on August 10, 2009 at 3:50pm: Hi Terri,
You should check out the database activity in Moodle. You create the fields and then assign the kids to create records. It is very flexible. I have used it for a student botany image gallery (with pictures classified by part of plant) and for student review of websites.

Comment by J. Gudelsky on August 15, 2009 at 11:46am: Planning to do new? I'm new to Tech 2.0 tools but just finished a class this summer. I have a science blog set up and a wiki for each one of my classes. I'd really like to do more collaborative work than my students have done in the past but want to start small. I'D APPRECIATE IDEAS OF WHAT OTHERS OF YOU HAVE DONE!!

I'd been frustrated in the past with the failure of students of students to really connect lab
work with course content and read a great article about quizzing students orally after labs. I'll be trying that this year.

Comment by Glen Westbroek on August 15, 2009 at 12:27pm: After labs, I often do a group discussion. Each group is to share one item they learned doing the lab - the point may be something discovered or a surprise observation. As each group talks, I often add "science language" to their 7th grade vocabulary - and tell them we will learn more about that concept later. I found when i do the labs as inquiry before we begin discussions, readings, activities, or lectures my students seem to relate lab work to what they are learning during direct instruction.

Good luck on the changes.

Comment by Glen Westbroek on August 15, 2009 at 12:28pm: By the way, if anyone is teaching 7th grade science and teaching cells - I'm looking for someone I can collaborate with on a project?

Any takers?

Comment by Debra Garcia on August 16, 2009 at 5:46pm: I'm not teaching 7th but I have a great project that I did w/ cells for that grade level and is now part of our 7th curriculum. It's based on a project that was in Sciecne Scope several years ago. I'd have to search for it and it is prior to the great collaborative tech stuff we have today. It's all on my school server but I'll try to find the NSTA reference.

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