Funding sponsored by:
www.qad.com
Click here to view the project resources.
Project Description: Students will navigate on the Internet to discover a variety of different types of learning. Their search experiences should include videos, online articles, newsletter template searches, and blogs. Teacher guidance and students researching should ultimately lead to Howard Gardner s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and how an understanding of learning styles and modalities can be intertwined into a new style of teaching and learning. After learning about the myriad learning styles, students will express ideas that they have with other students (in a blog), respond to other students ideas, and ultimately create their own learning styles lesson for their teachers. These student-created lessons will encompass multiple modalities, while helping diversified groups of learners. Maybe the best part of the unit is that it empowers students to take control of their own learning; furthermore, when students understand how to create a well-written lesson plan that can justify fun learning, it becomes a benefit to the teacher and the students throughout the year because of the variety of lessons that will be brought to the forefront for the teacher to choose from when teaching the rest of the year with that class. Long term, it will really make teachers better because they will understand the diversity of their students more and the true differences in learning styles.
How it works: Aware that teachers are already bogged down with an insurmountable amount of work, this unit, at first glance, probably seems like a very effective lesson to build student empowerment and interaction in the classroom (and it does), but also looks too time consuming to fit into a teachers already tight schedule. That being said, and also acknowledging how important it is to empower students to take hold of their own learning, an easy suggestions to justify this unit to yourself and your department, would be to build it into an existing unit, as a basis for the unit. My suggestion for English/Language Arts Curriculums would be to use this unit as a basis for your non-fiction unit that you teach during the school year. That way you take care of three important teaching tasks at the same time: your non-fiction unit, a technology unit, and more importantly, student empowerment. Once this unit is complete, you will have students writing lesson plans all year for lessons they would like to have in class. You can hold them to accountable on a high level for the lesson plans they write, being that their lesson plans will need to be written in order to meet all standards for any given curriculum you teach. This high accountability will build life-long accountability in each student, making their work real because of real publishing opportunities.
Assessment: Assessments include a rubric, a newsletter, a student-created lesson plan, and an electronic web observation area (on a blog).
Standards: National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
English Language-Arts Standards
1.0 Writing Strategies
-Organization and Focus
-Research and Technology
-Written and Oral Language Conventions: Grammar and Mechanics 2.0 Reading Comprehension: (Focus on Informational Materials and Non-Fiction) 3.0 Literary Response and Analysis
2.0 Writing Applications
-2.6 Write technical documents: Include scenarios, definitions, and examples to aid
comprehension (e.g., troubleshooting guide).
Estimated Number of Class Periods for Students To Complete Unit: 5 Class Periods
What you need: Students will use video cameras and movie editing software (i-Movie),Adobe Photoshop Elements, Garage Band.
Software or Materials Used: Student Computers -Blog Website -Internet
Video Website: teachnet.org/media/MediaDetail.php?recordID=4
Article Address: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm
Blog website: http://overflowingclassrooms.blogspot.com/2009/02/ucreate-learning.html
Keywords: Howard Gardner, Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Shawn Tracht, Student-Made Lesson Plans, Newsletters, UCreate Learning, Student-Led Classroom
The Students: Junior High and High School for any curriculum.
Overall Value: The programs best values are that it teaches students how to empower themselves. Everybody learns in a different way; however, many people aren't educated in how that works, or that different learning modalities are real. Once a student understands the way they learn, they will learn how to teach themselves how to learn anything. Finally, students use technology to do research and publish their findings with professional quality, better preparing them for the 21st. century.
Subject Area: English
Grade Levels: Grades 6 - 12
Tips for the Teacher: This project, once implemented, will lend an understanding of learning styles and teaching styles that are possible, but not regularly proscribed to, lending teaches a plethora of lesson plans to choose from. It's an addition to a teacher's repertoire.
