Collaborative+Convergence

http://basiccourse.wikispaces.com/ please feel free to add and/or comment.

Marsha Mayer

observer's notes:

Session 5 - Collaborative course for 9th grade at Friends Academy

Required course for all Freshman students

Meets every other day (5 times in 2 weeks) for 1 semester 40 minutes per class

Came out of a course called Computer Mastery, also for freshmen. But difficult to teach without ties to the rest of curriculum. Other teachers wanted their students to know things by the time they hit their courses. Hi priority of US principal. How to teach info lit in a meaningful way. All 5 academic disciplines, plus specials

Each teacher teaches 1 or 2 mini classes per semester—fast and dirty

Must get the US principal on board, then the dept heads

Course is graded now — need some assessment

What do they learn? Mini lessons for ½ the semester, then a project—list of project topics—must submit an outline, rough draft, final submission and a presentation (photostory, skit, game or story, podcast, movie—but no Powerpoint—too boring). Collaborative learning, with collaborative grading—via a rubric

Paraphrasing, podcasting, organizational skills, taking good notes (with resources), library orientation, outlining, research strategies, deli.cio.us, citation, Windows Moviemaker to remix video clips, etc.

Entire course outlined on moodle [moodle.fa.org] moodle a great course management tool, software kids have these resources all the time, since the teachers’ docs are all in moodle Mindmeister an online Inspiration for kids also, bubble.us called mind tools

Google.docs for collaborative work, also sharing email each other in project groups

Students are running with it—love the responsibility of managing these new tools—they are rising to the level. Students are motivated by using new technologies, adult tools—they are empowered. Much better way to teach and learn library skills—not so boring. With moodle, it is always there

Using del.icio.us must agree on a common vocab as a work group

Faculty is now aware the kids are doing this—teachers can now assign projects that utilize these skills

The sell to faculty: we can do this now, so you don’t have to do it later—1 quick shot—this is the training ground—infuse kids with essential knowledge

Idea from Bauhaus curriculum circular basic course graphic Google Bauhaus curriculum images

Ken says a moodle server is easy to set up—on a Windows XP desktop—runs Apache


 * Friday Update:**

Collaboration is critical for our learning. Creating collaborative projects is a critical skill for our students and they are not getting it in their traditional classes. Technology enables collaboration and by looking at media enabled projects.

The fact that school is individual based is broken because when students graduate they have to collaborate but do no have those experiences.

Add workshop moodle modle to do evaluation.

Eugene Kim: [|Blue Oxen Associates]

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