Skip to main content

Ask Simple Questions to Start Co-Designing Instruction with Students

  At the heart of any learner centered classroom is the co-designing of instruction by teachers and students. This can seem like a very daunting tasks at first. How can I work with each student individually to design a path to outcome mastery? How can I give up all of this control of my instruction? How can I get students to buy into this process? All of these questions are valid, but they are not the questions that should be asked at the start of this process. Students and teachers who are new to this process can't expect to go full on designing individual paths from scratch. Also, there is not going to be an equal balance between teacher and students when it comes to instructional design. At the beginning of the process, it makes sense for the locus of control to still lie mainly with the teacher. As I begin the process with a new group of students every year, I solicit information from students that I use to design instruction.  There are different times that I solicit this info

Innovate, Lose, Grow


One of the great stories of Innovation shared in Innovator's Mindset is that of Blockbuster and Netflix. A part of the story that I’d like to reflect on is the failure of Netflix. Most of us didn’t know about it because we didn’t have a personal interest in Netflix, yet. The graph below is taken from a series that Derek Bennington did at Chief Innovator.  As you can see Netflix was not an instant success. They lost money for years before they began to grow.




In a meeting four years ago, our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning Dr. Dana Monogue began by drawing a curve on the board similar to this:
She noted that the gains in our district had flatlined. Yes we were one of the highest performing district in the state now, but we weren’t preparing learners for tomorrow.  She put forth the challenge that we needed to change our model before we lost touch with the workplace of tomorrow and saw negative gains.
She next drew a second curve that represented a shift in practice, an attempt to innovate.

As you can see by this graph and the Netflix graph, they begin with loses. That day Dr. Monogue told us something I had never heard an administrator say before.  She communicated that our test scores might go down at first, but that’s ok. She let us know that she believed that short term losses are what long term success is built upon. Innovation requires a commitment to your goal and sticking to it.
It is one of those moments that I cling to as an educator.  It told me that my administration trusted me to be an agent of change, my failures didn’t define me, and they knew learning was more than just a score.  They understood that to innovate one must lose before growing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

#IMMOOC Week 3.2: How Do I Quiz

Too often I hear the words student voice & choice smushed together. It's one thing to offer choice in your classroom, but how do you hear the voice of every student in your classroom? Voice in terms of where students are at in their learning, their struggles, and what is working for them is what should be driving the choices we design (or co-design) in our instruction. In a previous post, I discussed how I've changed up my quiz structure in the classroom.   This is thanks in big part to a tool called Pear Deck . They have a new free Google Slides add-on that makes creating interactive slideshows much simpler for everyone. Rather than explain what the Pear Deck add-on is, I'd like to walk you through a gif tour of how to use it.  To get the add-on start a slideshow and go to the add-on menu. Now you're ready to create a variety of interactive slides through the add-on.  You can edit anything on the slide.  The only rule is: Don't delete the banner

Twitter Cards for Blogger

So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot more work than it will actually be

InstructureCon 2016 Round 2: The Wrath of Con

Canvas released another batch of session videos from InstructureCon 2016. I've watched 13 more sessions and there are so many great videos that speak to different roles in Canvas.  The videos I choose speak to my experience as an instructor. You can find all my favorites so far in this playlist . To find descriptions of my favorite volume 1 videos, go to my previous post. Hit the Bullseye with On-Target Curriculum Design KC Testerman Commonwealth Charter Academy - K12 Courtney Kofeldt Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School - K12 KC and Courtney walk you through their innovative way of designing lesson packages. The have built a predictable structure for students that allows for maximum personalization for instruction. It is great because the student experience moves away from constant scrolling to a turning the page experience. This is great for all Canvas experiences especially mobile. their design represents an empathetic view for the student experience not simp