Literacy for the iGeneration

I had planned on using this blog to keep track of the things we do in class. The purpose is both to help students and to help myself when I reteach the class in the future. It will give me a place to capture what occured in class, what worked and what didn’t. But, the best laid plans of mice and men… We’re in the midst of interviewing people for positions at Fisher and that’s taking up a lot of my time. Plus I’m trying to write an article, I have a chapter to write (due March 1), and two presentations to prepare for. But enough excuses.So, here’s what I remember happening last week.We did a problem based learning activity where the students were in teams. I gave the students a case about a student whose grades were dropping and the parent was asking for guidance. The students had to come up with hypothesis based on the facts. My point was that instructional decisions should be made based on data gathered from multiple sources about the students. We don’t just do something because we like it or it’s worked in the past, but because it is the most appropriate method to meet the needs of the content and the student as well as our teaching philosophy.We moved through the PBL then developed strategies for helping this young man. My other objective for this activity was for students to understand than these types of things do get done in team meetings, especially at the middle school level. We too often get trapped into identifying a student as this that or something else where as it is more beneficial to identify the student’s strengths and areas we can help them build.The second part of class involved setting up individual wikis. I’m hopeful that the students will be able to use these in the future, or at least develop ways of thinking about integrating technological tools into their teaching so that they have multiple options.