Planning the semester

Let’s start by engaging the students

This year I was fortunate to listen to Alan November at the ISTE 2010 in Denver. He had many great points about teaching and I made some notes to bring home to my own class.

1. Design a tutorial, then you don’t have to do homework.  Homework is only for one student, no purpose. Do not give a grade to this work
2. Every teacher needs to know how to design tutorials
3. List the top ten most difficult concepts to learn in class and ask the students for help. Unleash an army of creative students. Students would rather listen to students then ask the teacher for help
4. A shift of control from the teacher – the student become a team. The important skill for the teachers is the shifting of control. Use a camera and a recorder. Let the students make weekly podcast. Help them learn documentary production to create rich media stories of what they learned that week. Video and audio together
5. Taking notes in class, different students have different styles of taking notes. Make an official team for note taking. Review the notes for accuracy 5 minutes before the end of the class – really important. The person who benefits the most is the teacher. Amazing amount of information he gets from every class! The whole class together writes the text book. Let the students use the Internet while taking notes.
6. Use OneNote to take notes. (alternatively use Google docs with 3 columns for 3 notetakers.

Watch the video by clicking on the picture. Remember: Leave the net open – control is an illusion anyway