I'm have a great time in this LSDA course. Getting into Twitter has been an eye-opening experience. I'm now connecting to some really great thinkers and it's affecting me. Take today for example, one of my friends tweeted this http://www.edutopia.org/blog/hands-off-teaching-cultivates-metacognition-hunter-maats-katie-obrien and it has had a great impact. My first response has been to send the article to every staff member in my school in the hope of prompting some discussion. I'm sure it will because I won't be able to keep quiet about it.
Metacognition has always something I have been drawn to and now I see it as a key to unlocking productive learning. I must confess after reading the article I realise that I am a learning hog. I need to encourage student emulate some of my practices. As the article says ...
"Teaching is hard work -- you have to be constantly engaged and aware of your process and how to improve it. That's exactly what makes an expert learner. So share the wealth! If you really want your students to be better learners, then let them walk a mile in your shoes."
Hey Phil, GREAT to feel your enthusiasm and that you feel you're learning something new and making connections. Very satisfying for us too to read this.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to catching up next week.
Hi Phil, thanks for sharing your excitement and the link to that reading. Is there a forum within your school that will enable some discussion to be structured? I'm interested to hear what your ideas are for encouraging students to emulate your learning practices. What shifts will you need to make to the learning opportunities of your students to allow for them to engage in the metacognitive practices?
ReplyDeleteI’m glad you asked that, Rob.
DeleteI emailed out the whole article to all staff. I didn’t just send the link because I knew staff would not click it. They get a lot of email and really don’t want to engage in reading superfluous material. Enabling the text to be in front of them was fortunately interesting enough to draw some in and I got some great replies. I now intend to follow this up with some positive action.
One of the best ways to encourage metacognition is through an ePortfolio. Over the years I haven’t been excited with the methods used by some to develop eportfolios. Using Powerpoint or similar is OK to an extent but rather ‘clunky’. I think Google sites provides a pretty good solution. They are easy to create, owned and controlled by the student, able to be shared by the student with anyone they choose and because the site is a URL they can be easily accessed. They can also be taken by the student when they leave the school.
I have the capacity to implement a program whereby all year 7 and year 8 students create and use the ePortfolio for reflection and showcasing their work. This is working pretty well but I now need to communicate this to the wider staff so that they can get student to use their ePortfoliois in their specific areas.
I created some instructional videos (https://sites.google.com/site/pdbrown1234/) to help students construct their sites. You can see them by clicking the link. I will email staff and include the web link so that they can see how the eProtfolios are created and used. They don’t have to know how to actually build the site but it may be helpful to know. Because the students know how to manage their ePortfolio teachers only have to ask students to share their links with them so the can see the results of their tasks - whether it be a metacognitive reflection or a showcase. At least it’s a plan and I’m chipping away at the block, so’s to speak. In terms of developing metacognition, I believe change will come eventually. I think people need a vision, or an understanding of what ‘deep learning’ actually looks like. Moving towards it in little steps is also helpful.