One of my responsibilities during the ‘Students as Learning Designers’ Project is reflecting regularly, and I thought it might be interesting for everyone to see this. Teachers and students can you please use the three questions I used to reflect in Edmodo, it only has to be a sentence or two (if you haven’t already done this in LAMS):
- What did you learn about learning/teaching?
- How did this project help you think about your own learning?
- What are the challenges in learning about learning/teaching?
What did you learn about learning/teaching?
So far the main thing that I have learnt about teaching and learning is that no matter how high you set the bar for students they will always exceed it in some ways and miss the idea in others. So many students are already really ‘getting the concept’ of becoming teachers. Comments like this one ‘I think this project will help us learn about different vital aspects of intuition, such as communication and organisation. It can also teach us a more efficient process of learning and conveying opinions, such as providing the information on Edmodo, where it is more likely to be read and thought about ‘ amaze me. This student has articulated a deep understanding of what I think it means to be a 21st Century learner so well.
How did the project help you think about your own learning?
I work best and learn best by doing and making mistakes. This is great because I’m pretty good at solving problems, it is not so great because sometimes I miss the little things. I love that the student are all reminding me how hard it is too be a teacher and to meet the needs of lots of different personalities and learning styles. At the same time I feel like the benefits of using social learning spaces like Edmodo are really clear, I have been able to communicate with students individually and help students understand their personal learning needs and goals.
What are the challenges in learning about learning/teaching?
For the next iteration of the project I definitely think that the introductory process needs to be more streamlined. Students are really focused on the first activity in each section but not as much in the others. I think it is good to consider each element in the project eg Learning Design, Group Work but probably more important in stage 2or3 once you have started thinking about your project. In the beginning it is important to understand being in a project and quickly identify the âbig ideaâ that interests you. Also maybe using branching in LAMs so that students who finish quickly can advance and think more deeply about more of the concepts.
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