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Why We Iterate

12/15/2015

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I had a former student come by and tell me today that she wished she could come back and take my class again, because it seemed so much cooler now than it did when she took it. 

And she's right. It is a way better class than when she took it. My first year at this school, I taught Desktop Publishing with a little "How to Make a Good Powerpoint" and a little "Advertising 101."  This semester, Desktop Publishing includes sections on coding (block and html, if the kids want to get into that), graphic design/layout, Photoshop, making good slideshows across several platforms, manipulating all of the Google Drive suite of apps, movie making, website building, and creating a huge portfolio of their work. Then, they leverage these skills in bids for real-world projects, like an online literary magazine or a newsletter template for another school. 

It's important to iterate our classes, and it's important to learn to teach in more varied and effective ways. Sometimes, though, we lose sight of the real-world application of that idea. Iteration isn't just another one of those buzzwords we should hear and let float through on the ether. 

Real iteration is taking a class that was about how to make a calendar in MS Publisher when I was hired here and turning it into a Real-World Digital Skills Wonderland. It's about making the class more useful for everyone, and giving students skills they can use across the curriculum and after they leave my class. And it's about modeling the hidden curriculum in my class for my students; it's about always looking for ways to improve. 
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Jenga For High Schoolers - #flipclass Flash Blog

12/14/2015

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It’s a constant push and pull for most teachers between content and so-called “soft skills” - things like How To Study and How To Collaborate. I’d argue that the two types of learning create a positive feedback loop. Good study skills, for example, make learning the Hard Content easier--and they make the facts stick more. As with everything else, it’s all connected.

One of the most important “soft skills” we learn in my classes is “How To Figure Things Out For Ourselves.” As you can probably guess, this process drives students nuts to start with. Often, we’ll institute a “everyone gets an extra 100 if EVERYONE completes the assignment and NO ONE asks me how to do ANY part of it” rule. That tends to focus everyone and gets everyone to put on their collaborative hats really, really quickly.
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Also, in my class, I have no worksheets, no real “tests” to speak of--just a series of assignments that swirl and meld into each other. Students realize pretty quickly that they can’t ignore one piece of the Assignment Tower, or the whole things falls down. They can’t just pick and choose to leave out certain assignments, because they need them all to be able to complete the Mastery Tasks. It’s Jenga For High Schoolers. Everything holds everything up.
So, when I combine those two principles - How To Figure Out Things Out For Ourselves and Everything Holds Everything Up, I end up with a class that can be frustrating for students, but ultimately works with cognitive science to help information stick even better that it would if I just explained all of the things to them.


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    I'm Andrew. I write about learning. I like to learn. 

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