Learning in Progress

In the days of deep budget slashes and little money for professional development, the school librarian is in a perfect position - as someone who has the ability to work with every student and teacher - to lead from the library and fill in what some cases is a major gap.  One of the big trends in education today is working towards a system of more personalized learning for students. By meeting students where they are in terms of interest and ability we can do so much more to engage them in deep learning and help them develop skills that will aid them in becoming college and career ready as well as model citizens and life-long learners.  While advocating for personalized learning for students, it is also important to consider the personalized learning needs of our teachers. Talk to any group of teachers, and you will discover that there is a wide range of ability and interest for our teachers when it comes to digital age teaching and learning competencies, because of this i...

Digital Interactive Notebooks are an amazing way to help engage students in the learning process while creating personalized notes with content that is meaningful to them on an individual basis. Teachers can custom create notebooks to help guide students through project based learning, specific units of study or for tracking personal goals. Check out this 2nd grade example for a unit on plants to get an idea of how one might look. The digital interactive notebook can act as a compilation of hyperlinked content like video and digital articles, combined with note taking strategies and student created digital products that demonstrate key understandings.  If used with tools like Google Classroom, teachers can check in on work and insert comments throughout to give feedback and help guide students in deeper understanding. As students grow accustomed to the model, teachers can gradually release creation of the notebook over to the students to choose their own note taking strat...

It's been almost two years since I've updated my resources for SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy .  As I was considering the newest tools out for students to use, it became really clear that as time has gone by my own view of what is "Redefinition" has shifted. This really highlights the subjective nature of the SAMR model. What is Redefining in one classroom, may not be that at all in another.  When I first began to develop SAMR resources back in June 2014 , I placed Nearpod under the Redefinition category. Back then the possibility of putting your presentation directly into every student's hands where they could see clearly and engage in the lesson seemed so forward thinking. When I revised in 2016 , I chose to keep it there because of the addition of so many interactive elements, the ability to self-pace for differentiation and of course the virtual field trips that allowed kids to go to even the coral reef. Now, as I look at how far technology integration in t...