Skip to main content

The Digital Learning Farm


Alan November is an international leader who promotes improving teaching and learning and is a strong supporter of education technology. He has written several books (some of my favorites!) and presents and lectures at conferences across the country.

A couple of years ago he came up with the concept of the Digital Learning Farm. He talks about a time when farming was an essential part of the American landscape and students contributed to the growth and success of the family farms. They had very specific jobs and were essential to the survival of their family. As society became industrialized, the work of children turned to schoolwork and they played a more passive role in society.

Mr. November feels that as our society becomes more and more globalized it is imperative that students once again become strong contributors, especially within their learning communities.

He promotes utilizing six jobs in the learning community that can accomplish this:
·      Tutorial Designers
·      Official Scribes
·      Researchers
·      Collaboration Coordinators
·      Contributing to Society
·      Curriculum Reviewers

Click here to learn more about Students as Contributors at NovemberLearning.com

How does this relate to Project iAchieve and using iPods and iPads in the classroom?



On her Langwitches Blog, Silvia Tolisano has put together a chart connecting the different Digital Learning Farm student roles to iPad and iPhone apps. This chart blends nicely with the different charts that align apps with Blooms Taxonomy.


Silvia's chart and an infographic about the Digital Learning Farm student roles can be viewed here.


Alan November will be presenting about the Digital Learning Farm next Monday at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Conference. I am anxious to learn more about these Digital Learning Farm roles and how we can integrate them into the iAchieve project classrooms.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Science Fair Projects

At the end of the year, many of our schools hold school wide science fairs. Students plan Science fair project tri-fold display board and implement projects and then present the process and resulting data on tri-fold display boards much like this. One class decided to go green and do away with using display boards. They conducted their experiments and recorded the data but rather than create paper reports they used their iPads. Project Data Graphs The students took pictures and video and created graphs and other visual representations and imported those into the Explain Everything app. During the science fair, students brought their iPads to the school's multipurpose room and presented their projects to attendees right from the iPads. In addition to using digital tools, these students are also developing their listening, speaking, and presentation skills - all vital to college and career readiness.
Post a Comment
Read more

Flipped Training 2013, Day Four

Day Four: Putting It All Together Day 4 was focused on two things: creating videos and lesson planning. Two very important topics for flipped learning! Video Creation: While we encourage our teachers to create their own flipped learning videos, we also know that there are some great pre-made video resources available. We explored sites such as Khan Academy , Math Train , and Sophia . To help teachers understand why we encourage them to create their own videos, we showed the Katie Gimbar video entitled " Why It Has to Be Me ". Katie has been flipping for some time and has a great series of videos and we used several throughout the training. You can access them here . Teacher created videos help students feel more like they are right there with the teacher and extends their in class relationship. While video creating can get pretty complicated, we encourage teachers to just do "one take" videos without retakes or a lot of editing. If you m...
Post a Comment
Read more

T. A. G. Strategy

We want our students to reflect on their own work but also to be able to give effective feedback to each other. This is true for writing, conversations, or digital work. It's tough for us as adults and even more difficult for our students - no matter the grade level. As we have started using Seesaw ( https://web.seesaw.me/ ) and its student Comment feature, I've seen lots of "I like ..." and "That's cool" comments. Not very meaningful. I recently came across this simple strategy called T.A.G: Tell, Ask, Give. An easy to remember acronym and a good way to get students started in making effective comments.  I've seen several variations but like these descriptors for the acronym: Tell - something you learned or was meaningful ("like" if they are specific about what they like) Ask - a question Give - a compliment or recommendation (depending upon the purpose for the comment) Download a pdf here . Here are some additional ...
Post a Comment
Read more