The New York Times article What ‘Connected Education’ Looks Like asks educators to:
“Describe one example (of connected learning), small or large, from your own classroom or organization, or from work you have heard or read about, and tell us why you chose it.”
Please use the Evidence of Connected Learning in your practice Padlet to respond with your own experiences and thoughts to the above statement. Double-click anywhere on the wall to create a post.
I spent a year in the NWT at a First Nation’s school in Fort Providence teaching illiterate 15, 16 and 17 year olds with FASD. I spent an hour a day in the computer lab with them because they had enthusiastically discovered social media where they could connect with other First Nations kids in other hamlets. As a result the ‘need to know’ how to communicate online was intense and the question on spelling and syntax flowed freely. This was indeed an authentic CL experience for them.
I’m not sure if this could classified as CL. A few years back I had a distant student who had a documented learning disability and recommended academic accommodations. At this time I was the Special Needs Facilitator responsibly to providing support IAW the duty to accommodate legislation. His accommodation was tutorial support and we used social media to connect and carry out the accommodation. The student was successful in completing the program.
I think this example classifies as CL, but I’ll let you be the judge (the definition seems fairly open to interpretation):
Last year, while teaching adult ESL in Vancouver I stumbled-upon a really cool online tool called the BIO CUBE. We just so happened to be doing a unit on famous people the following week. So, I had them choose and research a famous person that interests them (with the caveat that the famous person should be somebody that is fairly well known). After they researched, they had to go to the BIO CUBE website and enter the information about their celebrity, except for the name, which I had them blank out.
The students then printed and glued the cubes. We finished by playing a guessing game using the cubes as dice. The team rolled the cube and whatever side was face-up they read aloud and tried to guess. They kept rolling until they could guess, or all they read all six sides.
It was a pretty fun activity. The students were able to engage in the topic directly and the language authentically (always an aim for me when teaching ESL). They also had the opportunity to pick their own research path, adding a level of personalization to the lesson. Perhaps it was more PBL than CL, but there are some similarities between the two concepts, so I’ll let you guys decide 🙂