When students own the learning

A topic about which I talk, teach, and preach often is Marc Prensky’s concept of Partnering with Students for learning. The idea in part is to let teachers be expert in pedagogy, but to let students use the tools THEY know and love to demonstrate mastery. When I came across this post at the Ed Tech Ideas and knew I had to share with readers of The Innovative Educator blog. This piece shows an on the ground view of how innovative educator Keith Ferrell did this with his students and what happened as a result. I admit that even I was surprised at the limited amount of direction the students needed to get going when given the chance to learn in their own ways using the tools they choose.

I invite you to read the post below and encourage you to visit http://edtechideas.com for more insights into ideas for educating innovatively.

Relinquishing Control

Today I relinquished all control of learning in my lab and shifted the responsibility of learning to the students. Most of my activities in my lab are project-based, but they are usually created by myself and the classroom teachers, have directions, pre-set expectations, rubrics, etc. In a recent workshop I attended, Alan November posed the question, “Who owns the learning in the classroom: the teacher or the students? This inspired me to relinquish control.
It went like this: My 4th graders are studying isopods and beetles in science so I presented to them a challenge: “Using any method you choose, you are to show your isopod/beetle expertise.” That was pretty much all the direction I gave.

Looking around my lab, here is what I saw being created:

• Bitstrip comics starring themselves as scientists explaining the diversity of crustaceans.
• Students researching sources using advanced search features for trust-worthy and relevant information
• Online jeopardy game creations
• Using Scratch to create interactive stories
• PowerPoint and Prezi presentations
• Using Flipcams and Moviemaker to create infomercials
• Podcast radio interviews
• Glogster Posters
  

Some students worked in pairs; others chose to work alone. They assigned each other roles. One the researcher, one the graphic designer, one the note taker. They asked if they could research! They created their own rubrics. Their usual, “How do I do this?” questions to me were redirected and asked of themselves: “How can we find out how to do this?” It was truly an amazing experience. Their newly-discovered independence and ownership in their learning freed me up to go around and make suggestions, teach specific search strategies, work one-on-one with each student discussing their projects, and really feel the excitement and buzz of authentic learning taking place.

EdTechIdeas: As teachers, it is often difficult to make a shift from forced learning (teacher delivered content) to student directed learning. I challenge you to just take one lesson; one activity; one afternoon and flip the way you’ve always done it in the past. Take a leap of faith, and relinquish control. See how you feel. Discover how your students feel. Feel the learning.