Eclectic Technology

Fractus Learning provides a great visual that shares 5 cooperative learning strategies as well as links to additional information including
* A book on Educational Psychology (Creative Commons)

* Additional techniques in a four-page handout called The Basic Collaborative Learning Techniques

* 20 Collaborative Learning Tips and Strategies for Teachers

* 2 Videos

The Common Core promotes cooperative/collaborative learning. These strategies may provide you with new ways to move students on the spectrum of learning, and potentially have your students engaged in project-based learning, which promotes critical thinking skills as well as highly engaged learners who will share their work with a much larger community.

How can we get our students more engaged in the classroom? Teaching them to investigate authentic problems provides them with opportunities to ask questions that will lead to solutions (and failures) but that will also engage them. In this post Tony Vincent shares steps in how to have your students engage in investigating authentic questions.

Vincent starts with a section called Driven to Investigate. In this section he discusses driving questions and references a previous article, Crafting Questions that Drive Projects.

Additional sections (and there are a total of thirteen) include:

* Thinking is Critical

* Stick Together or Divide and Conquer

* Provide Focus

* Provide Staring Points

* Can You  Believe It?

* Experiments, Trial and Error, Data Collection

* You Know Better Than Anyone

Each section is chock full of resources. This is a great resource to help you launch students into investigating authentic problems. He also notes that he will publish Part 3, Creating Products to Show and Share in the future. I will be looking forward to reading (and in all likelihood sharing) that post once it is published.

Check out this great visual on Problem Based Learning (PBL)from Mia MacMeekin. It provides a look at the seven steps found in PBL. For each step she provides a number of ways for students to think about the specific process. What are the seven areas?

1. Start with a real life problem

2. Map it out

3. Prototype, prototype, prototype

4. Be creative

5. Think global

6. Join a challenge

7. Set goals

8. Create learning moments

Along the way she also makes some suggestions on what you should be doing as a teacher. If PBL is new to you (or your students) this would be a great visual to have your students recreate, where they may change words and add images to make it their own. Then hang it in your classroom and support them as they become experienced at problem based learning.

This indepth post explores inquiry-based learning. The four phases are:

1. Interaction - Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a “need” or opportunity for inquiry

2. Clarification - Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or expert support

3. Questioning - Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry

4. Design - Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or product to culminate and justify inquiry

Each of the four phases also includes information on tones, student indicators, teacher indicators, appropriate questions and apps.

There are also 4 questions for student-based reflection and ten adjustments you may make as a teacher to adjust to teaching inquiry-based learning.

There are many forms of teaching that incorporate inquiry-based learning including project-based learning, blended learning, and challenge-based learning. You may find your students more engaged in the learning process if you include some components of inquiry-based learning in your classroom.

This post provides an image that looks at what we should consider as destination points for our students as they work on learning objectives. Have you consider using project-based learning and having that be an objective? How about a gamification objective? A few others are described in this infographic as are words to consider for the learning outcome.

The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) is a go to site for learning about Problem-Based Learning, and they are offering four free one-week courses during February and March. The courses are:

* How to Create a Driving Question

* How to Manage Student Presentations

* How to Assess Critical Thinking

* How to Include Content and Competencies

You may register for the first two courses now. Registration for the other two will open on Feb. 4, 2015.

Additional information is available on the courses at the website (click through to the course).

There is a maximum enrollment of 300 so if you are interested in checking these out it would be good to go to the website sooner rather than later.

How can we create more engaging lessons? Using technology may provide an assist. and this post shares 8 ways you can leverage technology to help your students learn and to have creative lessons. The areas discussed are:

* Incorporate Student Input and Gather Feedback

* Gamify It

* Let Students Create

* Get Interactive

* Have Students Collaborate

* Project Based Learning

* Simulations

* Bring in a Guest or Two

Each area provides links to a variety of tools and resources.

So how would one go about reinterpreting project-based learning? This post explores this idea in depth, providing five key areas where change must occur, and detailing one to five additional ideas that will help move project-based learning to a "philosophy of inquiry."
What are the five key areas?

1. Put PBL on a continuum of inquiry.

2. Blend surface knowledge and deeper learning.

3. Start with a sophisticated student-centered culture.

4. Make collaboration as important in school as it is in life.

5. Understand that PBL cannot be done alone.

If you are using project-based learning, or are considering implementing project-based learning next year take the time to check out this post. There are many great ideas that will lead our students to "deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing."

In this post Gorman explains why he likes driving questions and how they differ from essential questions. He states "they allow students to work together in the amazing process of divergent thinking." 

Gorman also notes that it is difficult to create good driving questions (and one might say the same can be true with essential questions). The image above looks at questions asked in "educationese" and how one might translate that to a driving question.

In addition he provides links to quite a few resources that include:

* A resource that looks at concepts of the driving question

* A variety of resources on Project Based Learning, including how to craft a driving question (which also includes a video)

* Practice with driving questions