Andrea Berger's List: Who Owns the Learning?

• Perhaps my most valuable lesson came from seeing the transforming power of authentic work for students who were traditionally unsuccessful in school.
• Few young people have opportunities to pursue work that has a purpose.
• This global cultural evolution is redefining our notion of jobs; as a result, we see an emerging enterprise-centered workforce in which workers manage their own businesses and sell their services to many different customers across a globally connected market.
• It has the capacity for a worldwide, authentic audience.
• We should expect all students to create knowledge products and publish them for authentic feedback.
• Digital Playground is a monthly gathering that gives principals a chance to play around with the kinds of tools and technologies being used by students in the classroom.
• When he was studying the American Revolution, he was not connected via Skype to students in England, which might have created an authentic debate about the American Revolution's origins that could have been turned into a podcast for the world to hear.
• The Digital Learning Farm model gives us an opportunity to co-opt the tools our young people want to use, and reframe them as potent engines for driving a more meaningful educational experience.
• Students often learn better from other students; they listen more intently, understand more completely, and participate more readily.
• Of course, the digital divide remains a serious problem, as many students still do not have access to computers and other technology tools in their homes.
• In fact, students have told me that the help of their friends can play a big role in determining their own academic success.
• Using student tutorial designers also gives teachers an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the learning styles of their students.
• These tutorial designers referenced textbooks and online resources, then used their notes to create the tutorial content.
• preparing to help her students create poetry podcasts for sharing with others via smartphones and MP3 players.
• Today, universities are using his class's website, Mathtrain.TV, to help train teachers to take advantage of student-created learning tools.
• The tutorials are helpful for parents, as well, who can use them as aids when they're helping their kids with math homework or as tools for brushing up on their own math skills.
• Because student tutorial designers generate so much excitement around their class topics, they create a better atmosphere for learning and teaching.
• There is very little technology to learn; student scribes can do their work in Google Docs or any of a wide range of online word processing programs, and teachers need only a simple website where they can post the notes for review.
• According to Darren, adopting this kind of program involves a shift in control and pedagogy, as well as an openness to imagine the possibilities offered by available technologies.
• I've even had conversations with teachers about how you might do something similar with even younger kids.
• Again, it's best to start out slowly and simply, and let the work grow along with the users' confidence.
• I could clearly see, however, that they didn't know how Google ranked results, nor did they understand the concept of country codes or how to use the search engine's Advanced Search button to limit their results to one part of the world.
• The students I met that day were using paper literacy skills to navigate in a digital world, and coming up with misleading and shallow results.
• With all of these online searching aids at our disposal, we should be committing to teaching our children accurate and creative searching techniques that are applicable across every discipline.
• At the same time, making students the researchers can bring real benefits to both the teaching and learning experiences.
• In fact, many students who use the Internet on a daily basis remain web-illiterate.
• we must train them to apply the same rigor and discipline to their online research that they apply to other skills across the curriculum.
• Clearly, the Internet has become a dominant medium for information in our society and our students must be trained in how to validate the content they find there.
• Visit http://novemberlearning.com/resources/information-literacy-resources/ for support with learning web literacy.
• In other words, Joyce works to train student researchers to understand when, why, and how to use online content.
• Joyce has created pages that lead them to materials that are part of creative common licensing. That includes photos, open-source video tools, image databases that are copyright friendly, government databases, and so on.
• Second, blogging helps student researchers organize their processes and outline their steps, important for any published results.
• You can learn how to design and use your own custom search engine; visit www.google.com/cse for basic how-to information.
• I believe that educators need to tell their student researchers to examine any information in terms of three aspects: purpose, author, and place.
• Is the site advocating some issue or idea? Making this assessment teaches students to look beyond the surface of any information or idea to understand its context and, more precisely, identify its mission.
• By teaching our students this and similar “smartsearch” techniques, we provide them with essential tools and strategies for validating information from the web.
• With a Google account, students can use Google Custom Search (www.google.com/cse/) to build a search engine designed to search a specific set of sites.
• (Visit go.solution-tree.com/instruction for live links to the websites mentioned in this book.)
• Check out Web Literacy for Educators (November, 2008)
• By using the techniques outlined here, you can create a search engine that directs students to the type of content that is appropriate for the work they are doing in your classroom, school, or community.
• You can read the full post, “Twelve Reasons to Teach Searching Techniques With Google Advanced Search…Even Before Using the Basic Search,” at http://novemberlearning.com (Gorman, 2011b).
• Top global talent must understand and value other peoples' points of view.
• Their message is clear for educators: we need to start teaching our students global empathy by developing their ability to understand and appreciate other points of view.

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