I've had the privilege of spending a few days in Shelley Wright's Classroom. Her blog has been a breath of fresh air this year as she has been taking some major steps in changing her classroom. Watching her students and her interact and find their way was not necessarily a smooth and perfect transition. She would be the first to admit there's a long way to go.
When you take 35 minutes of interviews and try to condense it to around 5 minutes, you risk leaving out key ideas or making ideas flow. I used snippets from her blog to frame the video and then allowed her and her students to speak more directly about their experiences. There may be some who see her as being critical but her critique is much more about a faulty system and paradigm than about teachers. I hope this video can be used to elicit some discussion.
On a side note, the reason it has (revised) in the title because my first cut was over 8 minutes and needed some cleaning up. Thanks to Ben Grey and a few others who offered some detailed and important feedback I was able to get it to this point. I can say enough about the need and power of feedback, particularly when tackling a project like this that takes several hours to create.
It’s always good to see teachers who get it. Even though tour groups come to our school and are amazed at what we have, I have to say I have classroom envy! What a great classroom setup. Thanks for putting this video together.
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I liked the combination of student and teacher voice towards the power of technology in facilitating learning to learn. I’ll use this video in some work I do with teachers. My only thoughts re revision is my concern that “about blood” shot might imply that students are creating summary reports as opposed to doing genuine Inquiry with a question that requires critical thinking. The kids talk about how people need to understand “about blood” as a first step. Do you have a shot of the teacher describing the actual question or could you flash the question up?
Wendy,
I see what you’re saying and in general, this wasn’t primarily about inquiry. It was more about engaging in content so that they could teach others. I do believe that inquiry would be a powerful piece but was not the focus here.
Hi Wendy,
We have used inquiry learning in our classroom, but the particular classes that were filmed are my students engaged in collaborative learning groups that were more like a jigsaw. In researching the circulatory system, the system was broken into its separate parts. Then each research group created a teaching piece that was then presented to their home group. So the blood group, initially needed to teach the function of blood in our bodies, then looked more in-depth at the blood typing system, and T4 cells. Hope this makes sense! Shelley
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