Yesterday I attended an inservice for Fairhope and Robertsdale teachers. The speaker was Dr. John H. Strange. Dr. Strange teaches at the University of South Alabama. His challenge to us teachers was to convert. Convert from teachers who want our students to "burp back" information to us, to teachers who teach our students how to "bring out their (the) brain and turn it on".
We are now 2 months into the "Digital Renaissance" in Baldwin County schools. All of my students have a MacBook. Unfortunately, some of them have lost use of their computers due to misuse. The MacBooks have presented their own set of problems. I'm not sure the students are learning any more than before. So maybe I need to change my methods. I don't think I'm approaching it correctly. The only thing I changed was the way the information was presented by relying on the students to spend more time viewing online lessons and resources instead of listening to me and taking notes. I still expected them to "burp back" the information to me in the form of a test. And the test scores didn't seem to be any better than before. And in some cases, as with my freshman biology students, the scores seemed worse. So I have to look at my methods. What am I doing wrong? What could I do differently? What am I missing? So begins my conversion.....
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