This week’s topic was resource based learning. One of the sources we looked at was a video called “If students design their own school “by Charles Tsai. This video was about a group of high school students getting to design their own curriculum for a semester. Students were given the tools and resources to create their own curriculum. The first day of the week, students had a weekly question. Throughout the week students would work together researching trying to come up with more information about the question. The last day of the week students had to present their findings with the rest of their classmates. This was not a traditional learning method at all, students were totally in control. If they didn’t know an answer they could rely on their classmates for help. The topics were also topics that the students were interested in, so they actually engaged and wanted to do more.
I also watched another video with Sir Ken Robinson called, Bring on the learning revolution! In this video he talks a lot about talents. He states that everyone has a talent; often times people make poor use of it. He talks about how today’s education is not making use of our students talents, and how there needs to be a change. We are so focused on test taking and assessing our students, but we are missing an important factor. The video suggests that students need to find their true talents, and go after their dream using their talents.
Additional Readings
The third article I read was called Technology Integration: A Short History. This article talked about how technology is changing education. This article talks about why technology is such a great resource. “It offers active engagement, the opportunity to participate in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connections to real-world contexts (Boss 2011).” The article also talks about how using social media and can help with students collaborating.
The fourth article I read was called Introducing Resources for Learning. This article talked about how to go about implementing resource based learning in to the classroom. Some of the key things this article talked about were picking out the resources. This article also touched on how it is important to provide a time for built in feedback, to let the students know how they are doing. One of the most important topics that the article touched was how to access the students appropriately. (Brown & Smith, 1996)“If you change the curriculum delivery strategy, but don’t change the assessment methods, problems can ensue.” Often times this is what we do, we believe that students should still be assessed the same way, but this is not true.
Comparison
The first two articles focused on how RBL (not specifically) should be student centered. In both of those articles everything was focused on the students and how they can lean on each other, or within themselves to take learning into another level. The last two articles focused more on how resources could/should be used in a classroom. The third article strictly talks about technology. The last article touches more on implantation.
Application
Resource based learning can be done very easily in my classroom. It would go well with Science or Social Studies for me. In Science, I would have told students to choose an animal of their choice, and research information on its lifecycle. In Social Studies, I would have students look up an African American leader, and create a presentation on why this person is or was a leader. I would students do either activity in the library or in the computer lab.
Boss, S. (2011). Technology Integration: A Short History. Edutopia, 2015, February 15. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/
Brown, S., & Smith, B. (1996). Resource-Based Learning. Introducing Resources for Learning, pp. 2-4. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?
Tsai, C (2013, February) If students designed their own school [Video File retrieved February 2015] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Robinson, K. (2011, November 9). Bring on the Learning Revolution! Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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