Background+Information

=Background Information=

Welcome! This wiki is intended to promote the use of cooperative learning strategies to enhance teaching and learning in the K-16 classroom. At a time when the processes of differentiated instruction and technology integration are being encouraged, we decided to create this Wiki and accompanying Moodle course. The Wiki is full of tools and resources. The Moodle course is set up as a framework (skeleton) for teaching cooperatively with technology.

We hope that both resources have the opportunity to live and breathe in your classrooms and in your schools as they help you to leverage the way you teach, as well as the way your students learn in the Digital Age. We encourage you to share the Wiki and Moodle resources with others. Moodle Course: Leveraging Cooperative Learning in the Digital Age @http://moodle.msad40.org/course/view.php?id=210 Teacher Webquest @http://questgarden.com/102/83/3/100430195938/ Discover how collaborative learning and web 2.0 tools will enrich teaching and learning!

We hope that this wiki and the related Moodle course will help teachers make the transition from direct teaching (lecturing ie. "Sage on the Stage") to facilitating the learning in their classroom. Research supports the approach used in the associated Moodle course linked above. Below is an overview of the process.

Process:
 * The teacher creates one (or more) "essential question" to focus the learning.
 * Students will be introduced to the content by direct experience, video, or the desire to learn about a topic/concept/standard.
 * Students build meaning by personal research, focused group discussions, and learning activities.
 * Students organize content using graphic organizers, making and learning the connections between content/concepts.
 * The teacher shares guiding questions (broad in nature) to further focus on key knowledge and skills. (In time, students can learn the skills associated with creating essential and guiding question. There is no better way to start students thinking about a large concept by looking at it from their personal, the curriculum's, and the world's point of view.)
 * Students regularly make decisions (when appropriate) on the direction that their study will take and set a strategy and timeline on how to meet their goals.
 * Students (regularly forming groups) will decide how they will demonstrate their learning and share it with others (choosing from a large variety of products)*.
 * Whenever possible, the learning will be an authentic (real life, worthwhile) task that will provide the students to opportunity to share the importance of their learning with the greater community (school, community, world).
 * Student will reflect on the learning process and the knowledge and skills gained. Learning journals will provide a record of their learning (and can be adjusted and shared more appropriately in a digital portfolio or personal learning blog).

Teacher Webquest

SUPPORTIVE REASONING It should be apparent while looking at the process above that there is a paradigm shift in this approach to learning. The students are doing the work. The students are making sense of the content and putting the content into context. The students are constantly gaining knowledge and improving their personal learning skills. The teacher serves as a facilitator using cooperative learning strategies, collaborative activities, and technology tools to ensure that every student learns.

Resources are available in this wiki and the Moodle course to help the teacher with her/his teaching tasks. Obviously creating a good essential question and guiding questions are very important to the learning process assuring that important curriculum is covered. A variety of assessment tools including rubrics allow the teacher to facilitate while quickly and easily assigning objective, not subjective, grades for students while they work in groups and move towards completion of their project(s).

Throughout the process students will learn important 21st century communication, collaboration, and research skills. Engaged and meaningful learning will naturally motivate student to put much more effort into their learning. Students will hopefully be allowed to publish their work and reflect on the learning process as they engage with people beyond the school community. Students will be engaged in real learning, solving problems, and working with others to arrive at solutions. Students will connect with experts to get "real" answers and professional direction/advice.

Students will be responsible for their evolving digital footprint that will follow them through life, open doors, and present future employment opportunities. Students will learn to find the motivation within themselves.

This CAN and WILL happen ONLY IF you are willing to put students in charge of their learning and serve as facilitator. In turn you will be much more motivated and less tired by doing all the planning, work, and presentation yourself. You can focus on what students are doing as well as what knowledge and skills they are obtaining. You will be able to recognize individual student strengths and weaknesses since you will be watching them through the process of learning, sharing, and communicating. Teachers will also have greater opportunities to use summative assessments, used to guide students on their journey.

Behavior and absenteeism will be less of a concern. Unique learners and special needs students make sense of the information in their own personal ways discovering connections that the traditional teacher could never make for an entire group of students. Adaptations will be made for all students since we all have different strengths and weaknesses. This process naturally differentiates instruction. Literacy needs will be addressed as they arise with actual content in real world situations. ALL LEARNERS will make substantial gains. Once the process is mastered and optimized, teaching and learning will become the fun that it is supposed to be. Everyone will gain important teaching and learning skills.

Families will be more involved since the students are more engaged with meaningful learning. Due to the nature of this teaching and learning process, the community will become part of the process. Digital stories will be told as students interview local and distant experts and share acquired knowledge and skills. Students will be producers and everyone else will be consumers. The experience will be a valuable paradigm shift preparing students for a technology-infused future.

At times this process will seem slower than the current methods of feeding the information on the test to students. However, in the end, students will gain more knowledge and skills and perform better on standardized assessments than by learning in traditional ways.

The research is clear. We must change our methods. We must prepare our children for an unknown future. 21st century literacy skills are imperative. We must leverage all the available learning tools and technology to provide the best learning environment for our students.

Please do not hesitate to make suggestions and additions to this wiki. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike, Non-Commercial license.

Wiki and Moodle resources created by [|Dan Tompkins], Shawn Kimball, Elizabeth Dodge