November Learning: Expanding the Boundaries of Learning

Alan November and Brian Mull have recently written an article titled Why More Schools Aren’t Teaching Web Literacy—and How They Can Start, which now appears on the  eSchool News site and discusses a three-part framework for making sure students are Internet savvy.

You are invited to read this article and share your thoughts and questions here.

Alan November and Brian Mull have recently written an article titled Flipped Learning: A Response to Five Common Criticisms which now appears on the  eSchool News site. Within the article, they explain how to deepen student learning using the Flipped Learning method, and they also address criticisms this method has received.

You are invited to read this article and share your thoughts and questions here.

Last spring, at the end of a full day of keynotes and presentations at BLC 11, @ewanmcintosh @dkuropatwa, a few others and I hit Beantown for refreshments and a kick at the day’s notes. The idea of problem-finding, of asking question to which no one knows the answers, emerged as a new model for pedagogy. Ewan took the idea to TEDxLondon.

Here it is again–six months later–on ISTE’s site: Teach your students to fail better.

BLC hits a sweet spot that I think puts it at the forefront of education: it’s big enough to draw a lot of bright minds yet small enough to allow serious conversation between keynotes and session. 

Today, we are launching our second BLC11 keynote video with Rob Evans, clinical and organizational psychologist and the Executive Director of the Human Relations Service in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

As you watch the keynote, we encourage you to reflect on and respond to the following questions.

• Rob Evans shared that for transformation to take place, there must be a balance of enough anxiety to stimulate change without having so much that people shut down. What are your ideas on how to acheive this balance?
• What do you do in your school to manage the overwhelming changes in technology?

This is a very special episode of our podcast series. It’s an archived recording of our first of what we hope will be many live webinars complete with audience Q&A at the end.

In this conversation, Alan talks again to Dr. Eric Mazur, Area Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University and 2011 Building Learning Communities Conference keynote speaker. Alan and Dr. Mazur revisit his work on flipped learning along with peer instruction that is guided by the questions and misconceptions students bring to class each day. This process, being done using his Learning Catalytics software, is allowing him to visualize student learning in new and exciting ways.

Dr. Mazur will be back for the 2012 Building Learning Communities Conference to work with participants in a pre-conference session. For more information, visit http://www.blcconference.com.

Webinar with Alan November and Dr. Eric Mazur [ 53:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode, Alan speaks to Lachlan Hull, a first year teacher working with students between the ages of four and six years old at St. Joseph’s Primary School – Kangaroo Point, located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. During this discussion, Lachlan explains how he uses a classroom management tool created by ClassDojo to build a sense of group accountability through personal behaviors amongst his young students. In addition, Lachlan shares a very interesting project his students developed using the popular game, Angry Birds.

Lachlan will be a presenter at the 2012 Building Learning Communities conference being held this July in Boston. To learn more about BLC, visit http://blcconference.com.

Managing a Classroom Full of Angry Birds - An Interview with Lachlun Hull [ 30:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

While many individual and small clusters of teachers have been utilizing the flipped learning model within their classrooms, Greg Green, Principal at Clintondale High School, located just outside of Detroit, Michigan, has been pioneering the infusion of this model across his entire school. In this episode, Alan and Greg discuss how this effort began and continues to develop as well as the substantial improvement this model has brought over past failure rates amongst his school’s at-risk population.

Greg Green will be a presenter at the 2012 Building Learning Communities conference being held this sumer in Boston. To learn more, visit http://www.blcconference.com.

Learn From a School That Has Completely Flipped Out - An Interview with Greg Green [ 26:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download