Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Content Curation for Students

 Drawing GallonBot is a great way
 to remember measurement facts. 
We're closing in on the first section of our measurement and data unit.

We started the unit a bit early in response to a parent request.

We've used many resources to teach the unit well:
  • worksheets tailored to students' needs.
  • Khan Academy related exercises, videos
  • Flocabulary and other related songs.
  • drawing models, taking notes
  • the Eames' Powers of Ten film.
  • problem solving
  • a learning path located on the class math website. 
On tomorrow's assessment, I'll pose the following questions to students, questions that start our collective attention to curation--choosing the best tools, resources, and strategies for learning.
  1. What tools, resources, and strategies helped you to learn the measurement and data information well?  
  2. Are there other resources or activities that you would have liked to use to learn these measurement data skills, concepts, and information? 
As I prep for the next unit, and think about these questions myself, I'd like to make the following changes.
  • Make the learning path more attractive and user friendly.
  • Continue to use a similar blend of online/offline materials
  • Add a project--students wanted to do this with measurement, but we just didn't have the time since we have to meet some deadlines for specific learning.
  • Use LearnZillion as I know those videos are very helpful to learning. 
It's important to include students in the content curation question early on as they will live, study, and work in a world of bountiful choice and information, and the continual need to choose best paths, content, and resources. The better they can navigate their own learning, the more successful they'll be.

Afterward
In five minutes or less this morning I posed the question, What is content curation and why is it important?, to students. They loved the quick talk about something that they hadn't heard about before. They rose to the challenge too as they curated the choices available for math study and made choices such as trying out the test, using Khan Academy to practice, and writing a song with all the standards information.  I'll pose the questions noted above on tomorrow's test, the we'll continue the conversation in the days and weeks ahead.