End of Year Reflections

As the school year comes to a close, I often begin to start reflecting as I put away some of the work of the year. It's just second nature for me to start thinking about how I would redo an activity or make a new connection.

This link contains a taxonomy of reflection from Peter Pappas. He also has entries for the reflective student and the reflective administrator.

I also value input from participants. Whether it is from an online survey or a Post-it note exit ticket, I can reflect on their perceptions and find ways to revise that will bring more engagement and meaning. Grant Wiggins recently surveyed students about their coursework. He has done a series of blog posts about the student responses.

This link takes you to the open-ended answers to the question, "I learn best when the teacher..." 
Because some similarities in the comments immediately appear, I wanted to put their remarks in a Tagxedo to see what words were repeated. Here is the result:

You can also look at the image online by clicking on this link.

Some of the student input matches our student surveys. Students want hands-on activities. They want things to be interesting, interactive, meaningful, and relevant to their lives. They want to participate in the learning process in a more active way.

Because we'll be presenting at ISTE in June, we've made a site for our resources about learning in a participatory culture. You can access it here.

This summer my goal is to find more ways to respect those voices by providing more participatory experiences in the courses I help design. It can mean more work up-front, but I'm eager to see how it pays off with the students once they are in the course.