December 14th News

Online Learning & Teaching Practices

Each week, Brave Virtual Academy teachers and I discuss our core principles at the heart of BVA.

• Personalization: providing unique learning pathways for individual students
• Agency: giving learners opportunities to participate in key decisions in their learning experience
• Authentic Audience: giving learners the opportunity to create for a real audience both locally and globally
• Connectivity: giving learners opportunities to experience learning in collaboration with peers and experts locally and globally
• Creativity: providing learners individual and collaborative opportunities to make things that matter while building skills for their future.

As a part of our BVA Community Book Club, participants learned from the Distance Learning Playbook for Parents about "mindframes". Student mindframes highlight the skills of self-regulation or "the ability to control one's behavior, emotions, and thoughts - in pursuit of long term goals" (p. 100). Last week, we talked about the first mindframe, "Know your current level of understanding" which focuses on teaching learners to understand what they currently know and what they need to learn next to continue to grow.

This week's mindframe is "Know where you are going and have the confidence to take on the challenge" (p. 105). This mindframe has two elements; clarity in where the goal lies, with flexibility in path on how to get there. The second element is the focus on the right amount of confidence. "Overly confident students actually learn less, but optimistically confident students learn more. Importantly, confidence develops with experience" (p. 106).

This mindframe speaks to me about the importance of the clarity of goals for learners. Lack of clarity of goals and purpose leads to passive or unengaged learners. Learning should be at an appropriate level of challenge or stretch and it will take lots of hard work and practice to develop expertise and confidence. When learning becomes divorced from meaning or purpose, however, is when it becomes a chore and is likely not helping your child to progress.