Objective: Demonstrate how I connected my classroom to a larger learning network beyond the school.
Connected Project and Next Steps
Through a project with my Game Design students, I found significant challenges in getting students to create their own meaningful connections beyond the classroom. However, with the help of a video shared by @jenhegna on Twitter and a chance to reflect, I developed a deeper understanding of mutli-tiered connectedness in the classroom. This blog post shares the core narrative of this learning.
During that Game Design course, the specific assignment I gave consisted of creating a blog post / video that summarized the game in its most recent state, sharing that post to relevant communities of gamers or game designers online, and then engaging with these people to gather feedback and ideas for the game. Unfortunately, students didn't have meaningful relationships developed online in this community, so when they reached out, they were mostly ignored or given unhelpful feedback. Since my network was primarily with math teachers and I had little to offer with well developed connections to other game designers, even I was unable to push students through this barrier. Despite the challenges, some of the student teams were still able to develop creative posts designed to capture the attention of an external audience:
Throughout the Game Design course, students learned trial and error, including in their work within the connected project. This video offers one example reflection on this part of the experience. To see videos from all teams in this class from the final day of the quarter, click here. Though these videos were created specifically to address this course assignment, I will never go through a new course again without capturing video reflections at some point during the semester. They are powerful artifacts to push my own learning.
Reflection
For the bulk of the reflection on this project, see my blog post above.
My most important lesson from this project was that even online networks are just groups of people. In order to receive, it is often necessary to give. You need to form relationships with people so they know who you are, what you care about, and how they can relate to you. In a longer course, I would ask students to start building a network early in the year as observers and learners. By the time they have something they want to share and get feedback on, they would have a relationship in place that they can lean on. This network starts within the classroom, enabling peer to peer feedback and a culture of support. It expands through the school and families, encouraging students to reach out to parents and other teachers for advice and direction in the project. It goes out to the local area, where students can connect with organizations who do work related to their project or find local experts who are passionate about something they want to learn more about. Finally, this process extends to online networks. If students become more comfortable building a face to face network around their "professional" work, the lessons that extend into the digital world will be that much easier to teach.