Brief Overview:
This project will help each student develop a theory base that underlies the construction of great learning experiences.
There are four major topics to build
Educational Theory and Practice; Curriculum and Assessment
Collaboration and Coteaching
Inquiry and Design thinking
Technology that boosts teaching and learning
After doing a self test of each topic, you will develop your own reading plan and submit it to Canvas. This plan should be submitted one week after the first workshop.
You will then read, view and listen to at least forty items in support of your Reading Plan.
You should submit the best of the best to the blog to help other students discover great items.
Then, you will submit a summary of you work and a theory statement to Canvas and then revise this for the philosophy statement on your Digital Learning Leader Portfolio. You should submit your summary by third workshop of the semester.
Umbrella Central Question:
Theoretically, can the Library Learning Commons and its professional staff make a major difference in teaching and learning that goes on today?
Content Objectives:
Each student will create and follow their own reading plan to build a solid theoretical base in four topical areas.
From the reading plan, each student will then contribute substantive summaries of only the best items to the course blog.
The final product will be a statement of your philosophy compeete with a full bibliography that will have a page on your Digital Learning Leader Portfolio.
Process Objective:
Each student will be able to utilize various technologies and resources effectively in order to build a deeper understanding of the four topical areas.
Assessment:
Content: Students will be assessed on how well they followed their own reading plan to build their content knowledge. Students will be able to write four substantive and scholarly one-page essays (one per topic) exhibiting their personal expertise and collaborative intelligence. These essays will be prefaced by an introduction describing their own journey.. This is then converted to a statement of philosophy for the DLL portfolio.
Process: Students will demonstrate their ability to utilize and apply the techniques of collective knowledge building as they contribute to the various activities of the entire class.
Summary of your self-directed learning activities:
Assess what you already know about four main topics:
Educational Theory and Practice; Curriculum and Assessment
Collaboration and Coteaching
Inquiry and Design thinking
Technology that boosts teaching and learning
Devise your own reading, viewing, and listening plan.
Pursue the ideas, adding the most relevant to the course blog.
Participate actively during all the workshops as theoretical ideas are discussed. Do you have unique ideas of your own to add to the pot?
By the third workshop, recount your journey and write one-page essays about each of the four topics you studied. Then convert to your philosophy statement.
If you have a better idea on how to build your theory base, propose it to the professor.
Culminating Activity: All semester long, the thinking, construction and building theoretical and real learning experiences together will constitute a constant demonstration activity of what we know and are able to do based on the theory base we are all developing individually.
The Big Think: At the end of the semester, we will reflect on what has happened, how it worked, and how it could be better for future students.
(It may prove useful to print out the above Google Doc in working on your plan. Then, come back here to complete the project.)
At this point, you have completed your Reading Plan for the four topical areas and you have charted your course. Now it is time to embark on your journey of reading, viewing, and listening to as many quality sources as you can find to help you learn what you need to learn.
Your instructor will send out (via email) articles or resources he finds valuable in his own learning journey. You are most welcome to use these as a part of your own journey. Occasionally, he finds something that is so important, that he will say that it is required reading or viewing because it will contribute directly to everything that is happening in the class.
to help everyone get started, you will post everything to this course Google Doc. After that, just keep your own list of everything that you will add to the end of your essays.
Just before workshop 2, please post your first ten items to the following spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13bzsi_YeH77yoAQduhQdDXx9qQPmb84y_qaGOX80q_I/edit#gid=0 You might find items from others that will help you in finding other items of interest.
From what you have read, viewed, and listened to post only the most relevant materials to the course blog.
Not all of your fellow students will be interested in everything you find, but you will run across materials and ideas that you think that others in the class would profit from. So, all through the semester, when you find a gem, add it to our blog. Thus, your postings are but a subset of everything you are consuming for your own journey.
Actually, the course blog is our own database that students before your have created and which you can add to.
The instructor will often ask the class to concentrate their reading and consumption for the next workshop. This is the perfect time for you to concentrate on that part of your own journey so that you have something to say and questions to ask at the designated workshop. Everyone will help everyone else along on the journey. None of us know or can know everything! And, we are not in competition with each other in a self-directed learning experience like this one.
Along the way, you may find other paths of interest es that you have developed since your original plan. This is fine. This whole journey is as much about discovery as it is prescriptive. The instructor asks you to consume at least forty items during your journey in order to dig deeply into your theoretical base.
There are three items you need to create to turn into Canvas for the project one assignment:
A brief description of your journey.
Four brief synthesis essays; one for each of the four topics and each having a bibliography.
Now, create the text for your Philosophy page on you DLL website. You are addressing a school administrator, board, parents, or other people you wish to impress. Your text can be an adaptation of your four essays or a completely different statement of philosophy; something that makes sense. be sure that you append a complete bibliography at the end of all the items you have encountered in your journey.
Upload this document to Canvas under the Project One assignment. You can see what other students have done for their phioslophy page on the DLL website. You don't have to copy their format or idea. Create something that makes sense to you.
Project 1 is a self-directed learning experience.
This means that you are in charge of deciding what you want and need to learn, pursuing your own journey, and then reporting out what you have learned.
Each member of the class starts at a different place and every person will end up in a different place, although there is plenty of opportunity to combine what you know and can do with other members of the class.
Novices need not panic at the immensity of the task. Likewise, experienced educators should not presume they are experts and have already arrived. We will all try to help everyone else in the class along the path. We are not in competition...
The why of Project 1 is to prepare you as a librarian to use the very best teaching and learning strategies as you co-teach alongside educations of many disciplines.