"Are students recipients of information or producers of information?"
~ Marco Torres
Auditory Receivers | Visual Producers
Visual Receivers | Kinesthetic Producers
In only a minute's time, Marco Torres explains that in order to empower our students they need to create not just receive. How many of us live by this each and every day as we work with staff and students?
I'd like to say that each and every day I try to find ways to use open ended creativity software and web environments to encourage and support the creation of original content by teachers and students.
Let's take this past week for example:
Student Blogging Project
On Wednesday of this week for an entire morning a team of teacher blogging "guides" led about 20 middle school students through the steps required to create student blogs. Producers? Check. The students started with a "blank screen" by default the blue banner in Wordpress. About three hours later each and every student had created an original welcome message, personalized her or his blog with a template and changed the banner title and image with either an original photograph or one from a creative commons website. The students were quite proud of their morning's work.
Audacity - Music Mood Assignment
On Friday of this week I worked with a music teacher. Her goal was to have her students use a creative commons licensed piece of music. The assignment is to use the tools in Audacity to change the mood of the particular cut. Brilliant! Producers? Check. The students will need to explain both the reasons why the particular modified track conveys to the listener a particular mood and expression. As well they will be required to explain the functions and tools used to create the modified track.
So does this mean all classroom work needs to be on the production side? Not quite. In both examples above many hours of instruction have taken place in order for students to create the skills necessary to produce. In the case of the bloggers the students spent the better part of four months commenting on the teacher's blog and learning to be a good global citizen when using on-line environments. And in the case of the music students hours of instruction have taken place to learn about the musical terms tempo, beat, rhythm, genre, etc.
So does this mean all classroom work needs to be on the production side? Not quite. In both examples above many hours of instruction have taken place in order for students to create the skills necessary to produce. In the case of the bloggers the students spent the better part of four months commenting on the teacher's blog and learning to be a good global citizen when using on-line environments. And in the case of the music students hours of instruction have taken place to learn about the musical terms tempo, beat, rhythm, genre, etc.
I do, however, believe that to maintain student engagement and motivation the creation side of things in the classroom is very important and cannot be omitted. It would be like traveling to the science centre and just listening to lectures all day and not being able to mess around and create.
Until next time.
NMC video clip: Creative Commons 2.5 License.
