Less Teaching More Learning

I have noticed that the less I "teach" the more learning my students do.

I don't think that this is because I am a bad teacher, in fact, I know that I am a good teacher because my students are learning.

The more Project Based Learning that I do in my class, the more I can visibly see that learning is in fact happening in my classroom. Sure, it has it's down sides too. Students are more likely to be off task instead of working on the assigned project because they are given more freedom that sitting listening to a lecture, but they are also learning time management and how to work in a social environment, life skills that they will need for the rest of their life. Sure my students are going to run into problems that they are not equipped to solve, but that is where being a teacher means that I am supposed to step in and lead them to find the answer. Sure the project may be a failure, but in life people have way more failures than they do successes. Sure they have fun when they are learning things, but THEY ARE HAVING FUN WHEN THEY ARE LEARNING THINGS! (I didn't know this was an actual objection, but one that I have recently heard from a parent. I quote, "My Child can't possibly be learning in here because they are having to much fun." Really? Really!) This type of work in class is creating such an amazing environment to work in, teach in, and be in each day. I thoroughly enjoy coming to work. The less time that I spend lecturing, the more close relationships that I am able to create with my students. The closer our relationships the more of a mentor I am. The more of a mentor I become, the more respect I have from my students. The more respect I have from my students, the less discipline problems I have. The less discipline problems that I have, the more PBL we can do. The more PBL that we can do, the more learning that happens.

More Learning. Less Teaching. PBL. Can you tell I'm a fan? What are your experiences with Project Based Learning? Successes, Failures? Questions? Comments? All are greatly welcomed and appreciated.

Creative Commons and Copyright Laws

I was just posting a comment on the Edublogger Teacher Challenge and it was becoming so long that I decided I should make it into a post to help those that read here too.

I recently became very aware of Copyright Laws because I took over the Advisor Position on our School's Yearbook. It was an extremely daunting task to take on and I had to learn laws very fast, and be able to turn around and teach them. I was extremely overwhelmed. What is Copyright? What is Fair Use? What is this Creative Commons thing I have heard about? Is it the same as Fair Use? I had no idea. I started in with research of my own and soon the legalise was so far over my head that my brain felt like mush. I called our yearbook company representative to ask where I could find out information with out all the legal jargon and she pointed to their website that was somewhat helpful, but not really. Then I just started with a Google Search. I should know by now that this is somewhere I should always start because the information always seems to be much more abundant and I am able to get a quicker and more clearer answer (even if it's where to do more research at) than anywhere else. I came across these 3 Youtube videos: Copyright, What's Copyright?; A Fair(y) Use Tale; Creative Commons, Let's Get Creative; that helped me learn what these things are, as well as help me teach the concepts to my class quite easily. My students picked up the concepts and ran with it on their own after watching the videos, in fact they are still singing the copyright song months later.


Have a Blessed One.
Miss Tabitha

This was easy!

In Drawing class today (just one of the 12 classes I teach)the students had light bulbs going off today! One of the students even remarked, "This is the easiest thing we've done all year! Why couldn't we have started with this?" Well dear student, if we didn't start where we did, even though you whined and pouted to do other things all year long, you wouldn't be where you are now, where this is so "easy"! I love teaching, especially on days like today. Comments from students like this one make it so worth it. When the students see that they are learning and are seeing the improvements that they are making in leaps and bounds it is so amazing! Have a blessed day, I pray your students have light bulbs go off for you today too!