Taking Control by Letting Go

This post should have been posted in January! No excuses...it is just late:(

At the end of last semester, I made some reflections and set some goals for achieving the classroom learning experiences of by vision with the AID of netbooks. The most challenging goals were to eliminate lecture and teacher talk, implement menus to provide student choice, and incorporate consistent differentiation. Well, mission on its way to being accomplished thanks to the acquisition of the PTL devices (netbooks)!

As far as the elimination of teacher talk goes:

Hi, my name is Shelby Acevedo and I am addicted to teacher talk/lecturing. It has been 101 days since my last lecture.

I phrased it the way I did above because it was truly a struggle and major conscious effort to keep myself from trying to control the classroom environment by talk, talk, talking. There have been 3 different instances in which I almost relapsed because I feared "they can't be learning if I am not telling them what they need to know". However, each time, the student's work and progress screamed, "Shut up and let us learn for ourselves Miss!"

Implementing menus for student choice and differentiation with netbooks:

Let's keep this real and start with the CONS of using menus:

1. It is ALOT of work, especially planning and preparing.
2. It is ALOT of work, especially planning and preparing.
3. It is ALOT of work, especially planning and preparing.

Now, for the PROS:

1. Students are able to self-pace which seems to increase student engagement and retention of information/skills.
2. Students choice seems to increase student interest in learning the content.
3. There seems to be a sense of ownership/responsibility to complete learning tasks and/or products because the student has chosen based on their own interest.
4. Classroom management issues have transitioned from keeping students awake, preventing them from cheating/copying, and boredom induced misbehavior to making sure each student has all the resources and instructions they need to complete their chosen product/activities, keep students from getting lost in the WWW, and preventing apathetic feelings about learning/computers in students who get frustrated by minor technological difficulties.
5. The teacher role changes from giver of content and the person in the classroom doing the most work (during class time) to diagnostician, learning guide/partner, and person in the classroom doing less than or equal to everyone else.
6. Student learning, at all levels of ability, has a real possibility of increasing simultaneously which seems to prevent students from feeling like they are wasting their time or like their needs are not being addressed.

On to the second unit of the semester using PTL devices to implement student choice and consistent differentiation!