I just started researching more on 20Time. I know we talk a lot about it in class, but I never truly understood how to begin this amazing program in the classroom. After reading 20Time in Education I realized that this is a very simple project to conduct with your students. There are also many fantastic opportunities for students to learn and explore on their own. This website goes into great detail on how to introduce 20Time to your students/parents, how to incorporate blogging, ideas on how student can present their projects, and even areas that are highly suggested for grading.
After being in our ED584 class for just a few weeks I am beginning to learn the importance of failing. In this 20Time project students should not be fully graded if they did not accomplish his or her goal. Students are allowed to fail. If you fail, you learn from your mistakes. We need to start letting students figure things out on their own and begin learning on their own. By doing this, I feel that they will take more ownership in their work and in the long run, learn more. I understand that this can be a challenge for some teachers; however, after perusing many 20Time projects, the possibilities are endless and so is the learning!
Jillian, I very much agree with your view that "failure" can be a good thing, though it often doesn't seem like it at the time. I think we do kids (whether they are our own or our students) a disservice by insulating them from failure, loss, etc and then expect them to enter a world where it is part of everyday life. "Tis better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all." Scott
ReplyDeleteLove the quote!!
DeleteThat's awesome that you did more research into 20Time, I agree that we talk about it all the time in class but I don't have a good conceptual understanding of its purpose. What did you feel were the biggest takeaways you got from your research? I also agree about the failure thing - it's part of life and we're doing students a disservice if we don't teach them how to deal with failure and take the best from it. This is hard though, in a time when we're being judged as teachers for the "successes" of our students.
ReplyDeleteI think the thing I took away most from my research was how simple it is for students to do, and teachers! They have everything already created you just have to execute it...and well find the time to do it. That's always the hardest part.
DeleteWell Jillian, you have my a bit more curious about 20-time, especially on how to utilize in a math class. I agree students need to learn how to fail and that it is okay and part of the learning process. Lisa makes a good point too, in this time of teacher evaluations how do we balance the time students need to fail and figure things out against the time restraints of the school year and standardized testing. Whew!
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