Model the Learning

In 2015-2016, I was fortunate to be involved with a TLLP team that looked into flipping the classroom: transferring the focus of our courses away from the teacher and on to the learners. Once we had successfully flipped, we became interested in how we could deepen our students' educational experiences, specifically through rich assessments. In 2016-2017, our same team took on a second TLLP project, which is just finishing up now, that had us digging deep into Rich Tasks. While the first project was very successful for us - everyone in the group was able to flip their courses in different ways and we were seeing success with the students - the second project was a much tougher go.  The learning curve was steeper, and it seemed the more we learned, the harder it was to implement GOOD rich tasks. We kept coming back to: what makes a rich task RICH? We came to an understanding that an ideal rich task should be broad , but have personal components; it should challenge the stud...

The following is my talk from the BIT17 Ignite session on November 9. The automated slide deck is here : 20 slides, 15 seconds each, for 5 minutes total. What a thrill! We’ve been asked to speak tonight to share our passions. There’s a lot that I’m passionate about - I’ve always got too many things on the go! So instead, I’m going to take a slightly different approach, and share WHY I’m passionate. Have you ever learned a new word, and then all of a sudden, you start seeing or hearing that word everywhere? You swear you’ve never heard it before, but suddenly it’s in the news, in the book you’re reading, or in a conversation? At the end of the summer, for me, it wasn’t just a new word that seemed to be popping up everywhere, it was a new question . I saw it in tweets, I saw it in blogs, I saw it in the books I was reading. And that question, was WHY. WHY? Such a little word, but such a big question! And it’s one I started asking myself. Why am I here? Not in t...