Archive for the 'performance' Category

May 28 2009

Go forward, move ahead: embrace learning first, not schools

Published by John Krueger under Thinking out loud, What lies ahead, performance, personalized learning

Perhaps the way to “whip it”, the failure of our schools that is, is to place our focus (and preoccupation) elsewhere. On l e a r n i n g.
Thoroughly enjoyed these two recent Facebook discussions with Tom Welch, Janna Chiang, and others about schools and how the time may demand that we simply pass them by rather than try to change or “reform” them. We also touched on the need to get the word out to parents /students about viable and enriching learning opportunities out there. The Golden Swamp comes to mind on that point. I am interested in finding out more.


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Oct 20 2007

Web 2.0 makes performance events even more possible

Published by John Krueger under assessment, distance learning, performance, tools for language learning, web 2.0

So much to do. I’ve decided that I’m going to borrow from others…

Susan and Thomas describe the Personal Pizza project as a fun way to get back into the language and vocabulary that students learned the year before. That would fit perfectly into the review and intro unit that I plan to start off the new KET German II program with. The Personal Pizza could be the first “event” of the Ger II year and provide a context around which the language (themes/ functions/grammar) to be practiced could be organized.

For the project, the students use (or construct) a pizza box which, when opened, shows a pizza–a personal pizza, mind you–that like any normal pizza is divided into slices (I have just 7 listed below.) In each slice the students provide artwork representations –no writing!–according to the following instructions:

1. describe self

2. describe activities you like to do and activities you dislike to do

3. describe 4 things about school

4. describe your favorite season

5. describe the upcoming weekend (using words perhaps / sometimes)

6. describe a typical day

7. complete the thought After school…

For the event Susan explained how she interviews each student one at a time (usually out in the hallway, while the other students work on something else.) Each student must bring his or her pizza box and point to the artwork while talking about each slice in the target language. The teacher uses a rubric that she checks off as the student presents.

Why is this so exciting? We can now do this in a DL context. Web 2.0 platforms make it possible. I can think of many possibilities, but Voicethread and UStream would be two very strong choices. Both are web-based, user friendly, and interactive. Simple podcasting would work too of course.

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