Building Classroom Community Online

I've done a lot of reading this week on how to cultivate a strong sense of community in your online classroom. To help me sum up what I've found, I created the infographic below. The image points out 3 things that I believe can make a big difference in the online classroom:

1. 4 things a community provides its members
2. 4 things a classroom community needs from its leader
3. Activities that can be fun, educational, and foster community

Agree or disagree with what I have here? Drop me a comment below.

Field Trips: Beginning or End of Learning

The other day my daughter comes home to tell me her class is going on a field trip to the Museum of Idaho next week. I thought, what an awesome opportunity to let the kids do some hands on learning and perhaps even some project-based learning. However, when I asked her why they were going to the museum, she told me it was a reward for doing good on something or another. I pressed harder to find out what the instructional purpose behind the trip was, but she is 9 and I was getting nowhere. As I read the permission slip and flyer that was sent home, I was left with more questions than answers. Here is what the flyer said:

So here are the questions I had after reading this flyer.

• What is the purpose of the Field Trip?
• What will the kids be doing to prepare for the field trip? 
• What is their assigned task while they are at the exhibit? 
• What will they produce as a result of the visit?
• How will they reflect on their visit and their new learning?

To be fair, my daughter's teacher is a young 3rd grade teacher and he might not understand why I wanted to know more, or perhaps even how he could make the trip better. So I wrote him the following email:

To which I received the following message this morning:

So apparently in 2014, in a world of budget cuts, global economies, technological advances, and high stakes testing, a field trip is the result of learning rather than an experience and tool for more learning! What burns me up more than anything else is that this field trip could be an awesome learning opportunity where the students could go, see, touch, listen, discuss, and produce some really fantastic artifacts that demonstrate what they learn. Then that student work could be used to show real evidence of learning instead of testing data. Then, next year when the school board needs to cut spending and field trips, they could have tangible evidence of student skills and knowledge. A field trip could be AWESOME SAUCE for learning. Students have a real opportunity to get out of the classroom and experiment with their knowledge, and do some extraordinary things.  But no, as teachers, we'd rather write home to the parent like they're idiots and give them reasons for going on a field trip instead of purposes. What a joke!  I'm through.

9 Reasons All K-12 Teachers Need a Web Presence

After speaking with my daughters teacher at parent teacher conferences and being told that I need to login to PowerSchool to see what the class is doing... And then being referred back to the gradebook portal when I complain about the lack of plans for a classroom field trip, I've decided that too many teachers rely on the gradebook portal as their preferred parental communication portal.

So here are my 9 reasons why every K-12 teacher should have a blog or website:

Creative Commons Poster Part II

A few weeks ago I created and shared my first Creative Commons Poster designed to help teachers and students to understand the Creative Commons Licenses. After having done a fair amount of investigating and research on copyright and Creative Commons licensed content, I felt inspired to create a second poster as a quick reference guide to assist students and teachers to find reusable content quickly. 

Download your own copy to print and share here:  

• Creative Commons Resources poster.jpg
• Creative Commons Resources poster.pdf

Creative Commons Content Poster by David Ashby is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.techtoolsforschools.blogspot.com.

Experimenting with Instructional Frameworks...

Today I was studying and experimenting with two different educational frameworks. First was the Instructional Core from Dr. Richard Elmore:

Then I went on to the Community of Inquiry Framework from Vaughn & Garrison (2008):

As I started to dwell on these two frameworks and how they relate to face-to-face classrooms, blended classrooms, and online classrooms, I started to see a connection, (I know it's not profound, but there is a lot of truth to the connection). 

I plan to use this concept to show our online instructors how they can use various tools to strengthen the connections between their students, their content, and themselves. Using these two frameworks, instructors should find guidance in what objectives their tools accomplish in the classrooms.