Engagement and the Power of CHOICE

The learning strategy that I have used this last term has been giving students opportunities to choose various aspects of their assignments. I have found that when students get to choose between two different ways to demonstrate their understanding, for example, creating a podcast or writing a letter, the student embraces the project and claims ownership of their work. Just the simple act of choosing empowers students and makes them feel like they have some control over how to best represent their learning.

The final project for the term will embrace choice and focus on the process of learning. Students will select available software and locate classmates and resources to help in learning a new software tool. Students will decide what they want to learn, locate print and online resources for instruction, keep a daily journal of their discoveries, capture screen shots or take photos of their process, and then finally share what they learned in class.

There is a lot of flexibility in choosing what to learn and students may learn the software with other classmates but ultimately it is the responsibility of each student to follow through and create this learning adventure for themselves. The documentation along the way is to demonstrate their understanding of the chosen software. Each student will be expected to SHARE one thing they learned about their chosen software during a class presentation.

Students are choosing to:

• build and program in Lego robotics
• edit music with Audacity
• create original music in Acid Music
• edit video in Adobe Premiere Elements
• create animated movies in Macromedia Flash
• edit photographs in Adobe Photoshop Elements

I have been pleased with the interactions of students during class. Students are experimenting, looking at books for ideas, asking questions, and learning by lots of trial and error. Who knew learning could be so fun?