Today was a great day. It may have something to do with the fact that we start a two week spring break today. But it also was a day in which I made connections with the following ideas:
1. It is great to be a connected educator.
2. You can be connected online or within your own school environment.
3. Feedback is essential to move forward.
We have recently started blogging with students and so I have been looking for ways to help students connect on each others blogs and leave feedback for each other. With one grade level, we are looking for students to comment on each others posts. In another, students have made videos and were seeing feedback. I found this video which I thought was good but still wanted a little more:
Today, a 4th grade teacher shared Austin’s Butterfly with us. It is a great example of the power of feedback and how specific feedback can help a student in their learning. The progress made by Austin is amazing but even more amazing is the powerful reaction of the students in the video who are guided through the feedback process. It is so powerful:
Austin’s Butterfly: Building Excellence in Student Work – Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback from Expeditionary Learning on Vimeo.
As I sat down to write this post, I first glanced at my Twitter feed and Grant Wiggins was at the top with a new post:
The post he shared, was an article about the use of video footage from different angles so baseball players could see specifically what they were doing, how they were responding, and how they could improve. Watching footage of themselves prior to a game, was become just as important of a part as stretching in order to make sure they were optimally prepared during Spring Training.
Both of these examples of feedback, point to the power of specific, timely, accurate feedback in order to best move the learner forward.
When I zapped off an email of thanks to my colleague, she replied with a link to a post where she had got the video from in the first place – fellow COETAIL participant, Reid Wilson, who’s work I have shared a lot of in the past. His post has a wealth of ideas of how to draw better comments from your students when giving feedback on the work of others. Well worth a read.
I feel really lucky to work in a time when we are not limited to our immediate environment for inspiration and ideas in our teaching. I love that there is so much out there to help me become a better teacher and a more reflective thinker, and I am so pleased that I have invested the time into growing a network of educators who inspire.
sonya terborg 