Active Learning

 Padlet

I chose to make a Padlet. It feels similar to the WhiteBoard option on Google Classroom but without the interaction with others on the same page. I looked at the Greetings from Room 211 blog for this assignment. This blog is from a classroom where one of the students went to Canada to film a movie. It allowed the student in Canada to stay in contact with his classmates as well as allow the classmates to learn about what life is like as a child actor on a film set. The teacher reviewed the students' comments and the student on the film set was able to post about their life while filming. He posted pictures and talked about life both on and off set. It gives the students a look at a life that they otherwise would not be able to experience. The student that was blogging about his life also added pictures and explanations about what was going on. 


personal screenshot, Padlet

Active Learning in the Classroom
I think active learning is beneficial to the classroom. There are many activities like the blogging that could help students interact with each other and learn from their experiences. Not every lesson lends itself to active learning which would make it difficult to develop certain lessons. Instead I think finding a way to tie it in every so often would help as well as finding something that the students do not get bored of. Like Kahoot, I could see teachers finding one thing that works and using it over and over again until the students end up hating it. Instead they should find several ideas and cycle through the various activities, maybe even with different groups of students, and see what the students like best. They can reuse the activities as long as they change it up a bit and offer it to a new group of students. 

Active Learning in the Library
Where I work, I think for the most part the kind of programming we do with the younger kids and the teens is considered active learning. With the younger kids, we often have crafts that help them develop their fine motor skills. We were just discussing the idea of getting a new kind of scissors that are easier for the kids to use but need to weigh against letting the kids struggle a bit as they are learning to use the safety scissors that they will use when they get to school. With the teens, we have brought in different people over the years. The most recent time we brough someone in, the teens got to decorate cupcakes. They learned what went into cupcake decorating and then were able to decorate a cupcake that looked like a duck bobbing in the water as well as a cupcake that looked like a baby chick. They had a lot of fun while doing it and the next time I saw the teens, many of them had passed the information along to their families and were planning on trying to follow some YouTube videos to create something else that they were into. 


Comments

  1. Karan StorlieMay 30, 2024 at 2:56 PM

    Hi Samantha-I've found outside presenters at my library can be hit or miss, but it sounds like you got a good one with the cake decorator. I've found that outside presenters have to be engaging, flexible and ready for just about everything, especially when the audience is teens. Presenters that do this usually get the teens excited and ready to explore more about the topic. I think that is one part of active learning, getting the students/patrons excited and wanting to learn more.

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    1. Samantha HoffmanJune 4, 2024 at 8:06 AM

      The cupcake decorator was also a parent of one of the teens so I think that helped that most knew her. But you are right. It has been hit or miss over the years, even for adults. I always compared it to a concert. No one really cares about the opening act because it is not who they really paid to see. But once the headliner comes out, everyone goes nuts. And getting right to the point or activity with the teens seems to do just that.

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