Life Long Learners Don't Take the Summer Off

Today I started my 8 week summer work schedule. I rolled into school around 7:45am today to pick up 4 GPS units and a couple of laptops before heading over to the playground to see four eager students awaiting the start of camp. It seems like I just left school for the year as the students and staff celebrated the last day of school only a week ago, but in the blink of an eye the classroom shifted to a more relaxed setting and the students came in with all the enthusiasm in the world to enter a new learning environment ready to absorb as much as possible. I couldn't be happier!

I myself will admit that I may have bit off more then I can chew this summer, but with a baby on the way having a little extra cash flow is a good idea, and besides the thing I miss most about not having my own classroom anymore is in getting to know the students better. So here I am primed and ready for four hours with four students each morning designing and creating animations, cartoons and comics for the week as well as getting outdoors to stretch the legs using GPS units to play games closely related to geocaching. (In the afternoon this summer I will be helping the IT staff move everything over to our new servers in preparation for our district Wide Area Network. In the late afternoon and evenings I will be tutoring adults with iPads, laptops and other types of technology needs.)

Of course, as things would have it, I walked into the lab with the students shortly after a quick outdoor geocaching warm-up activity and the Internet was down due to switching servers and problems early on. Time to punt! I had the students login locally to our network iMacs in our computer lab and we used the programs Comic Life, Photobooth, and Hyperstudio 5 to create comics, cartoons and animated stories. The four boys were fantastic and loved the programs. These creative minds not only explored the programs on their own, but quickly became collaborators with one another's stories and animations adding an extra voice over or sound effect for each other.

At the end of morning we watched all four stories and gave feedback to one another. This is the step that I often see skipped in lessons in elementary school, especially when using a lot of technology or teaching within the lab. I understand why this happens, time or an overwhelming feeling to finish the project make it nearly impossible to get everything in, but after seeing what I saw today, and have seen many times over, the observation, critical evaluation and reflection sessions are some of the best teachable moments out there. Plus, this gives students a chance to learn while doing. Too often we evaluate when it's too late to make changes. Do students really learn this way? Not really in my eyes. They see this as a grade given by the teacher, but not as something to improve on since they were not given the chance to fail at something and respond with a solution to the problem.

These mini evaluation sessions, both self-reflection and peer reflection, yields some of the best quality of work in my observations over my 11 years as an elementary educator. This is the basis and quality evidence shown in many case studies for student portfolios and student-led conferences. I know that I will once again push to have more chances for students to share, collaborate and reflect on one another's work. I will also surely push for ePortfolios this year and look for teachers to pilot some of these projects.