If your looking for the "normal" classroom instruction/lecture based, teacher centered class you might want to leave now. This class is not about me -it's about you. This class is different in that it is all hands-on, video/tutorial/project based.
If effort (focused participation), more than any other factor, has proven to lead to student success in the Bristol lab, then effort should be the most important factor in determining a student’s grade. In a self-paced, hands-on, project-based, tutorial-driven class, each student determines the pace of his/her instruction and the scope and scale of his/her learning. The question is: How hard is each student willing to try?
The Fine Print: Giving one’s all includes abiding by classroom rules, policies, and expectations too.
Basically this is how I will grade you:
A: You Gave it Your All
You tried your best.
B: Great, but…
You tried, but not hard enough.
C: No Second Effort
You really didn’t try very hard.
D: Are You Kidding Me?
You are wasting your time.
F: Who are You?
You stopped coming to class.
Who is the Judge? Formal one-on-one reviews take place every few weeks. Discussions include progress, goals, ideas, dreams, etc. and each student informs me of the grade he/she thinks they have earned according to the rubric above. I do supply rubrics for particular projects that I want specific tasks met but for many of the projects the student will be able to self-evaluate.
Besides learning graphic design and media arts I hope that you learn personal responsibility and doing the right thing. Above all else, I hope that you are responsible, reliable, moral, ethical, honest, dedicated, hard-working individuals. I encourage you to dream, think outside the box, to choose wisely, to learn from their mistakes, and to just do something!
here are only three things that they have to do to be successful in life: Learn, Think, and Do. My entire course is the repeated process of these 3 steps.
First, the students must be able to learn. Too often, students have not been given the opportunity to learn. They have always been spoon-fed the answers, never left to investigate, research, or examine. As is the real world of industry, they are given a project with a deadline, and access to resources with all the necessary information to complete the project. They must unearth the knowledge with their own hands. What makes my classroom unique is that students don’t simply receive, but find their knowledge. Students actively participate in their own learning.
The second important ingredient in my class is to simply “do.” Modern research indicates that people recall only 30% of what they hear, but 90% of what they experience. Students in my class don’t hear a lecture about the Internet; they create an online portfolio that consists of student work and their reflections. What makes my classroom unique is not so much that my students do these things, but that they do these things on their own. Real-world tools used in a real-world way, learned with real-world materials- and in the end, students have real-world knowledge.
What makes my class innovative and unique is that I focus less on teaching, and more on learning. I give the students the freedom to learn on their own, think for themselves, and do something with this new knowledge that matters to them.
Give a kid the freedom to explore his or her own learning, and you won’t be battling their resistance to explore what you’re pushing on them to learn. You’ll be trying to keep up with how far they want to take it all.
If effort (focused participation), more than any other factor, has proven to lead to student success in the Bristol lab, then effort should be the most important factor in determining a student’s grade. In a self-paced, hands-on, project-based, tutorial-driven class, each student determines the pace of his/her instruction and the scope and scale of his/her learning. The question is: How hard is each student willing to try?
The Fine Print: Giving one’s all includes abiding by classroom rules, policies, and expectations too.
Basically this is how I will grade you:
A: You Gave it Your All
You tried your best.
B: Great, but…
You tried, but not hard enough.
C: No Second Effort
You really didn’t try very hard.
D: Are You Kidding Me?
You are wasting your time.
F: Who are You?
You stopped coming to class.
Who is the Judge? Formal one-on-one reviews take place every few weeks. Discussions include progress, goals, ideas, dreams, etc. and each student informs me of the grade he/she thinks they have earned according to the rubric above. I do supply rubrics for particular projects that I want specific tasks met but for many of the projects the student will be able to self-evaluate.
Besides learning graphic design and media arts I hope that you learn personal responsibility and doing the right thing. Above all else, I hope that you are responsible, reliable, moral, ethical, honest, dedicated, hard-working individuals. I encourage you to dream, think outside the box, to choose wisely, to learn from their mistakes, and to just do something!
here are only three things that they have to do to be successful in life: Learn, Think, and Do. My entire course is the repeated process of these 3 steps.
First, the students must be able to learn. Too often, students have not been given the opportunity to learn. They have always been spoon-fed the answers, never left to investigate, research, or examine. As is the real world of industry, they are given a project with a deadline, and access to resources with all the necessary information to complete the project. They must unearth the knowledge with their own hands. What makes my classroom unique is that students don’t simply receive, but find their knowledge. Students actively participate in their own learning.
The second important ingredient in my class is to simply “do.” Modern research indicates that people recall only 30% of what they hear, but 90% of what they experience. Students in my class don’t hear a lecture about the Internet; they create an online portfolio that consists of student work and their reflections. What makes my classroom unique is not so much that my students do these things, but that they do these things on their own. Real-world tools used in a real-world way, learned with real-world materials- and in the end, students have real-world knowledge.
What makes my class innovative and unique is that I focus less on teaching, and more on learning. I give the students the freedom to learn on their own, think for themselves, and do something with this new knowledge that matters to them.
Give a kid the freedom to explore his or her own learning, and you won’t be battling their resistance to explore what you’re pushing on them to learn. You’ll be trying to keep up with how far they want to take it all.