Michael Wesch blogged recently about “How to get students to read 94 articles before the next class.”
Essentially, each student in his class had to find, read, and summarize five articles before the next class. The summaries were consolidated using Zoho Creator, and, well, according to Wesch:
By the time of our next class, all 16 students had read 5 articles and been exposed to the main ideas of 94 articles. This created an amazing foundation for deep conversation.
I hear the term “leverage” used quite a bit – mostly as a fancy (read: incorrect) synonym for the word “use” (E.g. “Students leveraged their cell phones to call GCast…” or “The principal leveraged technology to show a PowerPoint presentation…”). As a former physics teacher, the word “leverage” has a specific meaning in my mind. It implies compounding resources to gain some mathematical or mechanical advantage.
Leverage is like mechanical gestalt. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. You know – like having 15 students collectively read 94 articles before the next class.
Such a simple idea with so much potential for use in the classroom and in professional development.
(Don’t even get me started on the use of the word “potential.”)
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