What's Happening at Episcopal?

What is Authentic Learning?  

By definition, authentic learning is one in which activities and lessons are planned in order to structure learning outcomes around the "real life" contexts in which they would be used. Well, that's one definition of authentic learning, but I feel sure many educators would have varying ideas from the one stated above.  Therefore, authentic learning can be many things, and the two activities that were the focus of this week's tech talk do an excellent job of illustrating that point.    

Reconnecting to a text and gathering research for an essay can take on many forms as shown by Tandy Cobb and her Survey of British Literature class.  She developed a project using Fakebook, which allowed students to create a Facebook profile for a secondary character in the play, Hamlet.  Fakebook gave the students many of the same features that Facebook now offers.  The students were able to create a profile for their chosen character as well as simulate friendships and conversations between characters.  Ms. Cobb envisioned the project serving several purposes which included the students studying the development of the character and their relationships to other characters in the play, reconnecting to the text to review plot and character, and finally gathering and documenting appropriate quotations from the text for use in their essay.  This project takes the traditional method of character study and gathering of material for an essay and gives it a creative twist.  

Take a look at two of the Fakebook projects below: 

Ophelia 

Laertes 

Students in Jo Stoltz's eighth grade math classes were given an interesting task on Friday of this week.  Each class learned that they were now the proud owner and operator of an online retailer called CoolShoes.com, and it being the Christmas season they were very busy! Unfortunately, they had a major problem.  Most of their customers do not know the shoe size of the family member or friend they want to purchase shoes for.  They realized that it would be easier for customers to guess their loved ones height rather than their shoe size, so they were tasked with creating a graph and equation that would allow customers to input the approximate height and calculate an approximate shoe size for ordering purposes.  To test their theory they gathered the height and shoe size of each class member and used an Excel spreadsheet to compile and graph the data to investigate boy’s height vs. boy’s shoe size, girl’s height vs. girl’s shoe size, and everyone’s height vs. everyone’s shoe size.  The data compiled in Excel helped them determine what kind of correlation existed between height and shoe size and ultimately allowed them to chart a graph and write the equation to solve their problem.  Once this task was accomplished they were able to input other heights and shoe sizes to complete further testing.

While both of these activities content, learning outcomes, and authenticity vary, they still allow the student to take their learning into a "real world" context which both of these teachers believe is an important part of the learning process.  

Katie Robinson