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In my former professional life, I had the pleasure and the challenge of managing a large high school library media center. An irony of the job, one that made me smile and cringe, was the volume of the bell which rang every 42 minutes to signal transitions. The speaker in my library was broken and for whatever reason none of us could figure out how to turn it down, so at eight 42-minute intervals throughout each day, a jarring, disruptive, and impossible-to-ignore screech blared.<\/p>\n
In a space meant for reflection, quiet and focused learning, deep dives into inquiry, this interrupter literally felt like chalkboard nails reminding us our schedule boxed us in.\u00a0I share this story because in my quest to consider how access to technology can support personalized learning, I have been interested in how pacing and timing play a role in middle level classrooms.<\/p>\n
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The International Association for K-12 Online Learning<\/a>\u00a0states:<\/p>\n “Blended learning models feature elements of student control over time, pace, path, and\/or place, allowing for more student-centered learning experiences. Research shows that students with access to a combination of online and faceto-face instruction excel in relation to peers who have exposure to only one method of instruction.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If we throw off the constraints of needing to structure 42 minute lessons for all, what might that mean for more student-centered learning opportunities?<\/p>\n The following video from Leaving to Learn<\/a> speaks to 10 expectations students have for school restructuring to be responsive to their needs, in order to include this idea of thinking differently about time and pace<\/strong>.\u00a0While the entire short 3-minute video is worth viewing, to see the nod to time and pace, check out the clip from :49 to 1:11:<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/AOGmKejsepA<\/a><\/p>\n The questions posed are:<\/p>\n Joe Speers, a 6th grade science teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level <\/a>in Morrisville, Vermont has been experimenting with\u00a0using Google Keep and Google Forms to disrupt the traditional teacher-directed whole-class lockstep to one where students self-pace and self-select paths through a learning sequence.<\/p>\n Speers writes:<\/p>\n “Recently I had the idea of using Google Keep as more of a Learning Management System or badging system. I began transferring many classwork tasks to Google Keep that would generally involve whole-class instruction and then common work time. By issuing these assignments via Google Keep, we have the benefit of easy self pacing, and we remove the thing fast workers hate: waiting for all of our classmates to be ready.<\/p>\n As students ‘finish’ each note’s assignment, I share the next assignment’s Google Keep. The next assignment is like the badge to indicate you finished and are moving on to the next task.<\/p>\n This system follows some of the natural rhythms of the class creating a situation where I have nice randomization of formative assessment and check-ins. At times where no one is in line I can take a deep look at the current assignment a student is working on and slow them down. At other times when there is a log-jam, I can concentrate on sharing, and getting a lot of students moving on to the next task.<\/p>\n I’m working out ways to present\/host whole-class instruction at the beginning and middle of class-time to make this system work well. I want to start having the direct instruction be more focused on content, while using tools\/technology for task instructions. I am definitely improvising a lot.”<\/p>\n Here is a useful video to introduce Google Keep and the basics of how it works, if you are new to the tool.<\/p>\n\n
So what might this purposeful shift away from traditional timing and pacing constraints look like in the classroom?<\/h2>\n
Experimenting with\u00a0pacing using Google Keep<\/h3>\n
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