Thankful to Educator Who Openly Share for the Benefits of OUR STUDENTS.

In this season of Thanksgiving I’d like to say a special THANK YOU to all the amazing educators who openly share their talent and resources for the benefits of our students.  

There are so many ways that teachers do this - including one that has caught my attention lately Teachers Corner on Instructables site.

@MarlboroGrad

A few years ago, I received a few different requests for feedback from teachers who were creating their own Instructables as part of a class they were taking as part of Marlboro College Graduate Program:  Teaching withTechnology.

I loved the concept of having teachers create Instructables on so many levels.

• It provided practice in Instructional Design for the teachers enrolled in this course.
• It was real and relevant!
• It gave teachers a chance to create for an Authentic Audience.  This is something we ask our students to do frequently as part of the Authenticity Gold Standards elements for Project Based Learning.  Yet, how many times do we as teachers put ourselves into the position of publishing for an Authentic Audience?    There is nothing more powerful than putting yourself in the same roles you ask of your students for teacher professional development.
• It contributed to the greater community of resources available to those in our profession.
• Teachers love learning from other teachers!  Steps by Steps along with comments about what worked when you were trying this with your own students encourages other teachers to try what you created!  
• Creating instructables also fits in with the recent emphasis on Open Education Resource  in education.  I’d love to see Vermont educators add those instructables as link into the Vermont Open Education Resource site.
• Finally,  I loved that once teachers have created their own Instructable, they are often encouraged to create a similar experience for their students.  I’ve sat in on lots of procedural writing lessons where students write up the procedures for making something, and the only audience was the teacher, and sometimes their classmates.
  

Here is a great Educators Guide To Using Instructables with Your Students  by MikeCicc  that even includes a rubric to guide the process!

And in this guide tjaap  shares how she has her students write Instructables as part of her coursework.

And did you know that Autodesk provides teachers and students with FREE Premium memberships to teachers and students.  Scroll down to their offer at  http://www.instructables.com/teachers/

They also have so many Instructables organized in helpful ways for teachers by both grade levels and topics at  http://www.instructables.com/teachers/

I’m thankful to so many Marlboro students and alumni who are contributing members of Instructables!

For example, check out  Cynthia Cohen and  her  Instructable as part of her Final Project for the Create With Code elective that I taught in Marlboro’s MAT program last year.  I love that in her project she took the role of a 5th grade student solving a real world problem.  Both the Instructable and the video framing the problem as a prompt provide concrete examples for other teachers.  Thanks Cynthia!

Last month Instructables ran a Teacher contest  that is filled with lots of great examples of educatorss creating Instructables!

And one of the top winners of that contest just happens to be a graduate of Marlboro’s MAT program ; Jill who wrote her first Instructable as a course assignment at Marlboro.

Since then  Jill Dawson has written 5 amazing Instructables  including a very detailed one on her Marlboro College Capstone Project - an Interactive Wifi Controlled Storybook

You can listen to Jill share more about her project on this post in her Bling The Book Blog.

So one of MY THANKS this year is definitely all the Amazing Educators who so freely share their work for the benefit of increasing our collective impact on the goal of providing students with quality learning experiences!