To ‘Template’ or ‘When not to Template’? DLO or SDL

I agree that it's important that students have opportunities to be innovative designers and creators of digital solutions – moving beyond solely being users and consumers of digital technologies. In Hub Mako this is one of our mantuans - be a creator not a consumer! To become a creator we must first build our digitally fluence as both teachers and learners. 

One thing that has had me thinking is what is a student digital learning object? 

“Digital entity or content object using ‘different media modalities (and often interactivity) to represent data, information, reality, concepts and ideas…designed to afford educational reuse" (Churchill, 2007)

I was lucky enough to attend a Leaders of Manaiakalani hui this past week. We delved into some learning around digital learning object DLO and Student Design for Learning SDL. If your not sure what these are about please ask your Manaiakalani facilitator they'll be able to put you straight. It was a great session which challenged my understanding of how to design and enhance learning potential of all students. Building awareness in my learners of multimodal choices and tools available to teach, instruct, and then share. We spoke about taking the lid off, but in Hub Mako we smashed the lid! 

I set out to see what would happen if I tasked my class to design a SDL - no template, no wrong way, no restrictions, I did ask that there was at least movement, audio, text and imagery... I was floored by what happened 65 learners engaged in a simple task where they were asked to show their understanding or not of a numeracy task they were working on that day. I wish I had recorded the session as it was a powerful lesson. Learners went on to post there task on their bloggs, some commenting that at first it was hard to know what to do, others enjoyed the freedom to create (outside the box/template), some just used the tools they had used before, while others stepped outside their comfort zone to try other modes. Ka mau te wehi we nailed it! 

Here's a link to a few of those blogger posts: