Shake Up Learning: Ch. 14: The Dynamic Learning Model

Chapter 14 of Shake Up Learning covers the 4 C's and the ISTE Standards. Below are two infographics that I created showing the 4 C's.

These are the difficulties that my students and I have with the 4 C's, and some ways that I plan to address them:

1. Creativity - Sometimes students are afraid to be creative. Some students believe that their grade in the class might be negatively affected if they move too far outside of the box, but I have been working to change this. I give my students experience points (XP) in my gamified class for creativity. Students do not lose grade points if they choose not to be overly creative, but they are motivated to try to be creative in order to gain XP.
2. Communication - Some students do not enjoy communicating to the class as a whole. Though there are other options (small groups, using tech to speak anonymously, etc.), students must become accustomed to speaking in front of others. Sometimes communication can become a problem if students are not friendly with each other. The same can be true if students are working with their friends. Too much communication can be distracting if it is off task!
3. Collaboration - Students do pretty well with collaboration, but some students are strong leaders and others choose not to put much effort into group work. I’m aiming to solve this problem by assigning roles. In my gamified class, students are broken into teams. Each team has a warrior, a mage, and a healer. One day I could make the warrior the spokesperson, the mage the recorder, and the healer the task keeper. The next day I could switch up the roles, or create new ones.
4. Critical Thinking - Critical thinking is important, but it requires more than the minimum effort. Some students have days where the minimum effort is all that they are willing or able to put forth, or they might not understand the activity or the material, or they might have difficulty voicing their thoughts. In these cases it is difficult for students to think past the obvious and dig deeply into a concept.

As for the ISTE Standards, I am not yet familiar with them! I need to dig into the ISTE standards more, and make sure that I am really implementing them. I have helped my students meet some of them, but we have done so without being knowledgeable about them.

Some dynamic learning upgrades that I am thinking about include reaching out to our global community more through Twitter, creating a project in which my students take on an entrepreneurial role, and perhaps having my students author a children’s book about digital citizenship that they can share with the elementary students. These would be dynamic because they can change over time. As entrepreneurs, my students can alter their products. We can share on Twitter throughout the school year. The digital citizenship books could be shared with multiple classes over multiple years.


Visit Kasey Bell at Shake Up Learning to read more about dynamic learning.