Disrupt Your Classroom with Authentic Learning

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

What: Authentic Learning has been a buzzword in education for quite some time and has many definitions but is most understood as making learning meaningful by engaging students in relevant and real-world experiences (source). But, what does that mean exactly? This blog will discuss Authentic Learning and how it can be used to disrupt your classroom – for the better. 

Why: Authentic Learning allows educators to bring a real-world context to the classroom by allowing students opportunities to take real-world issues and problems and create solutions that are applicable to a group of people regardless of if they are local, national, or global (source). Implementing Authentic Learning experiences simply means that you are allowing learning to be an active process led by students. Long gone are the days of sit and listen learning. Students need to be engaged in the content of the lesson and take ownership of their learning. One of the best ways to do this is through Inquiry Based Learning allowing students to question and have their curiosity lead the way of Authentic Learning. 

How to: Implementing Authentic Learning experiences disrupts your classroom for the better because it prepares learners for the real world, enhances creativity, improves critical thinking, increases engagement and motivation, boosts retention of information, teachers life skills like collaboration and problem-solving, and allows students to understand multiple perspectives (source). Implementing Active Learning in your classroom might be hard at first but is well worth it in the end. 

Next Steps

Interested in learning more? Check out the websites below for great information. 

References:

All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above. 

TLDR (too long didn’t read):

Authentic Learning has been a buzzword in education for quite some time and has many definitions but is most understood as making learning meaningful by engaging students in relevant and real-world experiences (source). But, what does that mean exactly? This blog will discuss Authentic Learning and how it can be used to disrupt your classroom – for the better. 

@hollandkaylah

Multiple Representations of Understanding with Technology

These are the slides from my first Tennessee Educational Technology Conference presentation. Unfortunately the animations and effects were lost when uploaded to SlideShare. I’ve shared my notes and resources from this presentation over on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively. I hope to create a Vidcast or SlideCast of this presentation once I return home and things settle down.

I demonstrated that with freely available digital technologies students can demonstrate their understanding of course content in multiple ways (images, audio, video, presentations, artwork, and more). Each student’s end product (learning artifact) allows them to personally self-express their understanding of the content/mastery of the skills. Although teachers may not be comfortable using all of today’s technology it is important to consider allowing students to use it to communicate their understanding as they are often more naturally able to more fully express themselves with digital media.

View more presentations from Clif Mims.

Conference Tag: #tetc