Sandholtz Chapter 5

Sandholtz Chapter 5: Redefining Student and Teacher Roles

Chapter 5 focused on the role shifts of the teacher and student in a technology rich classroom.  It followed the movement of the classrooms from a teacher-focused environment to more student-focused one.  Students began to take on different roles including experts and peer tutors, not only in content, but also in technology.  Students began to help other students with technology problems and even helped the teacher learn new things about the technology.  Some of the teacher were apprehensive about letting  the students have this much control; however, once they saw the benefits, they realized that this type of collaborative learning helped to reach every student in the classroom.  Many of these teachers reorganized their classrooms to facilitate more collaborative interactions.  The remainder of the chapter discusses some considerations that must be taken into account when changing the roles of the classroom.  For instance, having not only advanced students act as experts, but also low achieving students, which acts to increase their self-esteem.  They also point out that students should be allowed to not only share their expertise with peers, but also parents, teachers and administrators.

This chapter is very helpful to me, because I am always looking for ways to increase student collaboration in my classroom.  My flipped classroom model already lends itself to being more student-centered, however I find myself always looking for more student collaboration, in particularly using technology to do so.  I love the idea of student roles as experts and peer tutors.  I think I am going to try this in my class next unit, because it has been very hard to have meaningful peer interaction when I am letting students pick their own groups.  Perhaps if I assign a groups, with each group having a peer tutor or "expert" I can always make sure that every group has someone there to answer questions when I am not around.