How I Use Learnist: In and Out of the Classroom

Dawn Casey-Rowe

Learnist is a community of people sharing what they know and learning from each other. This “How I Use Learnist” blog series spotlights various ways people use Learnist in their lives to share their expert knowledge on various topics. Learn how high school teacher Dawn Casey-Rowe uses Learnist in her classroom for a blended learning experience.

Learnist has become important to my life in many ways, both in and out of the classroom.

I found Learnist because I was looking for a way to give students what I now know is the “blended learning” experience. I didn’t know the term. What I knew was that I wanted to be able to give them the benefits of using tech in class even though we didn’t have a policy to use phones in school or enough computers for each student. I had tried a couple of things that didn’t work very well. First, I created a blog. My first classroom blog was boring and static. I wanted the class to come alive with multimedia activities, news articles, documentaries, quizlets, and other things. I abandoned that first blog and tried a wiki for a while, but I found that the students didn’t use it because it was too confusing—the chat was in one place, the learnings in another. It was too disconnected, and nobody was quite sure where to go.

One day, my friend said, “Use Learnist.” And I did.

It’s too simplistic to say that Learnist is an online textbook. It’s not. It enables me to write the course materials, or curate them from the many types of learnings out there—everything from primary sources, interviews, videos, clips, maps and GPS, quizlets… there are so many special types of learnings from which I can choose. I can encourage students to find better material, and add to any board that I start as well.

What I especially like about Learnist for teaching and learning is the social learning aspect. This means that the students can create, add to, toggle with, or comment on learnings. They become digital citizens. This is something important to me. Even though I’m teaching my subject material, I believe that teaching digital citizenship is of equal value to students in their lives and future careers. Learnist may be heavily utilized for schools, but it’s an open platform. This means that learning applies to and can be shared with everyone. That makes students realize that they need to be at their best, and hopefully, they will learn from the best of others. I’ve had students create material for class that ended up featured on the Learnist homepage. They competed equally with the rest of the learnosphere for that one—they were proud. I was, as well.

One of my most memorable classroom experiences was when we were using Learnist during the presidential elections. We looked at several candidates’ boards, with students commenting right alongside experts. “Hey,” one student said, “The person who created this board doesn’t like the candidate very much.” The students found a board that was favorable, noting how the same stories, events, and issues could be recorded entirely differently. A simple lesson in partisan politics emerged organically, with students identifying several things about the candidate’s leanings, media hype, spin, and electoral politics.

That’s one example. Using Learnist as a classroom teacher has allowed me to change up the course materials. I can make a board on something, and as breaking news comes in, I can change it. I’m able to gives students access to primary and secondary material. For example, we were studying Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds controversy, on which I included interviews with Welles’ himself. I’ve done this for material on Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Gandhi, and many other world figures who are better off speaking to students themselves. The pages of a textbook—or a lecture from me—doesn’t do it justice.

Learnist is helping me to save money in the classroom. I don’t want to replace old books. My new goal with Learnist is to get other teachers on board who will plan units and crowdsource material with me. I want to find the best of the best lessons out there and use them for all of our students. By connecting with other professionals on Learnist, I’m extending my Professional Learning Network—which now covers the space of the entire world.

Although I love using Learnist in the classroom, my favorite uses are my personal uses. I have several secret loves—environmentalism, DIY, fitness, gardening and sustainability, natural cooking, blogging, music, and a little bit of humor. I use Learnist to teach and learn about all my interests, and I connect with some really interesting people about them. That might be my favorite part.

So, it’s not just school that has me using Learnist, it’s life, too.

Dawn Casey-Rowe is a social studies teacher and edtech aficionado who loves fitness, sustainability,and all things green. She co-owns two locations of iLoveKickboxing.com with her husband and blogs of things of some consequence at CafeCasey.com. Her goal in life is to grow most of her own food, and although she is a vegetarian, she will cook you a grass-fed steak in an entertainment emergency.