Some Summary Thoughts


from wikimedia commons

Five years of supporting technology in the classroom cannot be summarized in one post.  However, the bullet points below can stand as just a few of the “big picture” understandings I’ve come to believe about technology in light of the view I’ve been given in the position of technology integration specialist.

  • Technology should be applied where it enhances, not duplicates, student learning activities.  Return-On-Investment is a fine principle to apply when considering any Stage 3 learning activity, including those that apply technology.  We should not check our teaching intuition at the door whenever someone suggests a “techie” way to accomplish an assessment or learning activity.
  • Connect outside your classroom. Of all the “21st-century skills” that are touted in education circles, one of the most important happens within a classroom where the teacher is not the sole judge of student performance.  Students creating for peers and adults that live outside the experiences of our classroom walls are motivated by an internal desire to perform, and technology makes this easier than ever before.  We ought to leverage authentic audience whenever we design our units.
  • Leverage the power of the web.  The Internet has fundamentally altered the way space and time affect the process of learning.  Find a website creator and set up avenues to communicate what you know to kids.  Then find an interactive tool that will allow students to communicate what they know to you.  The two-way street, the feedback loop that makes learning happen, is then open 24/7.  Obviously, parameters have to be set and expectations should be negotiated, but ignoring the possibilities of the web will increasingly mean ignoring the culture in which we live.
  • Simple is king.  There are wonderful ways to apply technology to the learning environment that require some technical expertise or a thorough knowledge of the possibilities of hardware and software.  But keep in mind that simple applications have just as much power.  Never discount a way of using technology just because it doesn’t take long to explain.  Share those often – they often make a big difference in the lives of a lot of teachers and students.
  • Never snub novelty.  While curricular big ideas and objectives ought to drive the learning activities we select, we ought never lose sight of the simple fun of novelty.  Kids like to do new things.  Adults like to do new things.  Technology has an endless supply of “fun”, and, when used as one component of our overall design, it can be a powerful ally as we channel student enthusiasm toward the business of learning.

None of the above is new, but I’m confident in every one.  Have one of your own?  Drop it in the comment field below.

Differentiation With (and Without) Technology


Erica Babb, science teacher at West Middle, has been sending me a number of different student creations in the past few months – videos, prezi presentations, Weebly websites, etc. I wondered what was happening in her classroom that was allowing students to produce such varied and high-quality curriculum work with technology. When I spoke with her, her answer was a combination of pre-assessment, compacted curriculum, and student choice.

Pre-Assessment

Erica begins each of her units with a pre-assessment. Students who demonstrate proficiency on the assessment are presented with a choice: continue following the unit plan with the rest of the class or deepen their knowledge of the topic through independent study. The simple offer hands students control of their learning. Each is able to determine the path that would yield the most personal reward, increasing engagement and placing the locus of control squarely on the shoulder of the student regardless of his choice.

Process

Students who choose to pursue an independent study have a few steps to go through.

  1. Erica provides a handout outlining what a “compacted unit” independent study will look like for a student. Though much of the child’s time in class will be spent on an independent project, she must still participate in elements of the class where she scored poorly on the pre-assessment. Details of Erica’s compacted curriculum assignment for her “Earth’s Waters” unit is below:

  2. If a student elects to do the independent study, she then begins planning a deeper investigation of the unit topic. An independent study is not a free pass to learning any topic the child wishes to learn. The product created must continue the work of the present unit, but at a level of depth that goes beyond that of the learning activities of the larger group. Because of this focus, the project topic is somewhat limited, but the methods of presentation are many and varied, often including some element of technology in them. One example from her product possibilities for the “Earth’s Waters” unit is below.

  3. Once a child has chosen a presentation medium, she fills out a product proposal form, detailing her topic and medium she will then present to Erica for approval. Erica has created a rubric for each medium: booklet, brochure, pictorial journal, poster, PowerPoint/Prezi, report, song writing, and oral presentation.
  4. After Erica approves a child’s proposal, the child copies a portion of that plan onto a “Compacting Contract” that she and her parents sign.
  5. Throughout the unit, the child must journal in an independent study log about her progress each day as well as her work with the class during days where she is participating with the larger group.
  6. Finally, the student presents her project to the class and Erica gives her feedback through a general rubric of the student’s independent work.

Outcomes

Erica’s students have created some amazing products through this process – and it hasn’t been only the select few. According to her experience, a variety of students have been able to take advantage of this opportunity.

One particular story was of a young man who, overall, is not a strong student. For one unit, however, he demonstrated quite a bit of knowledge and earned the opportunity to create a compacted curriculum product. In addition to offering him a chance to grow his existing understanding of the unit topics, the “award” of independent work has given him a sense of confidence in his own ability to succeed.

Technology isn’t the focus of this approach – students are. Just as they should be.

Research and Inspiration from One Year of @actfl #flteach


One year ago I became a member of ACTFL and began receiving the Foreign Language Annals as part of my membership. I meet monthly with the coordinator of modern and classical languages and ESOL here, and we use a bit of that time to discuss research that might direct the ways teachers and students use technology in presenting and learning a second language. I use the FL Annals as a starting point for my part of that conversation, and I suppose the highest praise I could give here would be this: I can’t imagine canceling my membership.

The FL Annals have inspired technology integration ideas, connected some dots in my understanding of second-language acquisition, and given me greater confidence that the work I do with teachers is helping students. Below is a summary of a few articles that have inspired me this year. Though there were many, I’ve selected only two per issue.

Authentic Tasks and Choosing NOT to Grade

In Horst and Pierce’s article, Foreign Languages and Sustainability 1, two things stuck out at me – the important role an authentic task plays in motivating language production and the conscious decision of the professors to AVOID correcting student errors in discussion board forums where students were communicating in an informal register, albeit still in the target language. When integrating technology , the principals of authentic task and a conscious approach to content created in the informal register are important aspects that I’ve seen work in the classroom. This article provides some support.

Building Better Self-Assessors

In Weyer’s article, Speaking Strategies 2 , I found a wonderful strategy to offer teachers who wish to help their students better self-assess: the process of transcription. Though Weyers focuses on how the intentional transcription process pushes higher education students into upper levels of proficiency, the approach can be tailored to secondary education students as well. I’m most excited to promote this technique using the Nanogong module we recently embedded in Moodle, a product that allows students to record their own voice easily and then transcribe the contents in the same web interface.

Attitude Matters

Though it may only have a tangential connection to the use of engaging activities with technology, Conchran, et al., contributed a thoughtful article 3 on what internal elements of our students contribute to their proficiency in a language – their attributions, attitudes, or aptitude? Their conclusion (from the abstract):

“The best predictive model was attitudes leading to aptitude leading to exam grades.” (566)

It seems to me that one reason to include some of the dynamic technology now at our disposal is that, when combined with meaningful, engaging tasks, it has the ability to influence the attitudes our students bring each day to class. While it’s at times easy to dismiss the idea of having “fun” in class, this article seems to support the idea that the relational environment we create in our classes has a great deal of impact on the production of language we see there.

Write More, Grade Less

In Armstrong’s article on graded and ungraded writing 4, she makes this summary statement:

“ Findings suggest that grades had little affect on student writing, and therefore more frequent and more varied ungraded writing assignments may be a productive pedagogical tool for improving the form and content of student writing” (690)

Earlier in the year I had been able to work with a teacher using TodaysMeet to do just that — provide students structured but ungraded opportunities to write about a topic that interested them. As more language teachers attempt the use of Moodle discussion boards, I’ll continue to promote this approach as one way to strengthen student writing.

Your Answer Doesn’t End the Conversation

In Miao and Heining-Boynton’s discussion of IRF and RTI 5, they include a nice table of response strategies teachers can use regardless of a student’s answers to an initial question, the goal being to mandate participation and promote engagement whether an answer is correct or incorrect. Whether used in face-to-face learning or online, awareness of these strategies can aide teachers as they create a culture of participation among their students.

With Assessment, Context Matters

The role of assessment – both for quantity of writing as well as quality – is investigated in an article by Brown, et al. 6 where the authors point out a tension in motivating students to take risks as well as strive for accuracy.

The findings of this article, paired with those of Armstrong above, seem to indicate that each student learning activity must be contextualized in order for students to succeed. If the goal of the activity is rapid, experimental construction of language, these activities are best ungraded. The results of the same activity, though, may be examined later as students find errors and attempt to fix them. Incorporating both tasks while learning language is an important step to ensuring that students attempt more complex language tasks as well as evaluate how effectively they have succeeded at the same.

And, a selection of quotes I found valuable:

“Current psycholinguistic research suggests that, as students begin to use more complex syntactic forms, their accuracy decreases until they have fully acquired the new forms” Horst and Pierce (Fall 2010, 373)

“Seeking broader and more diverse paths to mastery of a foreign language, students find the current two-tiered configuration [“language instruction” in early levels and “literature instruction in advanced courses] to be both stifling and largely irrelevant to major tracks emphasizing the sciences and business” Neville (Winter 2010, 446)
“Teaching is a matter of providing the learner with the right data at the right time and teaching him how to learn, that is, developing in him appropriate learning strategies and means of testing his hypotheses” Corder, 1988, cited by Mojica-Diaz and Sanchez-Lopez (Winter 2010, 473)

“Clearly, a need for striking a pedagogical balance between activizing new content and focusing on accuracy exists and, perhaps, has an analogy in the anecdotal two steps forward, one step back.” Brown, et al. (Spring 2011, 116)

Priorities


When I began learning about tech integration, I found Christian Long’s think:lab blog.  And not too long after I began reading, he stopped posting.  I’ve often thought about his last post, where he talked about reorganizing priorities and keeping true to them, as I continually strive to balance the employment that I enjoy and the family I love.  Each has been a blessing, one for now and one for eternity.

So, today I thought about it again, and looked Christian up.  Seems that he’s doing quite well and contributing to the network again.  I hope he’s found the balance he was looking for.  Time to add another feed to my reader.

When my first child was born, my father-in-law presented me with a bookmark that included every word to the song “Cat’s in the Cradle”.  If you’ve never heard it, it’s worth a listen.

 

 

Building for an Audience with Weebly.com


There are many great online writing tools out there, and I featured one just last week, but there are times when all we really need is a place to put work.  A display area.  A website.  A couple recent projects needed just that – a place where students could collect their work, summarize it, and put it on display.

A number of students recently completed assignments in their English classes where they were asked to read a text (some modern, some classic) in groups and then display their understandings online.

Independent reading groups from one class took time to analyze characters, summarize thematic elements, and reflect on their own impressions of modern books they were reading.  The class then built websites designed to pull all these independent works together, creating a cohesive introduction to the novels they read.  One example is below.

 

 

Students used a unique website creator to pull this off.  Weebly.com allows individuals to create websites easily through its unique drag-and-drop interface.  Adding content is as easy as selecting a “block” from the tool bar and dragging it into the website preview below.

 

 

In another class, students assigned classic texts from the Romantic period were asked to reinterpret their analytical work (which they had completed in typical research and essay forms) by creating up-to-date resources that highlighted the books they were studying.

These groups used some of the more advanced features of Weebly, embedding a blog, maps, video,and even a playlist of music they collected online.  Check out the websites for “Rebecca the Movie” (displayed below) and “META – Monsters Ethical Treatment Association” to see some creative, text-based interpretations of classic literature.

 

 

In addition to the content-specific focus of this project, teachers also incorporated elements of digital citizenship, requiring students to participate through first name only or pseudonyms (Mailcatch was used to set up group login accounts) and to use only specific sites that freely publish materials for re-use.  If you look closely, every picture featured on the site gives credit to the original creator and often a link to the website where the material was published.  For more information about responsible use, feel free to check out the information in the presentation below.

 

In terms of the projects’ effectiveness, teachers were happy with the results, and they also had a few recommendations.

“The kids really had to think about how to organize the information for easy access and they had to consider the audience as they were deciding what they needed to include. I’m REALLY impressed with the results!” wrote Katie Simonds, English teacher at West High.  Casey Holland, from the same department, commented, “I thought it was extremely user friendly once the kids got to work on their sites. It did help me reach the unit goals. One thing I would suggest is to have the students not worry about the pictures until they have the meat of the project done.”

 

Finally, Weebly isn’t just for student projects.  It might also serve your needs as a teacher! With Weebly you can include static pages, drop-down menus, a blog, and any number of types of multimedia.  And it’s free.   So, check it out.   If you’d like help, drop me a note.

Update (03/26/2012):

Katie Simonds and Julie Gerding, English teachers who are now in their second year of facilitating their Weebly project, have created some wonderful resources to help kids in the process of creating their web sites.  Check out the following links for an image attribution checklist, general instructions for using Weebly, and special instructions for using Microsoft Publisher to incorporate works that involve special font or layout design.

This article is also cross-posted at the Tech4Practice blog.

Resource sharing — which tool to use?


Recently, a teacher asked me to comment on what tool I’d recommend for sharing resources among a group of teachers. Her idea was to use the forums in Moodle, but she wanted some other options to consider as she made this decision with colleagues. My e-mail below:

You can get Moodle to do what you’re talking about.  I think the beauty of using Moodle for what you’re trying to accomplish would be that you could create a forum post for each resource you’d like to share and attach the resource to your post, which gives some description of how you’d use it and allows others to reply with praise, suggestions, etc.

The other option would be to set up a wiki either through Wikispaces or Google Sites, but you’d be limited on space and your attachments would be separate from the discussion.  If you’d prefer to separate the two, I’d probably go with a wiki over Moodle, as general resource sharing can get kind of messy in Moodle.  Wikis will allow you to create pages and post resources within them, which makes things a bit cleaner, but they move discussion to either a new tab (wikispaces) or to the bottom of each page (Google Sites) and discussion posts can’t have files attached.  I use both products, but for different purposes. Here are a couple examples: Wikispaces - http://edtechuniversity.wikispaces.com ;  Google Sites – http://www.bit.ly/Notebook2

If you want resource sharing only, you might want to check out creating a http://www.dropbox.com account and sharing through that.

I think this idea of sharing is a puzzlement to people in general.  How do I get what I want to share into the hands of others, especially in a way that keeps important bits of context intact?  In the district, this type of cross-district sharing only happens through a gatekeeper (the curriculum coordinator), and for good reason – we only have so much space on our district drives.  But it seems that people need something a bit more flexible and immediate.

Any solutions that have occurred to you or your colleagues?  What has worked well for you?

Challenges to Authentic Learning


Dan Meyer’s presentation for TEDxNYED has made its way around the twitterverse lately. I’m a fan of his blog and have been reading and recommending it to teachers for a couple years now. When the link to his presentation made it my way, I immediately sent it out to teachers.

As I was following up with a couple of them about it today, I began to think about the purpose of the resource that I had forwarded. I just finished Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do and have had a number of ideas from that book revolving through my head.   Today, faced with Meyer’s challenge to make math reasoning relevant through authentic, ill-structured problems, I remembered Jarvis’ question, “What business are you in?”

It seems to me that Meyer’s presentation, promoting a math experience stripped of information that “leads” to a neat answer, asks for more than just a new approach to a textbook.   To me, his presentation asks of the teacher a depth of passion and breadth of thought that, frankly, I wasn’t taught in school.   Don’t get me wrong – I had great teachers and I worked awfully hard to achieve excellent marks on my assessments, but I’m increasingly wondering if a part of my success was due to my ability to play by artificial rules.    As a teacher, I continued the process – teaching kids to play the game and enjoy it along the way.    With the ever increasing reach of the internet, however,  irrelevant tasks (or tasks that could be perceived to be irrelevant) hold the attention of fewer and fewer learners.

What I find a bit disconcerting about the presentation is that relevant learning demands a different approach to teaching – one that I neither remember from my experience as a student nor used in my own teaching practice.    Following Meyer’s example could place me in an uncomfortable position – a place where I present students with problems that I may not be able to solve.    I suppose that’s where the real shift begins to take place: where I end up modeling the processes I hope students will internalize.   It feels odd that I might be learning along side them, but, then again, we’re in the “business” of learning, are we not?    Perhaps one of the best ways to promote that business is to practice the learning right in front of our students.  In my current position, that means learning publicly before my peers, which is why I’m writing this post.

Thanks, Dan, for a great presentation.   For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, check it out below: