My question for this
module, based on ISTE Standard 1, was: How can I
design experiences that will allow my students to be innovative and inventive
in their learning? Working in a one-to-one laptop school, technology is
a part of my students' daily lives. We integrate effectively, but I wanted to
research how to be more innovative and really transform my classroom. What I
noticed in reading several articles was a consensus that having so much
technology at our fingertips allows students and teachers to more readily move
beyond drilling and into higher-level thinking. I agree with this sentiment,
but it still comes down to how technology is used.
An important aspect
of the internet (or Web 2.0 as a lot of academic articles call it), is that
it is constantly changing. I noticed this while reading "Learning,
Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age" (Greenhow, Robelia, &
Hughes, 2009) because many of the apps or sites mentioned in the article I had either never heard
of, or I had and I knew they had been replaced by something more current. I
have experienced this in my own classroom because I do a project where my
students make a Facebook page for Alexander the Great, using an online tool by Classtools or on a poster board, and I have decided I need to find a new form
of social media for Alex next year. Too many of my students think Facebook is
for old people, or they just never use it themselves.
The most important
part of technology, though, is how it is used. While it is fun to make social
media pages for historical figures, "a well-designed lesson should meld
content development with digital literacy" (Shand, Winstead, &
Kottler, 2012). In reading about the concept of digital literacy standards, it sounded very
much like goals I would have for my social studies classroom anyways- being
able to do higher-order thinking. With this goal in mind, I did a little more
research into the concept of flipped classrooms. In an article posted by a
Alex Perry, according to Page (2015), a flipped classroom "arrangement
allows greater personalization, freeing class time or teachers to help
individual students or small groups while other students work on
exercises." This provides ideas for answering my question, because a more
personalized learning environment helps with student creativity and
opportunities. In an article by Mazur, Brown, and Jacobsen (2015), flipped
classrooms are held up as a strategy that fosters inquiry-based learning, which
I feel can be difficult in a social studies classroom. It can be hard to stop
students from simply googling questions, so designing deliberate, thoughtful
strategies for engagement is a must. I tried to incorporate an inquiry-based
unit on China last year in my junior history classroom. The format of
inquiry-based learning does give students a lot of choice in what they want to
research, and computers give them the tools to both find a lot of useful information
and to share it in an innovative way. My students use the collaboration space
of OneNote to work together on research and writing for this project. I hope to be able to be more deliberate in my planning this year to better integrate technology and further my students' learning.
One area where I
still have questions is the emphasis I often see on sharing information on a
global scale as a definition of innovative use of technology. Why does posting
a video on the internet have more meaning than a video for classmates? Why does
use of a wiki (which I usually encourage my students not to use as a source for
research because it was put together by students like them) seem more
innovative than a poster project? After this research, I feel like I have a
better understanding of how I can help my students collaborate and can better
direct inquiry in the classroom. But, I still want to learn more about how to
better use the wonders of technology I have available.
References
Greenhow, C.,
Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. E. (2009). Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in
a Digital Age. Educational Researcher, 38,
246-258. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09336671
Mazur, A.D., Brown, B., & Jacobsen, Michele. (2015). Learning Designs Using Flipped Classroom Instruction. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 41(2). Retrieved from http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/26977
Page, S. F., ed.
(2015). Innovative Schools in Michigan. Connect:
Making Learning Personal, 2, 1-6. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED558046.pdf
Shand, K., Winstead,
L., & Kottler, E. (2012). Journey to Medieval China: Using
Technology-Enhanced Instruction to Develop Content Knowledge and Digital
Literacy Skills. The Social Studies, 103, 20-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.559434
Technology, especially social media updates constantly. You could see about updated the project with twitter or even Instagram. Two that are popular are SnapChat and Kik which would be difficult to do your project that you want to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever want to communicate with other teachers from around the world I would check out edmodo.com. They might have answers for your questions?
I think it is awesome the way you are using technology to have students interact with history. I agree with Alex that it would be difficult to use SnapChat or Kik but I think there could be a powerful way to use twitter. Since it has character limits they would have to really think about the most important points.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is great for students to do inquiry based learning. It sounds like the China project really gets students thinking outside the normal box of school.