Podcasting as a Test Review Tool

Program Standard 12

Throughout the quarter in EDTC 6431, Learning with Technology, I have been reflecting on the ISTE student standards. As a final project, I have designed a lesson plan that not only meets content standards, but also meets several ISTE standards. This year I am teaching senior students who will need to review for their history IB exam in the spring. I decided to use this project to plan a part of their review. While IB has a skills focus, students still need to be able to remember a lot of information. My seniors should have ownership of their review, but I have found that students tend to gravitate toward a text-packed PowerPoint presentation when they are asked to provide information to their peers. I wanted to come up with another way to help them move beyond that strategy. I am going to help my students design podcasts as a review tool. This will give them ownership of the test review and help them teach their peers, and also be more worthwhile than a presentation that no one pays attention to. To view the full lesson plan, click here. If you want to learn more about podcasting in education, check out The Nuts and Bolts of Podcasting from ReadWriteThink.

I look forward to teaching this unit in the spring, but I know that I have a lot of work between now and then. I need to become comfortable using Audacity, the audio editing software I will ask my students to use. I need to create a rubric that will guide my students to success but still allow them to create personalized podcasts. I also need to ensure that as I teach throughout the year I am encouraging study and note-taking habits that my students will find useful when they get to this culminating project. I hope that by engaging with students to help them use technology to study in a new way I can make the review process relatively painless and, above all, useful. If this goes well, I would like to make podcasting a regular feature of assessment in my history classes.

Update after teaching this lesson
I ended up using the podcasting lessons throughout the year, creating a string of episodes for the students to listen to as they review, rather than as a review tool itself. Click here to listen to their work! This was particularly useful because the dozen students I anticipated when planning my year were broken into two classes- a section of 4 and a section of 8. This allowed me to create three teams of four students each, and it was so fun to watch as they became more comfortable with the podcasting process. I worked with the students to create a podcasting rubric and a planning worksheet. My favorite part was when they would have organic conversations about creating a thesis for their episode, or discuss how they were answering the question, even though we never talked about needing anything as formal as a thesis. In this way, I could see that they were beginning to understand the material in a new, deeper way. Though I still struggle to see how I might use this in a larger class setting, I definitely saw benefits to using a podcast structure as a unit assessment for my students.

References

Bhaskar, Santosh (2013, August 23). List of great free tools to create podcasts. EdTechReview. Retrieved from http://edtechreview.in/news/533-free-tools-to-create-podcasts

Readwritethink (2018). Podcasts: The nuts and bolts of creating podcasts. NCTE. Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/printouts/podcasts-nuts-bolts-creating-30311.html

Robin, B.R. (2008). Digital storytelling: A powerful technology tool for the 21st century classroom. Theory and Practice, 47, 220-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00405840802153916.

Soh, K. (2016). Fostering student creativity through teacher behaviors. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 23, 58-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.11.002.

Yang, Y.C., & Chang, C. (2013). Empowering students through digital game authorship: Enhancing concentration, critical thinking, and academic achievement. Computers & Education, 68, 334-344.

Organizing and Reviewing Information- ISTE Standard 4

This week's standard, ISTE Student Standard 4, looks at student use of technology to think critically and problem solve. I interpreted this standard in light of a review project for senior students who are preparing for an IB test. They have two years of information that they need to review, and if they want to pass the test I think this qualifies as "authentic problems and significant questions for investigation"! What I want to avoid at all costs is students standing in front of a text-packed PowerPoint with no one paying attention because they know they can just look at the slides later. This is not appropriate use of digital tools, and it is not an effective study method either.

My first idea for this review was a podcast. You can read more about free tools for educators at this link from EdTechReview. I am considering using a recording/editing software such as Audacity to create our podcasts and then sharing through Google Drive or OneNote. There are also a couple of online hosting sites, such as PodBean or Podomatic, but I need more research before I feel comfortable asking my students to create accounts. Since this is effectively changing the way my students will review and study, I will need to change up the way I teach and lead this review session. ReadWriteThink has good examples of teaching strategies to guide my students as they figure out what to include and how to make a podcast.

One way that I can support my students leading up to this review activity is with other tech tools to organize information. In history, timelines are particularly useful. For another avenue of research this week, I took a look at some electronic timeline creators. The beginning of my search led me to an article by Christoforos Pappas, originally published in 2013 but updated in 2013, called "Top 10 Free Timeline Creation Tools for Teachers". What is really great about this article is that it tells you right away what the features of the timeline creator are, and whether or not you need a paid subscription to use the site. I have been exploring these resources, and here are a few of my favorites.

I started by downloading the OfficeTimeline tool, a plug-in for Microsoft Powerpoint. It looks like a really cool resource, but I found that it had a few too many moving parts for anything I would require of my students. There also wasn't a good way to add more information, like an explanation of why an event was significant. I would recommend this tool for people scheduling an event.

I have had students use Sutori in the past for a timeline-esque project (they could convey the information however they wanted, and these students chose a timeline). It is great because it allows a lot of detail, and it says that students can collaborate on projects, working together at the same time. I also like that it allows the use of pictures.

MyHistro looks really interesting because it is tied to a map. I could see this resource used for a war or migration. However, it would have a limited use for a more abstract timeline of documents, for example.

Finally, TimeToast describes their product as "easy as toast" and it really does look like a no-frills way to create a good-looking timeline. Like the other tools, you can add pictures and descriptions, as well as collaborate.



My hope is that use of these online tools would allow students to better order and explain historical events. Students learn by doing- and "doing" needs to involve more than sitting and watching a PowerPoint, whether that presentation is delivered by a student or a teacher. Social constructivist theory "suggests that students actively construct knowledge through their experiences" (Yang & Chang, 2013). Projects like interactive timelines or review podcasts engages students in a new way, allowing them to process information, decide what is important, and decide how to share their understanding.

References

Yang, Y.C., & Chang, C. (2013). Empowering students through digital game authorship: Enhancing concentration, critical thinking, and academic achievement. Computers & Education, 68, 334-344.

Assessment- both formative and summative

Program Standard 11
We began this quarter in EDU 6613, Standards-Based Assessment, by examining our personal thoughts around formative assessment and how we use it in our classrooms. I reflected that formative assessment is essentially a check-in and that it can be tied to content, objective, or even work time. I have tried multiple formative assessment strategies in my classroom, and I enjoyed the resources to learn about ways to use it more effectively in my classroom.

The text for this course, Embedded Formative Assessment (Wiliam, 2011) encourages teachers to think through assessment at all stages of lesson. Possibly the most interesting fact I pulled from this book was Wiliam’s warning that feedback plus a score makes the feedback worthless (2011, p. 109). Students only look at the score and worry about how it will affect their grade, or compare it with their neighbors. This set the stage for research over the quarter into different ways to give students feedback and then how to use that feedback to inform my teaching. Carol Dweck’s article “The Perils and Promises of Praise” (2007) serves as a reminder that giving the right type of feedback is also very important. Dweck, a leader in the growth-mindset movement, emphasizes process praise that “keeps students focused… on processes they can all engage in to learn” is much more beneficial to motivating students than effort praise.

For students to really benefit from process praise, though, they need to know where they are in the process. Teachers need to have an objective in mind, and they need to share that objective with their students in student-friendly language. Stanier, in his 2013 article “Much to learn you still have,” advocates for inquiry models that help students reflect. Stanier writes that if teachers make explicit “what master of that piece of knowledge looks like, pupils can assess themselves and decide when they are ready to progress on to the next piece of knowledge” (2013, p. 15). In this way, teachers and students can work together to meet the learning goal. If students cannot evaluate their own work, they will rely solely on the teacher to be told when they have met the learning target. This is not only inefficient, but it also removes the partnership from education, taking us back to the days when a teacher held all the knowledge.

Example of slide with learning objective- I project this slide
to help students identify and meet the learning target

Mid-way through the quarter, I chose to focus on self-assessment to learn more about effective strategies. You can read my findings here, but my overall takeaway is that self-assessment is an integral part of standards-based assessment. I have reaffirmed throughout this course that it is important to start with the end in mind. Begin with a target, and then think of how you will get your students to that target. Plan ahead to meet student confusion or misconceptions, but also plan plenty of check-ins that will allow you, and your students, to ensure that you are all on the same road heading for the same target.

As I begin the new school year, I will use the work that I have done in this course and in Curriculum Design, EDU 6639, to re-work my freshman curriculum. This course addresses SPU Teacher Leadership standard 11, “utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards-based environment.” My future lessons will be aimed at greater understandings that ensure my students meet the social sciences standards at my school, taking away some activities that, while fun, did not advance student learning in any particular area. I look forward to working more closely with my students as I identify learning targets and together we work to meet them.

References

Dweck, C.S. (2007, October). “The perils and promises of praise.” Educational Leadership, 65(2), 34-39. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct07/vol65/num02/The-Perils-and-Promises-of-Praise.aspx.

Moss, C.M., Brookhart, S.M., & Long, B.A. (2011, March). "Knowing your learning target." Educational Leadership, 68(6), 66-69. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar11/vol68/num06/Knowing-Your-Learning-Target.aspx.

Stanier, J. (2013). 'Much to learn you still have!': An attempt to make year 9 masters of learning. Teaching History, (150), 14-19. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.spu.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1325039101?accountid=2202

Stockman, A (2015, April 25). "10 creative pre-assessment ideas you may not know." Brilliant or insane: Education on the edge. Retrieved from http://www.brilliant-insane.com/2015/04/10-creative-pre-assessment-ideas-you-may-not-know.html

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Curriculum by Design

Program Standard 9

          This course in curriculum design has shown me that using the Understanding by Design model is both the easiest, most natural thing in the world, and it is also the hardest. On the one hand, it makes so much sense. On the other, it takes a lot of time and energy to produce a quality curriculum. While I have always tried to use this method, this is the first time that I have been able to have the time to fully devote myself to a rigorous application of UbD to a curriculum for students that I know and love. In the past, I have been limited by abstract guidelines for a future, fictitious class. Throughout this class, I have evaluated a known curriculum and adapted my lesson plans to make learning a more meaningful experience for all my students.

Research

            Reading The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011) put the UbD process into perspective. I liked how this book broke the process down, provided examples, and even recommended an order in which to use the modules. This book was a springboard for other helpful resources. To discover more about learning targets, I found the article “Knowing your Learning Target” (Moss, Brookhart, & Long, 2011) very interesting. While I have posted learning targets for my students for years, this helped me to better understand the necessity of ensuring your students truly grasp what it is they are supposed to accomplish during the class period, just as you would do for a big project. When it comes to instruction, I enjoyed hearing Doug Fisher discuss his gradual release method in a Youtube video titled “Gradual Release of Responsibility” (2013). What I thought was most interesting is that he emphasized that while his initial figure of gradual release was a top-down triangle, and the phrase “I do, we do, you do” gets ingrained in new teachers, Fisher explained that you don’t actually have to go in that order, as long as all the parts happen every lesson. This allowed me to see gradual release in a new light and to think more critically about the responsibility I give my students in each lesson. One of my favorite quotes about teaching is from Cris Tovani in her book Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, in which she says, “School should not be a place young people go to watch old people work” (2004, p. 20). By making my intentions clear, and holding all my students to the expectation that they can meet the learning standard, I can engage my students, challenge them, and make them see that what we do in my classroom is worthwhile.

Coursework

            The unit that I designed for this class has helped me to rethink the start to my year with my 9^th grade students. For the past three and a half years, I have taught a Western Civilization course guided by nothing more than being handed a textbook when I took over mid-year and being told “it would be great if you got to the French Revolution.” I felt bound to my textbook and the outline from the teachers who had come before me. Now, however, my school is shifting curriculum and I feel like I have the opportunity to re-think the 9^th grade experience. Over the next year, I will begin shifting the course from Western Civilization to World History. This is a daunting task, because World History is so huge! There are so many textbooks, most of them the size of a couple of bricks, and so many recommendations for what “needs” to be taught. By allowing UbD to guide the creation of my first unit for this new direction, I have been able to focus on outlines that will make World History manageable. I hope to teach my course as a series of case studies focusing on deeper understandings. This is supported by UbD.

Through my work on this foundational unit, I have a better grasp of how to start the year off right for my students. I began designing my unit by thinking about what I hope my students get out of it. I want them to understand where our concept of “history” comes from, and how it has shifted over time. I want them to understand the inter-connected nature of our study, and how what we study in one area of the world can be different from another, but that there is also a driving force for stability that encourages people to gather and be social. After thinking about these understandings, I had a better idea about what I should actually teach. I will be reformatting the first weeks of school around this unit.

I also have a better idea about how to ensure my students grasp these understandings. I enjoyed the reminders about constant formative assessment, both from this class and EDU 6613, Standards-Based Assessment. I incorporated many ideas from Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment (2011) into my lesson plans. This includes opportunities for students to reflect on their learning and a variety of ways for them to communicate their learning to me. However, it all comes back to having a quality learning target. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t tell your students where they’re going. And if the students don’t know where they’re going, it is highly unlikely you will all end up in the same place. Hattie (2012) writes that for an accomplished teacher, “the primary concern is to add value to all students, wherever they start from, and to get all students to attain the targeted outcomes” (Chapter 4, Prior Achievement section). This is impossible without a partnership between teacher and students predicated on trust and clear expectations.

Standard Alignment

This course is aligned with SPU Teacher Leadership program standard 9, “evaluate and use effective curriculum design.” I feel that I have met this standard throughout the quarter. I began by evaluating the textbook that I currently use in my classroom. I found that while there were many activities and opportunities for students to engage with the material, the lessons provided amounted mostly to reading the textbook and answering some questions. Despite the inclusion of “critical thinking” questions, there were no places in the curriculum for teaching strategies to answer these questions, and if you followed the prescribed lesson pacing, there was no room to fill them in. From here, I began to design my unit, starting with essential questions and understandings, then learning targets, and finally activities to help my students meet these targets. Throughout it all, I collaborated with peers, giving and receiving feedback, and revising my unit accordingly. By designing my unit in this way, I created an effective unit that will engage my students and encourage them to think deeply about historical topics.

References

Fisher, D. [FisherandFrey]. (2013, May 11). Gradual Release of Responsibility [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjURdvzty4c.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning [Kindle version]. New York, NY: Routledge.  

Moss, C.M., Brookhart, S.M., & Long, B.A. (2011, March). Knowing your learning target. Educational Leadership, 68(6), 66-69. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar11/vol68/num06/Knowing-Your-Learning-Target.aspx.

Tovani, Cris. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Media Literacy Against Fake News- ISTE Student Standard 3

This week we take a look at ISTE Student Standard 3

Students today have more information coming at them than ever before. Due to various social media platforms, traditional news programs, news sites, and newspapers both physical and online, everyone needs to be increasingly discerning about where they get their information and what they believe. There is also a disturbing trend of "fake news." While some people use the term to describe stories they disagree with, there are others who deliberately distort the truth to spread false information. With all of this in mind, I decided to focus my research for this week on media literacy. I have done some research in the past, but I wanted to compile a list of curriculum available to teach my students how to be critical consumers of the information around them.

I began by watching a video from Education Week that outlines steps being taken right here in Washington state to teach media literacy. The video brings up a great point that "just because kids are comfortable with social media doesn't mean they're savvy about what they're using." It also gives some recommendations about teaching resources. Below I will expand on some of those resources and add some others.

In the video, they reference an excellent and interesting study by the Stanford History Education Group, which provides awesome teaching resources for history lessons, particularly document-based ones. You can read the study here, or listen to a story from NPR at the bottom of the page. To summarize, students today are not great at discerning fake news, and educators should do something about it. I greatly recommend the resources from SHEG if you are a history teacher looking for quality lessons using primary sources. You can also see examples of the activities they used to conduct the study in the summary. I used some of them with my junior students last year, and it was indeed depressing to see where the gaps in their knowledge were. In particular, they are unfamiliar with the idea of checking to see who is providing the information. So, I hope by using some other resources I can help them become more discerning.

The video from Education Week also references the group Common Sense Media. According to their website,

Common Sense is the leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids thrive in a world of media and technology. We empower parents, teachers, and policymakers by providing unbiased information, trusted advice, and innovative tools to help them harness the power of media and technology as a positive force in all kids’ lives.

They have various series on different digital skills, but I am most interested in their unit on Digital Citizenship. There are leveled games and activities, as well as guides for teachers to facilitate the lessons. They also offer professional development opportunities for educators and the opportunity to connect with other teachers through social media platforms.

The last resource I would like to share is called Checkology and it is created by the News Literacy Project. Similar to the other sources, it acknowledges that students today have a lot more information coming at them, and it provides a platform for the students to learn how to evaluate that information. It has an interactive classroom discussion wall, incentives in the form of badges, and it includes a variety of activities, not just videos and questions. For the 2017-2018 school year, the premium version, where you can create classrooms and monitor student progress, is free! I like that it is directed at teens, and from the videos and activities I have done it is engaging and in teen-friendly language. I look forward to testing this resource and others in my classroom this year.


 (Links to an external site.)Links to an exterand it is created by the News Literacy Project (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. It acknowledges that students today have a lot more information coming at them, and it provides a platform for the students to learn how to evaluate that information. I haven't gotten very far into the modules, but it has an interactive classroom discussion wall, incentives in the form of badges, and includes a variety of activities, not just videos and questions.