Equal Access to the Digital World!

The digital world and its intersection with the education world is more important now than ever before... and its importance will only grow as time marches on.  As we speak, in schools, of helping to educate "21st Century Learners," we can not ignore the fact that, by its very interpretation and meaning, some of our students are set up to struggle from the outset if we are not careful to bridge the digital divide.  The digital divide refers to the fact that the world is divided into different groups: those who have easy and reliable internet and computer access and those who do not.  This is a significant factor in many ways, not the least of which in that it has the potential to widen the achievement gap even further in public education.

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To provide equal access to the digital world means that schools must start investing in technology, and enough of it that there is equitable access for all students.  Ideally, schools will become 1:1 (in other words, a computer or tablet for each student) in order to facilitate this access as soon as possible.  That said, there are real financial (and other) barriers that prevent this from happening.  So, to provide equal access to the digital world has to be done as best as possible. Teachers must take responsibility for bringing students to the computer lab, for engaging them in ways that are appropriate to the 21st century learner profile, and thereby helping them to attain the types of skills and traits that are required of a successful 21st century employee.  In short, the types of access that we, as teachers, grant to students in our classrooms is exactly how we can ensure that they are all able to learn using the digital world. 

Social Media and World History

Just for the record, the alternate title for this post was: "Twitter: Is it truly for the birds?"

Is there a much larger can of worms to open than the idea that social media is something that can be adapted for the classroom environment?  Much less that I'm going to be using... *gasp*... Twitter?  Almost immediately, the potentially horrifying implications jump to mind.  How will you regulate its use? How is that useful for students in a classroom? Why is it necessary to the lesson plan? Is it part of the curriculum? How about the state standards? 

In a 2011 article called "Learning Takes Flight with Twitter," Andrew Mercer calls twitter a "blogging tool with a twist...a micro-blog." He highlights my first point (and my argument for the use of twitter as opposed to other social media in my World History 1 class): that is, that with Twitter, "authors are forced to 'make it brief'" as they are limited to a mere 140 characters per tweet.  Students will be creating school-specific twitter accounts and those are the only ones that they will be allowed to be on in the classroom.  It Twitter specifically named in the Massachusetts state standards? No. But, the idea that students should be able to summarize and paraphrase is both there and in the Common Core Writing Anchor Standards.  Also in those standards are the ideas of analysis and creation (higher-level thought processes).  By having to think like a character from, for example, the Renaissance and tweet as, say Leonardo Da Vinci, students are using their knowledge as opposed to simply remembering and understanding historical facts and figures.  Twitter "provide[s] enhancement during group discussions" (Mercer 2011) and, as such, is an incredibly useful tool.

Another important reason for using twitter as a platform, and why I defend this choice, is that, as Mercer reminds, "the interface is very simple and intuitive and will have new users tweeting in minutes." There are various privacy settings and all students will engage in the highest level of those settings while only following their fellow students and myself.  You are also welcome to create an account and engage in the conversation, or just follow along! Additionally, as graded work, students will be held responsible for their postings and will be required to tweet a certain number of times as any given historical figure.

The link to my Twitter page is here:
https://twitter.com/MsLaRusso
Please ask to follow me and I look forward to everyone tweeting and reading about

Reference:

Mercer, Andrew. (2011). "Learning Takes Flight with Twitter." The Canadian Music Educator53.1: 35.

A WebQuest Update

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back from my blogging break!  I'm excited to share some new details with you about what students will be completing in class over the course of the two weeks that we will be studying the Renaissance in Italy. We will spend those two weeks almost entirely in the computer lab (or with the computer/iPad carts!) and everyone will be working in pairs on a set of tasks that will make them Renaissance experts. By following directions and completing two assessments (with lots of help from online experts in video and in print along the way), your student will become not only knowledgeable about politics, economics, intellect and the arts, but also more tech-savvy. These skills will serve them well for the rest of their academic and post-academia careers.
One task that everyone will accomplish is to create their own Prezis.  If you go to prezi.com, you can take a look at some sample presentations. This presentation software is fantastic... and mobile! No more forgetting the jump drive that your powerpoint is on and having a panic attack. Students will also have certain elements that they will be asked to embed into their Prezis (for instance, a youtube video and images).

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Another task that all students will complete is the creation of an assessment for the rest of their classmates to take after having done the WebQuest and created their Prezis.  This is something that each student pair will turn in (with an answer key!). They can create a test or quiz, a graphic organizer, an essay prompt, an assignment for creating a poster, or any other way they can think of to test their classmates' knowledge.  That said, students will really be reaching to the top of Bloom's Taxonomy as they make their way through these WebQuests, first learning about and understanding what the Renaissance was, then beginning to apply and analyze it via their Prezis, and finally creating their very own assessment about the topic to evaluate someone else's understanding.

I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Educational Value of Animoto

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Animoto is such a neat tool to have found and be able to use as an educator! This was my first experience creating a short video, but in my imagination the possibilities for its use are immense.  For example, having created this, I know now that I can include images specifically for my class to know and/or study. This would be an awesome way to include technology in an assessment. I can see playing this and having students identify 4/10 of the images and write about them (just as one example).  I can also see using this as a teaching tool and pausing for students to take notes. Anything that gets me out of the dreaded powerpoint rut is always a welcome and useful addition to my classroom. I also particularly like that the scope of the video can be minuscule or wide, depending on how much depth versus breadth you are looking to cover in a single class and/or unit.

Educational Value of Wordle

Wordle is an interesting, useful, creative, and visually appealing technological tool with a plethora of different potential applications within the classroom.  As a History and English teacher, I think that now, more than ever, my students' writing is under a microscope. With high-stakes testing more and more at the forefront of both my and my students' brains, I am constantly looking for ways to take the pressure off at times when we are doing writing assignments.  It is my belief that continuing to download onto the students how serious and scary these tests are will only lead them to perform worse thanks to testing anxiety, so the idea of seeing their open responses all pulled together into a Wordle is pretty neat.  That way, we can ask each other questions like "what's the main idea of your paragraph, at least according to Wordle?" If the answer is "the word THE," well then, maybe it's time to go back and edit.  Also by pulling apart the words, it makes it easier to check for spelling since you are not reading through a paragraph where words are in context. Those are just a couple of the editing applications I can see using.  I also think that it would be neat to compare a class's paragraphs on the exact same topic using Wordle, to see how truly alike they are. It would be my guess that, instead, students would be able to find patterns, but realize that they all think in different ways.

In my History classroom, Wordle is a potential tool in many ways. For example, in previewing the content of a test, to put the whole thing into this format might be an interesting way to help students see where my focus is and where they should study without feeling like I am spoon-feeding them much of the questions/answers.  It would also be an excellent tool to use before the start of a new unit, when we are going over the types of things we are going to be studying.  This use of Wordle as a previewing tool could then be a common strand throughout the unit, used a formative assessment along the way (how much of this Wordle can you identify now?) and at the end (at this point everything on here should look familiar).  I think that this scratches the surface of what the applications for this tool are and hope you will share your ideas with me as well!