I've been trying so many things and learning so much about further integration of technology into my classroom, but I'm not sure I'm ready to write a "tool review." So, here's my current journey with my students. Hope it's helpful to someone. Promethean Board: I've had it for one month and my students and I are getting more comfortable with it. Whenever I struggle or freeze in front of my students, I pause to re-group my thoughts and then move forward in the lesson with or without the Board. Though my learning curve has been rushed, I'm using it in at least one new way almost every day. The Great Suspender: As I'm doing so much research, I frequently have toooooooo many tabs open at once. I love that this extension puts my tabs "to sleep" when they've not been used recently enough. This helps in keeping my computer running more quickly and smoothly and I don't worry quite as much about not being able to get to every tab before closing my laptop for the night. Screencastify: I've resisted creating videos, even just voice-overs, for a long time (ironic since my husband is "TikTok famous"). When required, I've used Screencastify for my work in this masters program. I've just started using it with my students and am so glad that it's intuitive. Only a few of my students have used it before, but it's a great tool for them to learn quickly. They're collaborating to create a group presentation. I can't wait to see the final products!! So, I'm trying to be patient with my learning processes as I'm trying multiple tools and ideas simultaneously. To address the remaining questions from this week's prompt:
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By the time I see my students in 7th and 8th grade, they've had diverse experiences using technology in and out of school. As with any other content, some students are highly literate and others not so much. That being said, digital literacy seems to be such a moving target it's been hard to identify exactly what to teach my students to help them be responsible and respectful. I'm glad to be combing through resources such as the ISTE Standards, the SITE Model, and blogs where teachers share their own insights.
At this point of the school year, I just keep playing with ideas... with using technology even more than before and differently than before to support student learning. I am exploring what my students need, what they are interested in and what will catch their attention. I love this exploration and am beginning to plan for how I'll begin teaching digital literacy with a more structured approach in the next school year. In the meantime, I'll just keep throwing ideas out at my students, individually and in small groups, to see what makes the most sense to them at this time. Surface knowledge, deep knowledge, transfer knowledge. These are common terms, among both students and adults in my school, as we look at 1) what our students are learning, 2) how they know they're learning it, and 3) what they do when the get stuck. I've enjoyed reading works by Brenda Dervin, Bobbe Baggio, and Ruth Clark - separately. I did have to reread many parts of Dervin's and Clark's writing to make sense, even at a surface level, of what they were saying. Baggio's book was much more intuitive for me. My challenge came when I misunderstood the directions for this week's assignment - I thought I had to synthesize more information than was truly needed. Upon review of the instructions, I was relieved to see that my notes helped fill the requirements. Alas, I'm experiencing a version of what I ask my students to do on a daily basis. I ask them to write notes to help them make sense of material from different sources, share their information with others, and ultimately create some sort of product (artwork, presentation, etc.) to show their deeper (and hopefully transferable) knowledge. I could go on and on about what connections I've made between these three reading selections, but I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to reflect and learn more throughout our Sensemaking and Design class. For now, I'm just happy to see comparisons between this drawing of the "Learning Pit" that my students and I use to explain their learning - and Dervin's Sense-Making Metaphor. Digital Citizenship is so important to students in all grade levels. In addition to the complexities of students' social lives, their learning often revolves around the digital world. With my 7th and 8th graders, I've found the materials provided by Common Sense Education to be extremely helpful in supporting students. I particularly appreciate their "balanced tone" which is not fear-based. It's so easy for fear of the unknown, the complex, the digital... to take over our school rules and instructional methods.
I believe that the best way to teach Digital Citizenship is through a school-wide approach. The educator videos such as Implementing Digital Citizenship: MCPS will be helpful in discussing ideas with my administrators and colleagues. In the meantime, I will pilot some different lessons and strategies with my Advisory class. The Social Studies Department in my school is currently revising and adding instructional methods to each of our classes. In addition to Common Sense Education, we will utilize the Civil Online Reasoning from Stanford's History Education Group (SHEG). As we're currently halfway through the school year, I will focus on "Lateral Reading" and "Click Restraint," as well as plan for a year-long scope and sequence to begin next fall. In my Medieval World History classes, my students are definitely consumers of much media. As I incorporate more strategies to specifically teach Digital Citizenship, I will be able to further empower my students to become digital creators (the infographic below is helpful in my planning). All in all, I'm thrilled with how the students' digital world can be leveraged to increase their engagement in school as well as their knowledge and skill development. The more that we, as educators, incorporate Digital Citizenship into our classrooms, the more that we can leverage the tools at our fingertips. Brenda Dervin's article, "From the Mind's Eye of the User" challenges my thinking in multiple ways. When this article was assigned to my cohort, we were warned that it is dense and that we would struggle to understand it. I'm so glad that I've learned to be patient with my own learning process, as this allowed me to try to understand the article, set it aside, and return to it over time. I've taken pages of notes to separate the content, identify patterns, and to have a landing place for my upcoming thoughts on this article. As we will be studying the concept of sense-making, as introduced to us by Dervin, I've set myself up for future understandings to come instead of stressing about how much I currently understand. Additionally, the focus of my action research is on student inquiry and I've learned that the Library Sciences hold many keys to my questions. Therefore, I'm looking forward to diving into the concept of sense-making even more. I have identified connections between the method I'm using - the Guided Inquiry Design Framework (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari, 2012) that emphasizes the experiences and actions of the students as researchers - and Dervin's emphasis on the perspective of the actor, not the observer. I have found the following visuals helpful in seeing how the concept of sense-making is going to be helpful in designing learning experiences for my students: Theories of sense making span social scales (Copyright: Peter Jones, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada; modified and reproduced with permission) |
Megan BurtonInnovative Learning Archives
June 2020
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