Wikis can be used for just about anything! While the possibilities are just about endless, teachers can use wikis to encourage collaboration in the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, as well as publishing student work outside the classroom (Solomon and Schrum, 2014). Some teachers use Wikis to give students any-time access to resources, while others use Wikis for publication of student work. In Code Blue, students in a sixth grade science class create webpages for their department. Each student is assigned a doctor role (ex. Orthopedic Surgeon). Students published biography pages with information linked in about their specialty. Students clearly demonstrate an understanding of body systems. I really like the way in which each group of students have a block of the hospital. However, when first going to the site, the purpose (to display student pages). The home page is a list of links to get started in research. If I were to do a similar wiki, I would create a different home page, a Hospital Home Page, if you will. Then, have a link for student resources, directions, etc. Discovery Utopias uses a really creative way to publish student work and deliver resources for a project. I really like that the teacher included real-life failed utopias for student research, but I think my absolute favorite component of this wiki is the Clean-Up Crew. What a great idea! This teacher lists a Clean-Up Crew member from each grade level for other students to contact with creating, editing, and formatting pages. She even linked contact information for students to access. This is a great way to alleviate some of the pressure for us, teachers, to be in a million places at once! One thing I might change in this Wiki is the Proposal section. There is no obvious way to edit or download the proposal. I would either embed or link in a Google Doc or Slides for students to make a copy to begin editing right away. Go West provides students with a collection of information about the Oregon Trail: its timeline, daily life, maps, weather, etc. This site is very organized, and clearly well-planned. The only thing I would change is the concept map on the home page. To me, this is not visually pleasing, but I do not think it hinders understanding; just a personal preference. Overall, this is a great resource for students to learn about the Oregon Trail! Wikis are a great way to publish student work and to provide a concentrated bank of resources. I have started a Wiki to use in my 7th grade science class during our Biomes Unit, Exploration in Ecosystems. My plan for this Wiki is to provide students with the resources they need to create a page that promotes their biome. Student pages will highlight the features of the biome (plants, animals, landscape, weather, food webs, etc.). Students will work collaboratively on their pages. I am looking forward to further developing this Wiki and testing it out with my students! Carrington, A. (2016). Designingoutcomes.com. Retrieved 25 September 2015, from http://designingoutcomes.com/moodle/padwheel/padwheelposter.pdf Solomon, G. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.).
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Productivity tools are a great way to support the diverse learning needs of our students because of the wide variety of tools available. If you have a need, there is probably a productivity tool for you! Solomon and Schrum (2014) suggest that productivity tools have been “termed the Get Things Done (GTD) tools” (p. 94). Solomon and Schrum (2014) also convey the heavy presence Google and Google Apps have in the productivity tools market. I am an avid Google user, and I certainly see the benefit of their productivity tools for my own teacher-use, as well as student-use. My colleague and I have recently used Google Slides to create an Interactive Slides presentation for a self-paced lesson. Google Slides allowed the two of us to create this collaboratively without having to literally be together. Also, its ability to be interactive lends to a self-paced lesson. This is huge for supporting the variety of needs with which my students challenge me. The way I just described using Google Slides fits into a lower level of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Remember/Understand) because students are simply finding information. However, teachers can allow students to use Google Slides to show mastery of a concept in a variety of ways. Students can use Slides as a delivery tool for their product (Bloom’s level “Apply”).
Another productivity tool that lends itself to a self-paced lesson is EdPuzzle. EdPuzzle is Google App that allows teachers to customize videos. Teachers search already-made videos (EdPuzzle provides videos from YouTube and other popular video sites) to edit by trimming and/or adding questions. The video will pause automatically to allow the student to answer the questions. The teacher-edited video can be accessed by a direct link or can be embedded. EdPuzzle allows teachers to start students off in the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Remember/Understand). Developing these lower levels helps to strengthen the foundation of our students’ learning. Plus, any tool that will allow for a self-paced lesson is welcome in my classes! Carrington, A. (2016). Designingoutcomes.com. Retrieved 25 September 2015, from http://designingoutcomes.com/moodle/padwheel/padwheelposter.pdf Solomon, G. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.). I recently explored two virtual environments suggested by Solomon and Schrum (2014): River City Project and EcoMUVE (p.178 and 181). Both virtual environments are geared towards middle grades science and seem like a great way to engage students. Solomon and Schrum convey (2014) that a benefit in adding virtual environments into our lessons encourage student-led inquiry and “exploratory thinking” (p. 177). While virtual environments are incredibly engaging, students still need the teacher-provided structure and support. Also, students still need participate in “self-reflection in order for the implementation of virtual environments, according to Solomon and Schrum (2014) (p.179). The River City Project puts students into a city that has been struck by disease. Students must hypothesize on how it will spread and how humans can negatively or positively impact the disease. To experiment and test their hypothesis, students will be led through a variety of different sources: interviews, photos, newspaper articles, etc. To implement this virtual environment, teachers must sign-up, be approved, and attend a training. My favorite virtual environment out of the two I researched is EcoMUVE. This virtual environment provides a unique experience in two ecosystems: pond and forest. There are so many components to this curriculum! There are tons of teacher resources, student resources, modules for extension or remediation, food web applications, and even post-assessments aligned to the National Science Standards. The best part is that it is free! That is right, teachers, FREE! I downloaded the game and was able to explore the forest ecosystem. This virtual environment allows students to explore the relationship between biotic and abiotic factors in one ecosystem, as well as the causal relationships of different factors. One exciting feature of this virtual environment is that students can click on an organism they find as they are exploring, and an index card full of information about the organism displays and saves in their virtual notebook. Additionally, students can time travel while analyzing the population data. They can, then, create hypothesis about the trends in the data. One of my favorite feature is the food web tool. All organisms in the ecosystem your student explores show up in a food web tool. Students can drag organisms around and connect them in ways that show the transfer of energy. If a student is unfamiliar with an organism in their list, they can click on the picture and a list of facts needed to complete the food web is displayed. For teachers to implement, they simply need to download the software and follow the steps in the guide provided. Simple as that! With structure and appropriate planning, I think that virtual environments are an out-of-the-box way to get content across to students. I have never attempted using virtual environments in my classroom, but am eager to use the EcoMUVE project! Please view the image gallery to access screenshots of my first virtual environment experience. Solomon, G. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.). http://ecolearn.gse.harvard.edu/ecoMUVE/overview.php http://rivercity.activeworlds.com/rivercityproject/index.html Social networks can be a great way to have professional development right at your fingertips! My professor asked us to get a Twitter account. Honestly, I was not thrilled; just one more thing to have to keep up with. However, I’m not admittedly a Twitter fan. Seriously, it is so easy to spend hours upon hours going through my news feed full of fancy new technology tips and tricks (Shout-out to Alice Keeler!). I think the reason I enjoyed Twitter so much more this time (I have tried a couple times previously) is that I had a very good recommendation of people to follow. That, I think is the key to using social media to its fullest advantage. Following educators who can help me grow, not only as a teacher, but who can also help me grow my network is valuable. Another social network I joined is Classroom 2.0. Solomon and Schrum suggest (2014) this as a popular site because of its forums, groups, and its archive of lessons, podcasts, and interviews. This site is interesting because your membership, while free, must be approved. So, once you sign-up, you have to wait a few days to get approval. I really like this feature because it likely filters out those sneaky little advertisements that we occasionally face in other social networks. However, I was very overwhelmed by the website in general. It is somewhat difficult to sort through the posts in the forum. As I browsed through the most recent posts in the forum, I had trouble finding something that piqued my interest until I saw one titled, “3 Useful Tech Tools to Use in Your Classroom.” This teacher wrote a whole discussion about the usefulness of Prezi. I was surprised to see that her top useful tech tool. My faith in the site began to diminish. While, I am now a Twitter-fan, I am not sure that I will frequently visit Classroom 2.0. There are a multitude of applications for Twitter in the middle grades classroom. When I taught ELA a few years ago, I would have students summarize using hashtags or I would have them edit celebrity tweets. Neither activity actually uses the technology of Twitter; the first just piggy-backs off the concept, while the second just had me printing off tweets for students to correct. More effective uses of Twitter in the classroom could include recommending students follow certain experts to help them grow a more professional following. By doing this, students could use this as a springboard for their research. While researching ways to use Twitter in the science classroom, I found a lesson that I am really excited about trying. Basically, a high school science teacher assigned an #OrganelleWar with his students. Students created a Twitter account for their organelle and started a campaign for “presidency.” While campaigning, scientists from all over the world began getting involved and adding insightful, new information for students. Now, students and experts are interacting- this allows the lesson to reach that higher level of engagement! I am ready to explore this an option for my cells unit. I’ll keep my blog, and Twitter, updated! Solomon, G. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.). https://twitter.com/ http://www.classroom20.com/ http://www.slideshare.net/BradGraba/twitter-for-nsta?next_slideshow=1 In my opinion, my school district, Brantley County, feels the strongest digital divide in the socioeconomic factor. According to Town Charts (2016) , the average annual household income for Brantley County is only $36, 301 and our school is at 100% free breakfast and free lunch. In contrast, the average annual household income for Georgia is $49,342. (Town Charts, 2016). This gap, according to Gorski (2005), can have a direct impact on the access to digital tools, internet, and technology trainings, especially in education. From my personal experience, every year, a little over half of my students do not have consistent internet access outside school. Honestly, a little over half do not have established homes. Consistent internet access for those are simply not a priority. My observation was confirmed through studies done by Gorski (2005). They found that children living in low-income environments are “more than twice as likely to have computer and internet access…(p.24).” I thought it was interesting that their statistics combine computer and internet access together. Most of my students who do have consistent internet access outside school use the data on their devices (phones or tablets); they typically do not have computers at home. I wonder what the statistics would be if just internet was considered. The lack of consistent internet access outside school can certainly be a challenge! While assigning internet-based assignments, our teachers must be careful when considering pacing. We have to allow more class time than those in surrounding areas because we cannot require students to complete online assignments outside of class. Another challenge is the lack of experience students have in technology use. The only time some of our students are using a computer, tablet, or internet is at school. We really have to account for their learning curves in the use of the device as well as their learning of the content. content. Gorski, P. (2005). Education equity and the digital divide. AACE Journal, 13 (1), 3-45. Town Charts. (2016). Brantley County, Georgia Economy Data. Retrieved September 11, 2016, from Town Charts:http://www.towncharts.com/Georgia/Economy/Brantley-County-GA-Economy-data.html Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/freepress/6641427911 |
AuthorSarah Miller Archives
July 2017
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