*Key the choir
So, I have been grappling with the idea of how to introduce projects to my class. I often try to have students work toward a big project in groups as a way to be more constructivist in my approach to teaching and learning. I want students to take ownership of their learning, and I think project-based learning is a great way to do this.
I've been doing it for years. However, I get so frustrated on project roll-out day when I introduce the project and hand out all of the necessary paperwork (job descriptions, schedule of everything that is due. ever., rubrics for assignments, rotation of responsibilities, etc.) and some kid (our four) invariably leaves all of the papers at his or her desk and are without all of the necessary information for the REST OF THE QUARTER. This unit I have vowed to make a change, and I think I have found the solution in Google Docs.
*Key the choir
Google Docs allows me to save all of the necessary files in one shareable folder. From this folder I can include rubrics, schedules, group assignments, and the overall objectives for the lesson. Heck, I can include all of those things in one very sophisticated document with hyperlinks and tables. This document can be emailed, saved in a shared google drive folder, or posted to my LMS (learning management system) for those forgetful few to access as the quarter progresses, and I am saving a few trees in the process!
0 Comments
The unit was centered around the essential question, "Are we born with an inherent sense of morality?" and I wanted students to answer this question in an argumentative essay that synthesized a plethora of informational texts (both of which are standards that I needed to address before the end of the school year). However, in order to make any of this work for me and my students, I needed to do a lot of research on what UbD is and how to properly employ it in my classroom. Therein lies the challenge. Educating myself. And, this gets at the true nature of my current course, EDL 7510 "Improving productivity and practice with technology."
I find that so often I consider a professional learning network as a means to connect and communicate with others. A digital sewing circle in which people share ideas and grow. But, what I am quickly learning is that this is a very one-dimensional view of "network." A network involves being connected, yes. But it doesn't quite matter what I bring to the table. It matters that I can professionally grow and learn through the vast expanse of the internet. I can take a brief YouTube course by Grant Wiggins on Understanding by Design and feel confident enough to employ such ideas in my own classroom. Everyone has the potential to be an expert. That's a pretty cool thought. Everyone has a specific concept or skill that they struggle to teach. In fact, one may wonder to themselves, "How can I get students to engage in such a non-engaging topic?" For me, this concept is rhetorical vocabulary. In the context of literature and informational texts, the author's rhetoric comes alive. And, when students have the foundational knowledge of rhetorical strategies, they are able to read in a more critical and appreciative way. It essentially unlocks a whole new world to reading. The trick is, how do you get students excited about vocabulary words... not just any vocabulary words, but vocabulary that is just dense and, lets face it, boring?
So, you understand my lament when, last year, I realized I couldn't avoid rhetorical vocabulary any longer. I had to teach it, and I had to teach it well. And, I didn't want to spend longer than necessary. It was in this pit of despair that I had the idea to put WikiSpaces to use. I devised a lesson with the objective of getting all students to a "proficient, target, or mastery" level for all of the essential terms for the unit. I won't go into details of the terms or the unit, because this isn't an English blog. But I will divulge some of the benefits and drawbacks to using WikiSpaces. First thing the kids notice about the platform is it's appearance. Most Wikis are pretty bare and sparse. There isn't any fancy font or graphic you can add to make it look better either. They complained a lot about this. But not as much as they complained about the annoying formatting issues they had. Some of them, and I am the same way, wanted everything to look uniform and organized. But, the formatting in WikiSpaces was clearly not a priority with its developers, and making a uniform project takes a lot of time, dedication, and patience... lots of patience. Along that vein, simultaneous editing was very challenging. Students' work was constantly written over and deleted if they were working on the same page as another peer. They came to distrust WikiSpaces to a comical degree, and they copied everything they had done one too many times. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. The benefits were pretty great, though. The Wiki that the class created was an awesome opportunity for students to create their own official page, and share their own wealth of information on a rather boring subject. It created for me a comprehensive guide to rhetorical vocabulary, and I have since passed the website on to other teachers as a reference guide for them. So, the process wasn't awesome, but the product is long lasting. I was reading an article on Edudemic.com, which is a website that researches and posts information regarding technology in education. The article was about going paperless in the classroom, more precisely the article was titled, "Ultimate Guide to the Paperless Classroom." I found the information to be quite interesting, particularly because I have had a goal to be more contentious about the amount of paper I use in my own classroom. Especially because I come from a school in which students all bring their laptops to class everyday, and we have adopted a new and pretty efficient learning management system (LMS), I figured I should face little opposition. I oversimplified the challenge. I didn't take into account the challenges of organizing the mountain of digital work that I would acquire. I mean, it's quite easy to collect a stack of papers, and keep them in a file labeled with the appropriate label. I put a paperclip to keep like files together, and I keep them on my desk to grade... eventually. But organizing the mass of emails and GoogleDocs that comes with going paperless is a nightmare. I was drowning in emails, and my GoogleDocs, an application that I use both professionally and personally to keep organized became inundated with random documents labeled the strangest things as students randomly shared their work with me. While the positives were quite strong: collaboration in and out of class, peer editing and multi-tasked group work is so easy online; less excuses from students, I haven't heard, "I lost my paper" in I don't know how long; instant creation of documents, I don't have to worry about making copies before class ,or running out of copies at the worst possible moment when everything we need for class is online, I found myself making more copies. I found myself asking students to print out their homework more frequently. I found myself straying from my goal. The first tutorial, by David A. Cox, was really well put together, and very good for learning the basics of Evernote. It helped me learn a few new features that I didn't know exsisted, such as the ability to create stacks, or the awesome editing features that are available for notebooks. These are great things to distribute information to students AND to keep organized. But, as awesome as the tutorial was, it didn't really teach me how to use it in the classroom. So, I found myself looking for more resources.
I found a great resource, by accident, when I came across "Going Paperless with Evernote". Going paperless is the goal, and Evernote is the tool. I figured this had to be the best resource for me. And, I think it was. Seeing Evernote used in the exact way in which I plan to use it in my classroom was awesome! While the production value and organization was a little distracting, I definitely found the content of this online session much more applicable to me and my classroom. |
Archives
May 2018
Categories
All
|