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I teach technology. Well, the title of the course I teach to Grade 5 and 6 students in Regional School District 13 (Durham, Middlefield, Rockfall) appears on their report cards as ‘Computers.’ It’s a pretty nondescript title, and because of this and very broad district curricular standards in this strand I have the gift of flexibility in what and how I choose to teach.
When I first became interested in teaching technology skills to students, I asked my niece, who was a student at Guilford High School at the time, what she was learning in her computer class. “Excel,” she replied. When pressed for more information, she told me about a workbook students used for daily Microsoft Excel lessons. They’d arrive in class, see what the assignment was for the day, follow along with the directions in the workbook, print out a final copy of the completed assignment, and be done with that lesson for the day. Next day, same drill, just one page further in the workbook. The teacher collected the printed out lessons, graded them, and assigned something new.
That’s not me. That’s not how I teach. When you approach technology that way, aren’t you just using the technology for the sake of using technology or with some larger purpose in mind? Where are the connections? Where is the meaning? When I started out as a third grade classroom teacher many years ago, I had the luxury of teaching at a private school that had curriculum benchmarks and academic standards but no prescribed program or textbooks that we were required to use. We taught reading from chapter books and non-fiction texts that fit into our units on Early America and the ocean. Our science studies took the form of studying gears and water mills and building replicas at the Eli Whitney Museum. And math - how I loved not having a textbook and workbook for math! I was committed to having my students explore all of Early American history (and not just the white version), and since I did not have a textbook to work from I was free to choose my own materials and resources. We spent a lot of time talking about and reading about non-white people living in Early America, and the students were fascinated by the concept of the Underground Railroad. Our math lessons morphed into calculating distances, rates of travel, and safe houses. My kids were so taken by the idea of safe houses that they made scale-model three-dimensional safe houses, complete with floor plans and hidden rooms.
But I digress. Fast forward sixteen years and here I am. I tried teaching technology in a methodical, sequential, workbook-like fashion when I first began. Contrary to my private school experience, I truly thought that made the most sense. How could students do more advanced projects if they hadn’t mastered cutting and pasting in Microsoft Word? Could you create a PowerPoint presentation if you hadn’t successfully diagrammed the program’s layout first? I tried it and it didn’t work. Retention was poor. Feedback from teachers showed that they still couldn’t copy and paste quotations from websites into word processing documents.
Without connections - and they could be real-world or curricular - students really didn’t seem to grasp the usability technology tools available to them. Without a clear purpose or goal or context in mind, teaching technology skills in isolation proved to be futile.
As part of our final reflection for Education 7718, we are being asked to reflect on whether or not the technology enhanced the instruction and efficacy of our unit. We are also being asked whether or not students, because of technology, dug more deeply into the subject matter. My charge is to teach technology. I have taught lessons on Google Earth and how to embed Placemarks - in isolation, devoid of context and meaning. I can, without a doubt, say that teaching the same skill but connecting it to the time period being studied in students’ social studies classes, made a very big difference. I would strongly qualify my answer to address the need for a clear purpose and a clear audience to be identified prior to starting the unit, as well.
When constructing this response, I tried to envision a medium that would communicate a Venn-Diagram compare/contrast analysis of the Unit, complete with challenges, PITA factors, and successes. This written form is the easiest for me to explain my thinking, and the following bulleted lists will allow me to expand on my thinking without rambling on and on.
PITA Factors:
- When the technology fails. The Journey to Freedom on National Geographic website requires a plug-in that was not available on the students’ computers initially. Fortunately, some savvy students used the ‘Customer Service’ section to find an older version of the activity.
- Student pull-outs. My course is scheduled during a ‘related arts’ block, which is also used for students to be pulled out for instrument lessons, counseling, speech therapy, remedial reading/math, etc. Class attendance is inconsistent, and every day a significant amount of time gets spent playing ‘catch-up’ with students who missed class the day before.
- Kids who hate group work. Some of my students legitimately had major concerns about working with groups. What do I do about that? Do I force them to be miserable, citing a ‘real world need’ for them to be able to work with other people? Or do I allow them to work independently and really hold them to a very high standard? Once the tears started rolling with one student, I opted for the latter.
- Oh, that contract. Again, I had a crier. Her group would not let her type on the computer. She’d asked repeatedly and they were just not cooperating. Queue teacher intervention, review of group-created contract, righting of the ship, moving forward.
- Program set-up. I love Diigo, what it can do, and all of the possibilities it affords. I do not love the process one must endure to set it up. It’s easy enough, with a Google account, to do so, but for 10-12 year olds it’s a multi-step procedure that they could really care less about (even though I stressed this was an important real-life skill to know - hah!).
- Google Earth is too cool. I needed to redirect a lot of students once they were actively using Google Earth. It’s fun - pictures, flight simulators, street view, shipwrecks - who can blame them for being distracted?
- “Wait, what?” So I explained. Then I modeled. Then I kept the instructions on the Big Screen, and students had copies beside them on paper. I even had video tutorials on my website. So why is it that so many students, for any/all of the lessons, needed me to tell them step-by-step (again) how to do what they needed to do? Where did I go wrong?
- We’ll just make stuff up. I checked student work every step of the way. Websites were annotated using Diigo. Students were able to toggle between open applications. Yet when information was entered into placemarks, some students did not use the facts they had highlighted when using Diigo, but made up information or overly-summarized and did not provide detail. In speaking with other classroom teachers, this is a common theme that needs to be constantly addressed and practiced.
- Quiet on the set! When students were recording their screencasts of the placemarkers, the classroom had to be ‘shushed’. In and of itself not a huge deal, but it could be if there were more than 2 people in the room attempting to record at a time. We use the computers’ internal microphones to record; we do not have personal mics.
Examples of Growth
- Creating a positive online presence through blogging. Students seemed empowered by having conversations about moderating their own blog comments and putting themselves ‘out there.’
- Students applied the tools they learned to other aspects of their lives. One student created another blog about her favorite Football team, stats, players, and more. Another student created a screencast about another program he really like to use in the form of a video tutorial and posted it on his blog. One girl created a map with placemarks of all the places she’d like to see all over the world.
- “I got ‘em!!” Students were ‘hooked’ with the use of Google Earth. It’s a program that they love to use, yet only use a few of the many, many features it offers.
- Narrowing down. By being asked to choose three sites out of many and highlighting notes that would be used in a written paragraph, students rose to the occasion and were able to be more concise in their work.
Changes for Next Time
- Test the technology on each computer prior to use with students.
- More ‘meta’ conversations - why are we taking notes? What are we going to do with the notes that we are highlighting? Does the use of this technology enhance our presentations? Would we prefer to go back and use paper and pencil, note cards or graphic organizers to take notes?
- Spend some additional time setting the stage for the when/where/significance of the Underground Railroad.
In conclusion, with a clear purpose and objectives, the use of technology in this particular unit of study enhanced the learning of students, their overall engagement with the subject matter, and their abilities to apply what they learned in other areas of their academic and personal lives. I believe that students were able to dig more deeply into the subject matter, both historical and technological. Skills, not taught in isolation, were necessary to learn along the way, and reappeared throughout the unit.