Educational technology in practice
As I become more familiar with technology and its role in developing students who are creative, able to think critically, competent communicators and collaborators, I am integrating more and more strategies into my classroom. Below are a few examples of technology and how I have integrated it into my classroom.
Technology that supports student learning
I created this mind map to show how three technologies (Quizlet.live, Flipgrid and Schoology) relate to communication, collaboration, critially thinking and Bloom's Taxonomy. All three technologies allow students to communicate with one another, but Flipgrid and Quizlet live allow for a bit more communication than Schoology. Schoology is an LMS and I use it for grammar practice, publishing readings, individual questioning, collaborative speaking exercises, individual listening activities, and many other activities. It provides students with a platform to show what they understand. Quizlet.live is a way to quiz students on vocabulary through language translation, picture recognition and riddles. Students must remember and define vocabulary as well as apply what they know to solve the riddles. Flipgrid is a platform for students to create a post videos. My students have used it to share about themselves, as well as, creating group skits and dialogues. It allows students to create, design, and present their work.
Collaboration among instructors
My classmates and I were asked to a digital representation of the C (Critical thinking, Collaboration, Creativity or Communication) that we emphasize the least and how we could improve that. We first had a discussion, through a video chat in Google Hangouts, about what we read and our reactions. From that discussion, my classmate entered all the notes she took into a world cloud creator and created the word cloud above. We then shared our responses within the PowerPoint.
We created a PowerPoint in real time! I am amazed by technology! I create assignments for my students, but I rarely get to be the collaborator and creator of work.
We created a PowerPoint in real time! I am amazed by technology! I create assignments for my students, but I rarely get to be the collaborator and creator of work.
OERS
Open Educational Resources (OERS) are available to teachers free of charge. I visited www.oercommons.org/ and search for resources in French. Many of the resources I found were for the university level, however I also located Tex French Grammar. This is a resource I had used before, but only to print off worksheets. For this lesson, I shared the link to a specific grammar point and required the students to read the notes, complete the activity, check their answer, screen shot their results and share the screenshot in my LMS, Schoology.
This was a great review for student and allowed them to have immediate feedback on the review with minimal effort from me. However, some of the grammar points are a bit too detailed and it can give the student too much information as this is a university website.
This was a great review for student and allowed them to have immediate feedback on the review with minimal effort from me. However, some of the grammar points are a bit too detailed and it can give the student too much information as this is a university website.
SCREEN-CAST: How to create assignments in Schoology
I started using Schoology a few years ago and took a class offered by my county on various LMS options. Since then, we have had professional development sessions on Schoology and Google Drive at our county meetings. Several teachers still ask how to create activities in Schoology, so I created this screen cast in the hopes of educating those teachers on how to create activities in Schoology.
Creating this screen cast was not easy! I wanted to share a lot of information, but I did not want to use a lot of time. I paused the recording and copied and pasted my text so that the viewer was not waiting for me to type. It was challenging to get the right timing as the microphone cut me off on several of my first tries. I found that the more I recorded, listened, and re-recorded, the more confident I sounded.
I tweeted out my final product and I hope that it will be shared at the next county meeting for those who are interested in using Schoology. If you are interested, click on the picture!
Creating this screen cast was not easy! I wanted to share a lot of information, but I did not want to use a lot of time. I paused the recording and copied and pasted my text so that the viewer was not waiting for me to type. It was challenging to get the right timing as the microphone cut me off on several of my first tries. I found that the more I recorded, listened, and re-recorded, the more confident I sounded.
I tweeted out my final product and I hope that it will be shared at the next county meeting for those who are interested in using Schoology. If you are interested, click on the picture!
REview of technology
There many educational technologies available for teachers, but some are better than others. I appreciate what Flipgrid allows my students to do. By posting my review on the Common Sense education web page, other educators are able to read about the pros and cons of the website and better inform their decision about what they will use in their classrooms.
Acceptable Use policy
Technology is apart of our daily lives. As educators, we must do more than prevent students from harmful content--we must educate them on how to be responsible consumers. This is a poster that I plan to use in my classroom to remind students about responsible digital citizenship. The document to the right I plan to provide to students and parents at the beginning of the school year to help them understand how I created these policies and to demonstrate giving credit to others.
Rubrics that support group participation
After reading about 20 Collaborative learning tips and strategies for teachers, by Miriam Clifford on Teachthought.com, I wanted to immediately put her strategies into action. I create the rubric above in the hopes of highlighting the need for group roles. I created a pre-test and post-test, groups based on gender and abilities, and I attempted to provide a real-world situation--wanting to go out, but chores need to be completed. I gave the students time to plan, goof around, record and edit. Each day they were asked to rate their group-mates' level of participation using the scale above. I used the score that the student assigned their classmates to award points on the last section of the rubric.
Flipgrid:
students collaborating
It was a disaster! They didn't follow the rubric! I had asked them to include commands, negative expressions, and past tense sentences. The skits were funny and creative, but they failed to complete 3 sections of the rubric (click on the image if you would like to listen!) I was so disappointed.
I had the students listen to their project and grade themselves using the rubric I provided. They all agreed that their grade was lower than what they wanted. I gave students the opportunity to redo the skits on their own time and a few did. Hopefully, they learned the importance of reading and following directions.
They also did poorly on the post-test. Many students chose not to complete the homework (seem OERS above) and therefore were not prepared. We had a discussion about the importance of completing our work and then we voted on how to improve the grade on the post-quiz. As a class, we decided to review the 3 grammar points and take a 3 smaller quizzes over the course of 3 weeks. Students did much better on the 3 mini-quizzes, but I feel like we reviewed simple review points too much.
I had the students listen to their project and grade themselves using the rubric I provided. They all agreed that their grade was lower than what they wanted. I gave students the opportunity to redo the skits on their own time and a few did. Hopefully, they learned the importance of reading and following directions.
They also did poorly on the post-test. Many students chose not to complete the homework (seem OERS above) and therefore were not prepared. We had a discussion about the importance of completing our work and then we voted on how to improve the grade on the post-quiz. As a class, we decided to review the 3 grammar points and take a 3 smaller quizzes over the course of 3 weeks. Students did much better on the 3 mini-quizzes, but I feel like we reviewed simple review points too much.
Revision and reflections
I am continuing to use what I learned to create groups and promote collaboration among my students despite some setbacks. I plan to use this rubric in the next few weeks. It is a group project that is focusing on only one topic--the 16 verbs that use ETRE in the past tense. I am hoping that this project will allow students to showcase their creativity. As I prepare to assign this project, I am considering allowing students to choose their own partners. There was some debate over the perfect number for group projects (3, 4, or 5) and there were great reasons for each. However, I feel that 5 was a bit too much for my students and there was often someone waiting for a task. I only want 4 students working on this project and I feel that there may be more creativity if they are able to work with classmates with whom they are comfortable.