As we are getting near the end of our 3rd PBL unit at Helensview, the instructional design of our final unit, unit 4 is taking shape. Being paired up with the Science teacher, we have decided to create a space for students to create their own Weebly sites in much the same manner that we as Cohort 14 are being asked to do. The goal is to have students work through a series of tasks that will lead to the beginning of their personal digital portfolios. Instead of breaking down each day into a lesson, we are creating a task list (Rubric focused) of what needs to be included within each Weebly site. Students can choose to work on any aspect of their digital portfolio on any of the 8 given days that the unit will run or complete parts off-site. As support, we will create a series of YouTube videos, screencasts and hyperdocs that will allow the students to take charge of their own learning. Of course, we will be available each class as supports for more focused questions.
Aesthetic has been a huge driving force behind my instructional design in the past and after reading about the Sociocultural subcontext within the SITE model, it gets me thinking about the motivation of the learner. What are the motivating factors for the learners to create digital portfolios? Tying this into Dervin, how will learners gap bridge if they do not see a use for the skill on the other end? As students at my site move towards graduation, the prospect of jobs and continuing education looms heavy. Students are motivated to be done with their high school journey (most anyway) and being able to include this digital portfolio as a graduation requirement would definitely provide the motivation needed to complete it. But that is not enough. I want the students to see this as a useful tool for their post high school choices. In this regard, I must design the experience to make it meaningful for the students and not just another checklist on their ride towards a diploma. Integrating personal voice, choice and showcases allows the students to make it theirs and allow the viewer to get a glimpse into who they are as a person, as student and a community member. The selection of tasks within the Weebly will really be the key to a meaningful output and as my co-teacher and I work to design the unit, this needs to be at the front of our mind. As my action research gets flushed out, I want to thank Dervin, Sir Ken Robinson, Baggio, Clark, Pebble-In-The-Pond and the SITE model for pushing me to think beyond learning objectives and state standards and leading me into the realm of end-user, repeatability, usefulness and accessibility. These readings have really helped shape a pile of random wants and thoughts into a somewhat cohesive ball of what I want for my classroom and end product.
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Google Forms. How can you not like a piece of technology that reduces waste (paper) and time (self grading)? Over the years I have gone through cycles of using Google Forms. It is almost as it comes into fashion and then can quickly fade out. Last weeks session invigorated me to use it again, as I have been relying on Quizizz as my short assessment tool as of late. Trying to input exponents proved difficult until I installed the add-on EquitIO (formely g(math)) that created a math editor option for each question. Success! After giving the Google Form today, I was able to learn about the strengths of my students from the previous weeks learnings. In comparison to Quizizz, I saw that Forms allowed more time for thoughtful responses and turned it into more of a show what you know rather than a competition. With Quizizz I have really been trying to stress the "slow down" mantra and have spent time debriefing the average time per question in hopes of getting more accurate responses. Google Forms did just this. In the future, I know when I would need to use Quizizz and Google Forms because they both play a specific purpose in my classroom.
Besides acting as a quick assessment tool, Google Forms can help get feedback through surveys, which is how I have used them for my Action Research. When completing the study which included the effect of a PBL unit on students comprehension, I wanted to gather authentic student input about how they felt when working through the unit, mainly within collaborative groupings. Google Forms allowed me to create a short pre and post survey that involved how students approached and felt about working in collaborative groups. Several questions were multiple choice, but having the option to have students own words in short answer form is what made the survey that much more real. Moving forward with Forms, I would be interested in having students create and administer a Form in situations that involve student input or some kind of democratic process within the school or classroom. Additionally, it might be cool to have groups create/administer their own forms to other groups to test each others knowledge and possibly turn it into a "Can you stump another group" situation. I feel like I cannot address the importance of my driving question or capstone and who it is meant for without first answering the question, What is Alt Ed Anyway?
For the majority of my teaching life I spent my day to day in a traditionally modeled urban school. Just like almost any other school I encountered typical class sizes (26-32), fairly consistent attendance (90%), students who did well and those that struggled. Our student body was comprised of an array of students form different cultural, economic and social backgrounds that on occasion would intermingle with those not homogenous to themselves. On a day to day basis, systems had been put in place at the site and classroom level that allowed the majority of students to learn and engage with the content. It was a school. The type of school you think about when asked to think of a school. Grades, fights, Back to School nights, open houses, after-school HW help, sports teams, etc. Honestly, looking back over a year and half ago when applying to an Alternative High School position I didn't really think about what it would entail. I figured that I had taught in a few tough schools in Oakland, my management was solid as was my content, how much different could an alternative setting be? Almost two years in I still struggle. I am still constantly questioning what I do, searching for different strategies and trying to problem solve with the question, "How could this better" in the back of my mind. So what is Alt ed? This list is not unique to an alt ed setting (or at least shouldn't be). To me, alt ed is:
With this in mind, my driving question's end user is the students, as they will be the ones that potentially will benefit from this research and design model. However, my end user is also my peers, our sites/districts administration and every other Portland area school district that we service. At our site, attendance is a major issue. Most of our students attend 50% of the time. Planning content that builds on itself is tough. Last year I created individual units that students could work through independently and pick up where they left off. This was fairly successful but still approached math through a traditional lens (that most likely didn't work the first time around). What I am trying to do with my current driving question is create a template for unit design that incorporates a PBL framework and works for students that are at school or not. Basically, I want to take online learning, PBL design and the integration of content areas and smoosh them together. I do not want math to be taught in isolation but rather integrated into relevant unit experiences. We already have a good start on this. I have planned with the Humanities and Sciences to build some pretty cool units that do just this. What is missing is the accessibility aspect and high school rigor. Right now our content is meeting students where they are. The hope is that in the future, by offering other modes of accessibility we can fold more students into the success zone rather than only the students who are frequent attenders and really push skill levels into that "prepared for college" category all the while creating residue from meaningful units that connect in multiple ways. Social media can be such a blessing. It has allowed individuals to create and be involved in collaborative discourse, share ideas and grow Personal Learning Networks (PLN). Of course with benefits of this extreme interconnectedness follows the pitfalls. Showing yourself in a bad light, over sharing personal information, talking negatively about someone else and using social media to partake in non law-abiding actions are just a few actions that can easily label you in a negative manner. This falls in line with what Gwyneth Jones mentions in her article 6 Ways to Avoid Those Social Media Pitfalls, "As educators, I passionately believe we should use social media to push the positive, celebrate student successes, share resources with our colleagues, and connect with parents and the community." How then do we push the positives aspects of social media while curbing the negative?
Unfortunately, merely telling students about the pitfalls of social media does not always guarantee avoidance. Counter to what Jones discussed in her article, I do believe that connecting with students via social media (I do create a separate account just for this purpose) is not only an effective way to communicate and build rapport but also lets the student know that you are part of their targeted audience. Say for instance I was crafting an email to a close friend of mine and had to cc my supervisor, the email might look differently than if it was just to my friend. I know this because I am well versed in code-switching but these are the skills that we want to instill into our youth. Our students will make mistakes with how they use social media, that is a fact, but having someone there to point out the mistake and help them grow from it leads to learning and understanding. In regards to having been witness to an inappropriate use of social mediaI, this is a surprisingly (or not so surprising) common occurrence. Often times the plan of action is talking with the student privately to make them aware of the action. We have several staff at my site that connect with students using social media so reinforcement from adult to adult helps hold the student accountable. At times we have had to take further action involving law enforcement but this is a rare occurrence. Patrick Larkin in What Do You Do When You See Inappropriate Social Media Posts? brought up some valuable guidelines in dealing with such comments or posts. It is these type of conversations we as a staff seek to have with our students. In our view, these negative posts and comments lend themselves to teachable moments rather than punitive. |
AuthorHello, I'm Joe. Welcome to writings about my thought process throughout the journey of Touro's Innovative Learning Graduate Program. Archives
July 2018
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