Final Report: Fall Edition
What I've learned
This semester I read Stuck in the Shallow End by Jane Margolis. As I read this book, I considered how accurate it is that often times we think of technology as a solution or an equalizer in high poverty schools. Yet, this is so inaccurate from the reality of the schools and student population I, many of us, service. The spectrum of technology uses in a school vary from using iPads or chromebooks as a center to students coding games for each other to learn or study. In my classroom when I first received a chromebook cart, in my head I thought, "sweet, I can have all exit tickets completed on there." That was four years ago, now students use chromebooks to research, study, demonstrate learning, and create projects to inform others.
As stated in Stuck in the Shallow End, technology is supposed to erase the inequalities in education, across the country and from neighborhood to neighborhood. However, if the teachers aren't equipped with the skills to push rigor, is it effective? I have found in my experience after reading this book, that sometimes the policies written are out of date or do not relate to every circumstance. How are we as teachers using technology to generate more higher order thinking opportunities as opposed to comprehension activities or typing papers? In the application of this book to my imagineIT project, I've been able to utilize technology in ways for students to facilitate their critical thinking skills of the water issues we've studied.
Everyday I wonder if students realize that I learn as much, if not more, from them as they do me. Through the focus group with my students, I learned that they appreciate work that’s purposeful, just as much as adult learners do. I’ve taken their feedback into consideration and implemented homework that was purposeful, personal, and applicable to the research of our current societal issue at hand. And would you believe it, the completion rate increased by 17% than regular analysis of activities from class.
What I’ve taken away from my colleagues is making the grand scheme of the societal connection into more bite-sized chunks. Since conferring with my peers and implementing components of my project, I’ve made parts more bite-sized. I’ve also made the students learning more student centered by allowing students some autonomy around the issues they connect most to, which in turn, has driven their own learning.
Insights
One of the most insightful experiences from my imagineIT is how engaged students are when they’re studying current issues that relate to the content learned in our base units. From the focus group and their work ethic, I’ve seen my students who enjoy learning, develop a love for learning science and the issues scientists try to solve in society. In turn, I hope that I can provide them more opportunities and time to work on the societal related issues in tandem. It’s never been truer than now that students actively learn when the learning connects to them.
Looking Forward
For the next round of my imagineIT project I’ll have a few different variables to work with. The first change out of my control is going to be the size of my class and it’s length. Which will be able to benefit students to allow them to dig more into the depth of the issues. Something else I’d like to implement/change is to combine my deep play focus and imagineIT project together, again to focus on providing students with more time. I’m not sure of how to combine 20Time with society and science but I have an idea or two. One idea is to put students into groups of issues that align to our upcoming units and allow them to decide how to inform our community of the issues at hand. I know I’d also like to spend more time planning for students to share their work as well this round. I was thinking that once I get the students’ blog up and running, maybe the TV projectors in the hallway could have some of their newsfeed running on it to provide students with the voice of making their community aware to some of the issues around the world.
This semester I read Stuck in the Shallow End by Jane Margolis. As I read this book, I considered how accurate it is that often times we think of technology as a solution or an equalizer in high poverty schools. Yet, this is so inaccurate from the reality of the schools and student population I, many of us, service. The spectrum of technology uses in a school vary from using iPads or chromebooks as a center to students coding games for each other to learn or study. In my classroom when I first received a chromebook cart, in my head I thought, "sweet, I can have all exit tickets completed on there." That was four years ago, now students use chromebooks to research, study, demonstrate learning, and create projects to inform others.
As stated in Stuck in the Shallow End, technology is supposed to erase the inequalities in education, across the country and from neighborhood to neighborhood. However, if the teachers aren't equipped with the skills to push rigor, is it effective? I have found in my experience after reading this book, that sometimes the policies written are out of date or do not relate to every circumstance. How are we as teachers using technology to generate more higher order thinking opportunities as opposed to comprehension activities or typing papers? In the application of this book to my imagineIT project, I've been able to utilize technology in ways for students to facilitate their critical thinking skills of the water issues we've studied.
Everyday I wonder if students realize that I learn as much, if not more, from them as they do me. Through the focus group with my students, I learned that they appreciate work that’s purposeful, just as much as adult learners do. I’ve taken their feedback into consideration and implemented homework that was purposeful, personal, and applicable to the research of our current societal issue at hand. And would you believe it, the completion rate increased by 17% than regular analysis of activities from class.
What I’ve taken away from my colleagues is making the grand scheme of the societal connection into more bite-sized chunks. Since conferring with my peers and implementing components of my project, I’ve made parts more bite-sized. I’ve also made the students learning more student centered by allowing students some autonomy around the issues they connect most to, which in turn, has driven their own learning.
Insights
One of the most insightful experiences from my imagineIT is how engaged students are when they’re studying current issues that relate to the content learned in our base units. From the focus group and their work ethic, I’ve seen my students who enjoy learning, develop a love for learning science and the issues scientists try to solve in society. In turn, I hope that I can provide them more opportunities and time to work on the societal related issues in tandem. It’s never been truer than now that students actively learn when the learning connects to them.
Looking Forward
For the next round of my imagineIT project I’ll have a few different variables to work with. The first change out of my control is going to be the size of my class and it’s length. Which will be able to benefit students to allow them to dig more into the depth of the issues. Something else I’d like to implement/change is to combine my deep play focus and imagineIT project together, again to focus on providing students with more time. I’m not sure of how to combine 20Time with society and science but I have an idea or two. One idea is to put students into groups of issues that align to our upcoming units and allow them to decide how to inform our community of the issues at hand. I know I’d also like to spend more time planning for students to share their work as well this round. I was thinking that once I get the students’ blog up and running, maybe the TV projectors in the hallway could have some of their newsfeed running on it to provide students with the voice of making their community aware to some of the issues around the world.
Implementation Update
With the feedback from students and colleagues, I decided to chunk my project a little bit more. I constructed a webquest for students to research water issues around the world. I allowed them to work on this for a couple days. After their research was complete for the most part, students worked in pairs to create a PSA (public serive announcement) focused on one of the issuses they researched. The PSA was constructed as a quickfire. I hope to allow students to work on their PSA more, as students enjoyed using the application and want to make a finished product.
Students were also charged with the task of tracking their water usage for a week. Students were astounded of the amount of fresh water they use on a daily basis. This was done at the same time as thier research. Students were able to make connections to their water usage to the shortage of fresh water and other related issues around the world.
Students were also charged with the task of tracking their water usage for a week. Students were astounded of the amount of fresh water they use on a daily basis. This was done at the same time as thier research. Students were able to make connections to their water usage to the shortage of fresh water and other related issues around the world.
Water Usage Chart
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