Making it Count for the Kids

With all the different lessons and activities that we ask our students to complete, posting them online adds an exciting dimension that causes the students to do a better job and allows for others to connect with their learning. I try to bring this element to the students that I support by using a variety of free Web 2.0 tools. Most recently I have participated in a 5th grade project where the students were given the task to prove their understanding of Internal and External Conflicts.

The Activity - Easily Differientiate Due to Technology:

The teacher allowed them to demonstrate their learning by choosing what type of end result they were most comfortable with. The options were to make a comic (We use the Comic Life application.), a podcast (using PowerPoint to create the images, iPhoto to organize, and Garageband to create the podcast), or a movie (using iMovie HD or '09, PowerPoints to make the images, and iPhoto). The teacher gave the students a rubric and what content was required to be shown in the end product (such as specific terms, definitions, and examples). The students were then off to work independently, in pairs, or teams - however they chose. I demonstrated a day in their class (50 minute periods) on how to create the Podcast and a little demo on bringing in the slide pictures in iMovie. But because the students were already familiar with iMovie and had already completed a Comic Life project so not much time was given to those applications.

Showing the children what they did mattered and continued outside of the 4 walls of the classroom:

For this activity the students (all but 1) chose to create a movie. When they were done all movies were exported as a .mov. The teacher has her own free wiki through PBWorks. A folder was created to place 4 sheets of "paper" to house the links for each team's Quicktime movie. By uploading the files, adding the movies was simply a click of a link! Now these students, who worked hard on their project, can showcase their work to not only their peers, their families, and now you.

Conflict Movies (scroll down to see the conflict movie links)

Instructions I gave on creating Garageband Podcasts.

The Tweet That Got Me to Think

@bethstill tweeted today, "How'd you react if you were told this by admin? It isn't good for students to have 1 standout teacher while the rest are so far behind." About an hour later I was taking a walk in the woods with my family and I saw the perfect response. There in the middle of the brown trees sprouting with tiny green leaves was a beautiful purple tree. Thus, the standout tree. I laughed thinking, "God allows for many different things to standout on their own why not let teachers?" As always the state of how to teach is going through a reform, but this one is different. This reform is taking teachers into utilizing technology in its many different forms, tools, applications, etc. And as with everything in life some teachers are easy about using technology, jumping on board, ready to try even if they fail, and others are nervous and want the security of mastering it all before even attempting to try, thus falling behind. I am proud to say that I am an easy going, try, try and fail, try again type person. I support teachers on this journey, giving them the tools, ideas, and assistance in transforming lessons into technology rich activities that engage students and teach them skills like creativity and collaboration that they will need in life besides knowing that every sentence begins with a capital letter, or 5 x 3 = 15. Schools need these standout teachers to foster growth and the want to change in their colleagues teaching styles. If we don't have these standout teachers we would still be in lecture style teaching, sitting in straight quiet rows, setting our students up to be failures as adults because they are missing the skills that they did not gain because that standout teacher's wings were clipped so he/she would not fly ahead of others trying things out. So my response to that administrator would be, " You don't want me to try and be the best teacher that I can be? You don't want me to grow professionally and learn new things every day to try to use with my students? I am a teacher because I want to teach, I want to help my students grow to be the most that they can be in life. I want to try and reach them in every way possible. I am not in this profession to worry about what my colleagues can and can not do, or are and are not doing. I am in it for the students. Aren't you?"