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"Why I Teach"
How indoor recess can look.
We at Engaging Educators are located in Michigan. Michigan in the winter is cold, grey, and snowy. As “From the Classroom Week” highlights, Ben and I still pay the bills as elementary classroom teachers. Much of the winter is spent with indoor recess. I had an incident in my classroom today that nicely ties together our From the Classroom and College Project series.
To summarize the College Project, our students are researching, contacting, and presenting on three different colleges. I’m working on taking our project from the 20th Century to the 21st Century. One of the aspects of college preparedness we’ve been working on is vocabulary. Students have been researching words from admission to waitlist. In the past, students have been required to make an ABC book with the vocabulary words, definitions, and example sentences. This year I told my class to use any tool of their choice to present these words. My students still have a relatively small 21st Century toolkit, but they are comfortable using iMovie, PowerPoint, and Garage Band to name a few.
This gets me to today’s indoor recess. I said to my class, “This is your 2 minute warning.” As usual, I received a series of mumbles and groans. I looked up to see which students they were coming from today. The complaints were coming from three of my boys. The Three Stooges, The Three Musketeers, what ever you want to call them, you know the boys that I’m talking about. What you wouldn’t have guessed, though, is why they were complaining. They were complaining that recess was ending because they were too busy working on presenting their college vocabulary. They wanted recess to continue so they could continue to work on our writing unit.
That is why I teach with technology.
***I wrote this on Halloween and thought I posted it. Better late than never.***
This is normally Ben’s series, but I’m going to hijack it today. If you want to read his previous four posts click here. My school choose to “celebrate” “Halloween” on Friday. I use quotes around celebrate because if we were to actually celebrate something, some parents would object due to religious beliefs. I put quotes around Halloween because that holiday offends even more members of our school. I digress.
We had our Harvest Fest on Friday. As with most days when students are going to consume large quantities of candy and numerous cupcakes, the learning was few and far between. I had two bright, very bright, educational moments on Friday, both of which included technology. I teach READ 180, by Scholastic, with 18 struggling fourth grade readers. They are all below grade level in reading. Each three weeks of READ 180 is broken into a workshop. The end of each workshop contains a very scaffolded writing activity. This workshop was about firefighters and ended with students writing a paragraph about why firefighting is dangerous. We spent a day creating a web of ideas. We spent a day taking the web and filling in the ideas into a very scripted planning page with numerous sentence starters and built in transition words. We spent another day taking the planning page and turning it into a five sentence paragraph. We spent yet another day self-assessing our work. After four days of work, it would be expected to have some decent paragraphs. I had two out of 18 that I would call decent at best. I was flabbergasted and deflated.
This gets us to Friday. Because the day was virtually useless but I don’t believe in wasting days, I decided to have the students type their paragraphs. What happened next was truly magical. All of the students, even the numerous students that are quivering with energy on regular days, were totally focused. They all typed, and more importantly, they all became obsessed with the red and green squiggly lines under their mistakes. They revised and edited. They fixed spelling mistakes. They corrected their grammar. They helped each other. Every students’ writing improved dramatically on a day when most students weren’t even working, and it was all due to technology.
With the way my daily schedule is setup, I was left with an hour at the end of the day after all of the Harvest Fest events had concluded. Don’t ask me why–it’s complicated, just believe me. I broke one of my own ed tech rules. The laptop cart was still in my room from the paragraph writing lesson earlier in the day with my reading students. I told my class for the last hour of the day they could just play on the computers. You know, like a technological babysitter. I was tired, and I’m not proud of it.
My wife and kids were still in my classroom from the Harvest Fest. I was talking with them, and something made me look up at my class. The room was far too quite for the pandemonium that was supposed to be occurring. I realized that my class was broken up into two different groups. One group was busy playing multi-player math games at multiplication.com. The other group was finishing up their iMovie poetry projects from earlier in the week. When I said go play on the computers, I expected the class to flock to the usual kids websites like y8.com or nitrome.com.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of a group of students (and myself a little) when I saw all of these students so actively engaged in their own learning on a Friday afternoon following multiple pounds of candy and cupcakes.
These are two of the reason why I teach with technology.
In the previous two parts of this series, I discussed how technology gives students a voice and helps them get along. Today, I thought of another reason…
I read a blog post yesterday by a blogger I really admire. But he wrote about something that I didn’t completely agree with. So I left a comment in which I explained my own beliefs and respectfully expressed my disagreement. And then he responded. And I responded to that. And he responded to me again. It was, if I can use my favorite and most over-used adjective, awesome.
This blogger, Greg Pincus, whose blog regularly provides me with insightful, inspiring, and helpful reading, lives about 3,000 miles away from me and we’ve never met. But in the course of a few hours we had a really exciting and satisfying “conversation” about teaching reading. The ability to have discussions like this and to learn about others’ viewpoints is one of the many reasons I teach with technology.
I want my students to understand that there isn’t one right answer to almost every (non-math) problem. Technology, particularly the millions of blogs out there but also including other social media and networks, makes it possible to examine the viewpoints of others. More than that, though, technology offers the opportunity to understand and respect the viewpoints of others. And more than that, technology offers the opportunity to have a discussion about important topics. And that, my friends, truly is awesome.
How else could people from completely different backgrounds, points of view, and locations have meaningful discussions about their opinions? Technology allows me to teach my students (among others) these incredibly important ideas:
- There are others out there with opinions that differ from yours
- Just because someone disagrees with your opinions and beliefs doesn’t make them wrong
- Conversation about our differences can lead to mutual respect and understanding
We could set up conversations about our differences in the classroom among ourselves. But it’s so much more meaningful and powerful to allow these discussions to happen via technology, which knows no geographic and philosophical boundaries. I want my students to become, above all, THINKERS. And the conversations that technology makes possible allows for this to happen in all kinds of new ways.
There are countless examples recently of how this is occurring. Controversial blog posts about the value of educational technology, what teachers really want parents to know, and others demonstrate the value of discourse. These two posts alone have generated perhaps thousands of comments and responses via blog, twitter, and facebook.
We get some thought provoking comments, too. In fact, just yesterday someone commented on our “Lessons Learned” post and it made me think of lots of things I wanted to say.
So why not get your students in on the conversation? If not on these topics, then on others. No matter their age and no matter if you’re a 1:1 school or only have one computer in your classroom, it’s totally possible.
The power of communication. One of the many reasons I teach with technology.
Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/88543347@N00/232025953
You can read Part One of this series by clicking here.
A few months ago, I had an aha! moment that made me say “now THIS is why I teach with technology.” I blogged about it, and I’ve continued to think about how to explain why I integrate so much technology into my teaching.
My second reason is this: Technology gives students a voice. Allow me to explain…
What I’ve noticed, over time, is that technology gives an outlet to students who don’t often express themselves in class…students who rarely speak up, students who go unnoticed. When you give them tech tools to use, it’s an amazing thing to watch. Students like those I’m describing, when charged with creating using tools such as Glogster, iMovie, Garageband, and others, flourish. This “new” and “different” way of expressing themselves seems to appeal to them, and seems to give them the confidence to step up, do their best, and excel. In turn, this brings them into the spotlight and earns them attention and praise from people who may not normally provide them with those things–classmates, teachers, parents, etc. It can all have a snowball-type of effect. The confidence grows and grows. And so does achievement.
I had a student last year who really struggled in reading and writing (which is often the case with the students I’m describing). But she had somewhat of a breakthrough during a class backchannelling activity. We were chatting in a backchannel during a webcast about how to become a better writer. She added a comment into the backchannel that was completely brilliant. This was a girl who hardly EVER spoke up in class without being prompted and cajoled. I really think it was due to the nature of the technology that she added this comment. The backchannel gave her a forum…a low-risk forum…to speak her mind. And it led to her receiving a ton of follow up comments and praise from the other students (and from me). I really think the technology, in this situation, empowered her to speak up and share her great idea. If it was just a regular low-tech class discussion, I don’t think it would have happened.
Please don’t think that I’m trying to say that technology is the be-all end-all cure for what ails our educational system. Far from it. What I am saying, though, is that technology offers many benefits that are often overlooked. Chief among these is the fact that it gives students a voice, no matter what their skill level.
I think this is important to consider as we more forward into a (hopefully) tech-centered, student-centered 21st century learning environment. And it’s not just true about technology–it’s true about many other things that are often among the first things to fall victim to budget cuts–music, art, etc. These subjects, along with technology, reach kids and appeal to them sometimes in ways that the “traditional” curriculum does not.
So this is why I teach with technology–one of the reasons, at least–technology connects with kids and gives them a voice whereas without it, they might have one that isn’t heard.
The reasons I teach with technology are so many that I can’t possibly explain them all in one post. Part One involves our recent Amazing Race project, which we’ll be writing about during the rest of this month (or your can read about it in full on page 2 of our June newsletter).
[...]
The reasons I teach with technology are so many that I can’t possibly explain them all in one post. Part One involves our recent Amazing Race project, which we’ll be writing about during the rest of this month (or your can read about it in full on page 2 of our June newsletter).
The short version of part one is as follows: I teach with technology because it helps students get along. Of course, there’s a little bit more to it than that. Bear with me as I tell a little story….
For the Amazing Race project, students were placed into groups of three. Now, teachers know that there is a lot that goes into grouping students. And there are many questions to consider–Should you let students choose their groups? Should you group by ability? Should your groups be heterogenous? Et cetera, et cetera.
We opted to group them completely at random by drawing names. For the most part, it worked out splendidly. The groupings were generally diverse in terms of learning styles and abilities. But of course, when you randomly assign groups, there’s always that one group that doesn’t (how do we put this?) “gel.” The group I’m speaking of consisted of a girl and boy who pretty much have an “oil and water” type of relationship. She annoys him to no end and he does the same to her.
In a project designed to last three weeks, a pairing such as this one presented me with a couple of conundrums: Should I split them up? Both certainly begged me to do so for the first three days. Should I keep them together and cross my fingers? Both certainly attempted to persuade me NOT to do this for the first three days.
What did I opt to do? I put my faith in the power of technology and the design of the project. I decided to believe that both of these things would help this dynamic duo overcome their antipathy toward one another. And in the end, it turned out that I was right.
The excitement of participating in a competitive project that involved challenging web searches, scanning QR codes, and (apologies to the principal) a lot of running around, helped these two sworn “enemies” forget their differences and work together for the final 10 days of the project. It turns out that they were having so much fun and so engaged in learning with computers that at some point they simply decided to give up the fight and work together. The alternative…sitting out and not participating…just wasn’t acceptable to them. This technology project was too awesome to be missed.
So did technology help these two students become best friends? Not by a long shot. But I do think the excitement of a meaningful, engaging project that incorporated accessible and fun technology tools helped these two students put aside their differences so that they could participate.
I’m not saying the next time the State Department sits down with the Syrian or North Korean government they can fix things by creating a podcast together or by commenting on each other’s Voicethread projects. I’m just saying that I like teaching with technology because it can inspire students who don’t normally get along to bury the hatchet. The excitement that technology brings to a learning environment is a powerful thing.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to our blog. Part Two will focus on leveling the playing field and giving students a voice.
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Why I Teach With Technology: Part Four
This is the fourth in our series about why we are using technology in our classrooms. View the other three parts by clicking here.
Technology makes the previously impossible possible. That’s why I use it in my teaching.
There are so many examples I could use to illustrate this point: virtual field trips, [...]
This is the fourth in our series about why we are using technology in our classrooms. View the other three parts by clicking here.
Technology makes the previously impossible possible. That’s why I use it in my teaching.
There are so many examples I could use to illustrate this point: virtual field trips, Skyping with experts, global collaborative projects, and so on and so on. But I’ll choose something that happened today…
Each week, my class is assigned a “Problem of the Week” (POW for short). This is a multi-step word problem that ties into the concepts we’re studying in math class. I usually try to make them pretty challenging because, ideally, I’d like the students working with their parents and families to complete it.
One big barrier to students’ success on the POW is that, even th0ugh I introduce the problem help them get started at school, by the time they get home, they aren’t sure what to do. Enter technology.
I decided today to do something to help…I am starting a weekly vodcast that students can watch at home to assist them with the problem. This should help parents. too. (Sometimes they find the POW a little tricky).
Some things that need to be said at this point:
Problem of the Week Vodcast 10/21/11 from Engaging Educators on Vimeo.
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