Are You Integrating or Innovating in the Classroom?
This session is a participatory session. It's a sharing of ideas and thoughts while also hosting a friendly debate on what the best practices are for our students in today's classroom. Although this session focuses on the teaching practices and strategies that we can use to best meet the needs of our individual learners, I also shared tools, apps, and student projects from my own classroom.
What is the role of technology today? Is it something that we add to existing lessons? Is supplementing our instruction with a piece of technology engaging for our students?
Integrating versus Innovating. What is the difference? Who becomes the focus and driving force behind all of our decisions?
See ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards for Students.
Here are the different tools we need to re-evaluate to ensure they are being used in a way that supports innovation in our classrooms while meeting the needs of our individual learners.
What is the role of technology today? Is it something that we add to existing lessons? Is supplementing our instruction with a piece of technology engaging for our students?
Integrating versus Innovating. What is the difference? Who becomes the focus and driving force behind all of our decisions?
See ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards for Students.
Here are the different tools we need to re-evaluate to ensure they are being used in a way that supports innovation in our classrooms while meeting the needs of our individual learners.
- PowerPoint presentations: Alternatives: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories created in PowerPoint, but by using hyperlink buttons, creates an interactive story in which the reader is engaged.
- Interactive Whiteboards: Here is a blog that mirrors much of the discussion that we have about the positives and negatives of using Interactive Whiteboards: Interactive Whiteboard Insights. Students can also engage in a Chalk Talk: When Walls Talk.
- Student Presentations: Avoid the "about" presentations. Alternatives: Internet Mysteries which can be published on wikis, Tackk, or Weebly for Education.
- Textbooks: How are they being used? Does the learning change if it's a digital textbook? Students expect their content to be interactive. Alternatives: Student-created collaborative textbooks created on wikispaces. Here is the one that my learners have created for our science class. Livebinders is another way to have students create their own textbook. Here is my students' Poetry LiveBinder. Here's an explanation of LiveBinders: Plugged In: Coming to Your Live...Mentor Texts. Yet another option for collaboratively build a resource is Blendspace (formerly EdCanvas). By having students collaboratively create their own textbooks while reaching their learning styles and multiple intelligences. Here's a piece I wrote about curating content: Three's Company When Curating Content.
- Testing: How can we evaluate what our students are truly learning? It's difficult with standardized tests as a wrong answer doesn't necessarily denote a lack of understanding lust as a correct answer doesn't indicate mastery. Alternatives: Students reflect on their learning and have conversations with peers through blogging. My students use KidBlog.Here's an example of how we used it one day. My students also set personal goals and we chart their progress through an app called Confer. Here is a video explaining how Confer works. (As a side note: my students use the app Notability to document through text, photos, and audio of what we do each day in class. If a student misses a class, he/she can pull that note up and get the information or it can be emailed home.) Other ways to know what students know is through the use of Google Drive, Padlet, TodaysMeet, and PollEverywhere. This article explains each one of these tools: How Do We Know What They Know and Where Do We Go From Here.
- iPads: The challenge with a tablet like an iPad is that is can turn students into consumers instead of promoting them to become producers. Here is a Bloom's Taxonomy of Apps. Many of the apps on the chart can bridge several of the categories depending on how your students use them. Some of my students' favorites are Animoto, iMovie, Songify, and Toontastic. Here is a list of Apps for Multiple Intelligences and 100 iPad Apps Perfect for Middle School for you to use to support the learning in your classroom. Be sure to evaluate whether an app engages your student as a consumer or a producer.
- If you have read Dan Pink's book, Drive, you are familiar with the concept. Innovation Day and Genius Hour began in the business world, but was adapted for the classroom. Several teachers have adapted it for their grade level or content area. Here's what happened on our first Innovation Day.
- Genius Hour is lead by a driving question that a student has. You can connect through the Global Genius Hour project and follow ongoing conversations on #GeniusHour Twitter chats. Sometimes students struggle wiht creativity. Here are some tips in guiding them through the process: How to Unleash the Creative Child.
- Here is the wiki my students created to showcase all of the the work that they did before and during our Innovation Day. Not only did they use a planning sheet to prepare, but they researched innovators to discover what qualities they had in common and published faKebook pages on each of them. The digital projects were published using tools like Prezi, Voki, StoryJumper, and Animoto. Here is a blog that I wrote about our Innovation Day: Time to Innovate.
Please stay in touch. I would love to continue these conversations. You can follow me on my blog at [email protected], on Twitter and Instagram @juliedramsay or on my Facebook author/educator page, Julie D. Ramsay.