Lessons Learned

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness

Category: Tablets

Virtual School Pedagogy – Oldies but Goodies

Note: My international school is just starting virtual school for the current school year, so we are now just experiencing what many schools have been doing for most of the year. I posted the following to our Wellness blog.

I hung up my instructional technology hat a ways back, so I can’t offer the latest tools, tips, or techniques that many of our staff use in their virtual learning delivery. I can offer pedagogical strategies that have worked in the past and can definitely be supported through technology to enhance learning in virtual schools.

Concept/Mind Maps

Concept/Mind maps help students make their thinking visible, primarily when representing connections between ideas, events, topics, etc. Concept maps also can be used as collaboration tools.

An excellent way to use concept maps for virtual learning is to use an online provider like Mindmeister. Students can share their Mindmeister concept maps with you to access their thinking, especially for formative assessment of their understanding as the unit of study progresses. Virtual collaboration is supported if you partner with students or place them in groups to work together to use mind maps for multiple purposes. Here is a mind map template for essential questions one teacher provided his students. Look at a blog post describing how students used concept maps to answer the essential questions for their units of study at a couple schools.

Learning Activity Types via TPACK

Several American professors came together in 2010-11 to organize learning activity types (LAT) into nine subject areas supported by technology. They published articles about their efforts. Here is one. They provide research-supported pedagogies in their Learning Activity Types website hosted at the College of William & Mary School of Education. They apply the TPACK construct for planning purposes. Look to their website by going to the left side menu to select from the nine learning activity-type disciplines. The supporting technologies are from 2011, so adapt ones that still exist today and/or find the latest iteration or replacement tool that best supports each pedagogy. Image Source

Multimedia Essays (Media Mashups)

Writing essays is one of the most precious skills that we teach our students. But sometimes, our students can benefit from an alternative learning experience and assessment that engages the full range of their ICL skills. We can differentiate and add complexity to the standard writing process by having students create multimedia essays where they “mash up” various sources of media to communicate their thinking. At the time, a William and Mary doctoral student describes her work with multimedia essays in this podcast. Image Source

Personalized Learning System (PLS)

Students (and teachers) use technology to access information, to make meaning, to create and communicate their learning via a personalized set of resources for learning… a “go-to” 24/7 technology and information access toolkit – a Personal Learning System (PLS).

We guide our students to work as architects designing and maximizing their “learning flow” (think of the term workflow) while also engaging in time management techniques to increase efficiency and purposeful productivity. Self-directed and growth-minded students use devices, apps, Web tools, and information sources, putting themselves in charge of their learning. Here is a web resource describing what a Personal Learning System can look like and a planning document for students to work with. Image Source

Sketchnoting (Visual Note-Taking)

Our students live in a media-rich world. They think in images, video, and sound while constantly making neural connections. The creation apps on phones, tablets, and computers offer students pathways to draw, audio record, insert images/video, and embed hyperlinks to information sources, all personalized. This is where visual note-taking comes in. We can expand note-taking choices beyond text recording into multiple modalities by guiding students to use mind maps, colors, shapes, images, and digital grouping by dragging and dropping objects and connecting lines to record their thinking. Image Source

The Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono created this approach to decision-making and problem-solving that guides users to think in terms of types of thinking and perspective. We can apply them for individuals and groups of students to use as they process information. Here is a helpful overview and a teacher’s application in her classroom. Image Source

Thinking Routines

In the book Making Thinking Visible, Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morisson help readers understand the power of thinking routines to help students process big ideas and make their thinking visible. Teachers routinely use the thinking routines in their regular face-to-face classes. One can also choose from a variety of technologies to also use in virtual school. Here is a dated web resource on the supportive tools one can use. However, the application of the routines is sound. If you are new to the routines, you can review an article by Ron Ritchhart and David Perkins entitled Making Thinking Visible. Also, look to go through the Harvard Project Zero Thinking Routine Toolbox. Image Source

WebQuests

WebQuests are a natural pedagogy for virtual schools because they’re already web-based. They connect inquiry and research skills to students working in teams using their communication skills to present their findings. WebQuests are online research expeditions built by teachers that put the students into roles to find information from selected sites and other resources as they attempt to solve a real problem and/or answer a question. The students in teams analyze, curate, and then use the information to create a learning product to demonstrate their understanding. WebQuests are NOT internet scavenger hunts with students just going through a list of links. True WebQuests have the students performing in the authentic roles of historians, economists, mathematicians, etc. The culminating project is usually a performance task in which the students present their findings while playing their roles or applying the learning to produce a product. Image Source

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A significant wellness connection for these pedagogies is that they engage students in PERMAH while exercising their Character Strengths. Collaboration amplifies Relationships with students using their strengths of kindness, leadership, and teamwork, to name just a few character strength applications. The process of creating definitely has students applying their strength of creativity within the pillars of Engagement and Accomplishment.

So how do we take these oldies but goody strategies and other current innovative and effective practices to spread them throughout our virtual school? One approach would be to form a virtual school design team in each division who become busy bees finding out what’s happening in virtual classrooms elaborating on ideas, and making connections to new approaches. They then cross-pollinate throughout the division and potentially between divisions. 😁

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Using Video to Share Instructional Practices

screencastingWe can record videos of fun activities, celebrations, special events, etc., to share with parents what their children experience during the school day. We also need to record instructional practices, innovative learning, and examples of the concepts and skills our students are learning.

This is especially important when parents might not be familiar with rich curricula like the PYP and Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) programs that guide students to engage their higher-level thinking skills as they construct understanding.

With this in mind, the following is a short video of Cecilia Rios, one of the innovative Kindergarten teachers at my school. Stay tuned for more examples.

Making Thinking Visible in the Kindergarten Classroom

Scaffolded Screencasting by Kindergartners

I am collaborating with our excellent Kindergarten team of teachers to prepare an assessment for their students. The students will use Educreations on the iPad to draw and voice their understanding of the water cycle. They are experienced in screencasting.

We will provide three levels of scaffolding for this project by inserting blank images of the water cycle into Educreations. The first level of support will be the image below that the teachers use in class so the students are familiar with it. The words describing each stage of the cycle are blanked out, which should prompt the students to remember from their classroom lessons.

Level 1 Cycle

The second image provides less support leaving it up to students to draw arrows and provide precipitation. The image will be new to the students.

Level 2

The third level of scaffolding will be not to have an image, thus leaving the students with a blank canvas to draw in their understanding of land, water, and atmosphere. We have a few weeks of lessons until the students make their thinking visible. I will then post a new post to share examples of their work.

Communicating Understanding and Documenting Student Learning

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Our First and Second Graders recently completed projects using ScreenChomp to create screencasts on their iPads. The learning goal for the students was to reflect to communicate their responses to the essential questions from the units of inquiry they were completing. A big challenge was representing their thinking about their learning visually and communicating their answers to the questions in their second language (French, Spanish, or Dutch).

The First Graders responded to the following questions from the People Around the World unit.

  • What is my daily life like?
  • How is my life similar to the lives of children in other countries?
  • How is my life different from the lives of children in other countries?

The Second Graders responded to the following questions from the Weather unit.

  • What is the weather?
  • What makes the weather change?
  • How does weather affect people’s lives?

Here is an example of one student’s screencast.

iBooks and One’s Personal Learning System

Mark and I discussed yesterday’s iBook textbook initiative on the Edtech Co-op podcast. The show will soon be posted to the blog and iTunes. Hopefully, it offers some new ideas and background information on textbooks to add to your thinking about teaching and learning using digital resources.

Here are some of my main takeaways from the talk:

We need to remember that the iBook creation tool is just one part of a learning system for our students that includes a huge array of apps for learning, connectivity to a world of resources, cameras, and a mic for recording, all in a mobile device thus allowing for personal learning both in and outside of school. The iPad offers a Leatherman-type learning platform and supports the connectivity of the “1 to Many” movement, so we must remember not to see iBooks in isolation.

As future iPads are introduced, the question arises of what a student’s interface is when working with the iBook while also wanting to access other apps simultaneously. For example, we spoke in the podcast about thinking and the note-taking tool embedded in the iBook. Wouldn’t it help learners even more if they could take notes in a mind map and audio record their thoughts while reading an iBook? These two tools may be included in future iBooks, but Mark pointed out that some apps do these two functions. The barrier is that the student would have to continuously hit the home button to get out of the iBook to access the learning tools she wants to access.

This leads me to wonder if Apple can make some productivity apps more widget-like, where they could float on the screen while the iBook is open. It would be nice if a calculator, mind mapper, voice recorder, specific subject/topic apps providing text and images like Britannica, or simply a video feed with a search engine could float on the screen so that a student can access these tools while he is reading in the iBook. Or Apple may offer the possibility of a split screen so that two apps can be opened simultaneously, or one can swipe to a second or third screen with opened apps, similar to Mission Control on the Mac. (Note: One can turn on “multitasking gestures” in Settings to hold a hand swipe between previously opened apps.)

This hope for access to apps to help the student learn beyond the iBook textbook connects to our discussion of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and our hope that Siri on future iPads will offer further supportive and adaptive structures to help all learners. Whether Apple will build in the UDL constructs to the iBook app or use Siri is not that important as long as the learning tools are added to the iPad. Many of our students would benefit if the text could be highlighted as the words are being read to them. Being able to voice record their ideas and thinking either into MP3 files or into text would be another helpful adaptive technology.

How about asking Siri to gather a listing of videos that explain the three branches of the Federal Government that could be watched in the corner of the screen while viewing one’s US Government iBook? The same goes for an art history iBook, which has a curious student wanting to see more images of Picasso’s Blue period and text from Britannica or other sources. It is only a few steps to make these events happen, but it would be nice if the student could be immersed in the learning process, only needing to swipe her finger and potentially make voice commands to access further information.

We also discussed teachers building their iBooks while wondering how classes could collaborate to create eTextbooks. Mark brought up several good points regarding current tools and having access to these eTextbooks on the web for collaboration. Listen to the podcast for further details, as there was much to that discussion.

A connected topic is how a teacher could design and publish an iBook that could include interactive modules, as demonstrated in the Apple iBook video. My interest in developing eTextbooks goes back to a post about “information brokers” who could represent the publishers, media providers, and interactive module creators like Explore Learning to provide a marketplace for iBook creators to purchase copyrighted material to add to the iBooks. While there is so much free and non-copyright material on the web, one really would benefit from including, for example, Discovery Learning video segments and text resources from the vast library Gale offers. Another point is how much of the media and interactive modules would be in each iBook, or would one need to be connected to the web to receive the feed? Again, listen to the podcast as Mark unpacks this topic.

We talk about students “making meaning” and “constructing understanding.” A portion of this learning process is having access to the information and then having the scaffolding to bring it together. What might this process look like for a student using an iPad and iBooks? I am picturing a humanities course with a student reading the assigned iBook historical novel, reviewing her iBook textbook, and using various apps to seek more information while pulling his thinking together in one place, say a mind map or simple interactive whiteboard app. The interactive whiteboard app would be populated over time with screen captures from various sources, notes from the iBooks, and audio files of ideas the student recorded. The building of understanding stage occurs with the help of essential and guiding questions the teacher lists in the iBook textbook or through the school Learning Management System (LMS).

By dragging notes, screen captures, etc., into groups of shared ideas and then using mind mapping lines to make connections between them, the student constructs her understanding by working to answer the questions while making further “brain pop” idea notes in the parking lot section of the IWB screen. Technology could support the learning process as students use technology literacy to choose the best tools/apps for their individual learning needs.

Mark brought up an additional point about this learning process of using all these tools: the students could export their notes or the entire learning document/mind map to be shared with the class for further collaboration and connection-making. Again, it’s pretty cool beyond just reading a digital textbook.

As we know, change starts with validating where you are and what you are doing (the familiar) and is usually most effective when we take small steps that shift us to new ideas and behaviors. The iBook, with its potential for interactivity via simulations, manipulative maps and charts, gaming activities, media, etc., and access to the web, can support the shifting process. We empower students to use their personal learning systems to access information, learning activities, and tools for building their understanding and for being creative to construct projects to communicate their learning. EBook competitors like Kno and Push Pop Press can work with Amazon, Android device makers, and Microsoft to compete with what Apple offers, thus giving our students even more choices for personalized learning systems.

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Alphabet, Art, Teeth and Technology

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 Our first-grade teachers, Sally Laha and Laura Carew, recently taught a very interesting unit. The objective was to help the students learn about good dental health while applying their knowledge of the alphabet. The assessment included image creation and application by writing a sentence using their dental knowledge with their assigned alphabet letter.

Technology was used when the students drew images and wrote their sentences in Windows Journal on tablet computers. The teachers printed each Journal page to create their alphabet book. A digital version was also posted in Prezi for parents to view from home.

As a follow-up activity, the students used Kidspiration to create a diagram where they pulled image symbols onto the canvas, one for each letter of the alphabet (e.g., T for a tiger image). An additional learning objective was to have students further their understanding of how we categorize information using the library categories in Kidspiration (e.g., Ocean Life, Transportation).

It was something to hear the collaboration as the students searched in the different categories of the symbol library, sharing, “I found a ‘P’ picture in the animal library! Has anyone found a Q?” It was also something to see the students who did some lateral thinking as they went into the US States category to use state names to match their letters. Too bad no state name starts with “Q”. 🙂

Tablets Doing Double Duty

Michael Segedy, a teacher and IT Coordinator at TAS, recently shared an interesting way he could see tablets and inking do double duty for him and his IB students. Michael works to prepare his students for IB exams by giving them time to write assignments in class. The students use paper and pens just as they will on the exam. As Michael has a tablet and is used to receiving student work digitally, he supports his students’ writing by using the inking tools to make comments and ask questions in the students’ Word docs as his students go through the editing process.

The problem with helping his students think about and improve their writing from the timed sessions is that the work needs to be digital. He has the students type their work up in Word to move to digital editing. Michael shares that if his students had tablets, they could handwrite their timed writings and turn them into text using the provided software. The students get practice at handwriting in actual testing situations, and they can easily share their work with their teacher to further develop their thinking and writing- a great two-for-one technique.

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