EDG 693 Reflections

"What have you taken away from this course that will permanently change the way you teach in your classroom?"

I have been teaching for 24 years, mostly in middle school language arts. I have prided myself on keeping up with new trends in education and being a life-long learner, but EDG 693 and Dr. Wirtz have pushed me to my limit this summer.

At the end of last school year, to prepare for a professional development I had to lead on tne new standards, I was making a creating a powerpoint. I walked into the media center where our awesome media specialist, Heather Warrell, was talking to students. I overheard her say to these students, "Powerpoint is so yesterday! You all need to try Prezi!" I was convicted. I went back to work and played with Prezi all weekend, putting together a presentation about the Kentucky Core Academic Standards. You can view it here:

KCAS June 6 & 7 on Prezi

Heather also challenged me to participate in the school blog. (That can be seen at http://okhms.nelson.kyschools.us/index.htm ) I didn't realize how hopelessly outdated I was in technology, however, until I took EDG 693 this summer. This class required me to deal with technology in ways I never have before, and it also encouraged me to try new things.
At first I kept my 13-year-old duaghter right by my side so she could help me troubleshoot, but after I got my confidence, I was doing things by myself, like registering for the educator's Skype collaborative site and contacting people to participate in a collaborativce project with my class. Even starting my own blog was a challenge, and I rejoiced every time I figured something out, like the time I was able to figure out how to edit a previously posted entry.

What this class has done is encourage me to use the technology that students are comfortable with and integrate it into my classroom instruction. I would not have done this without being thrown into the pool and forced to swim on my own.

I hope I am an inspiration to others--if a 46-year-old teacher can use the newest technology, so can you! I have already talked to a few teachers about the projects I created in this class, and I am excited to implement these plans next year. It feels great to know that I already have teachers willing to collaborate with me, and I know they will keep challenging me to try new things. I really feel like once you stop learning yourself, it's time for you to get out of teaching. This class helped challenge me to learn even more, proving to myself that I am still in the game, still enjoying what I do, and still willing and able to keep on learning along with my students!

Instructional Plan: Interviewing the Elderly

Communication via technology is the area of language arts that has changed the most in the last decade. Through the social networking site Facebook and the free services of Skype, my middle school daughter has kept in touch with exchange students from Australia, Germany, and Japan. When I was her age this would have required a postage stamp and several day’s wait or an expensive long-distance phone call.

Another significant change of the past few years is the number of grandparents raising grandchildren. Most recent census data shows that “Grandparents are raising nearly 3 million children in the United States… That's up 8 percent over the past decade, largely because of the recession” (Robertson, 2011 January 27). The fastest growing demographic group in the United States is that of adults 85 years of age and older. “Most children view the later years as a time of decline and loss, rather than wellness and personal growth, and a time of isolation and loneliness rather than healthy involvement in the community….At very early ages, children have internalized ideas that serve as a breeding ground for ageism (age prejudice) and gerontophobia (fear of aging), that cloud a healthier view” (“UT Health Science,” 2011). The “Interviewing the Elderly” unit will attempt to increase communication between youth and the elderly in hopes that students’ understanding of and attitudes toward the elderly will improve.

I will be completing this unit with an 8th grade group in collaboration with a language arts teacher, social studies teacher, and media specialist.

Learning targets for the unit:

1. I can construct interview questions and conduct and interview in order to discover personal, historical information. (W.8.7.)

2. I can use technology in order to edit recorded information and form a cohesive, clear narrative or story and keep the audience engaged. (W.8.7)

3. I can use integrate media technology into a presentation to add interest to a piece. (SL.8.5)

4. I can organize a video presentation in a way that engages my audience initially and provides them with a satisfying conclusion. (W.H/SS.2a, W.H/SS.2f)

5. I can compile documents, artifact, and information received in an interview to develop one narrative or story about a person. (W.H/SS.2b)

6. I can use editing technology to make logical transitions in a video presentation. (W.H/SS.2c)

7. I can create a video presentation that has an appropriate tone and acceptable vocabulary. (W.H/SS.2d, W.H/SS.2e)

During the three-week unit, 8th graders will be paired with an elderly citizen at a local nursing home. By the close of the unit, they will have interviewed this person, taped and edited the interview, and created a human interest piece.

Learning movie editing software and the basics of photography and videotaping will be an integral part of instruction, as well as interviewing techniques and formulating questions that elicit information. Activities that increase awareness of the challenges of elderly citizens will be conducted, and students will read The Graduation of Jake Moon, a novel by Barbara Park that describes how life changes for a boy after his grandfather with Alzheimer’s comes to live with him.

The culminating activity for this unit will be a red carpet screening at the nursing home one evening to show all video stories and pay homage to the interviewees. Parents and family members of students, caregivers of elderly citizens, community members, and the local television news station will be invited to attend. Planning this celebration will be the responsibility of the learners—informing community members, contacting local media, sending invitations to caregivers, etc. The red-carpet evening will showcase not only the talent and creativity of our middle school students, but also positive cross-generational relationships.

The complete unit can be viewed at the following link.

Locating and Partnering with Co-Teacher

For the past four years I have traveled to Managua, Nicaragua to serve on a mission team. We visit neighborhoods to meet the residents and hand out toiletries, and then we go to the local church and present a program. Afterwards we feed the children at the program—usually 150-200 children. I am in love with the country of Nicaragua and feel homesick for it when I have to return to the states.  

Each year when I return, I present to the students at my school. My goal is to make them love Nicaragua as much as I do and to truly appreciate the lifestyle they live in the United States.

While searching on www.education.skype.com I first looked for people who would peer edit with my students.  I made a few initial contacts but heard nothing, so I created my own project, inviting a class of middle school students to partner with my students and collaborate on writing. I was pleased to get a reply from a man from Costa Rica. Guido Toro is a journalist and audiovisual producer. He currently serves as the director of El Imparcial newspaper, a local paper in Costa Rica. He also produces news for other media companies in the radio and TV field. He expressed interest in a collaborative project, and I was excited to have a partner in Central America so near to Nicaragua. (Mr. Toro’s profile is available at http://education.skype.com/users/13765#/users/13765/?tab=favourites&_suid%3D400)

Because of Mr. Toro’s position, I had to tweak my idea a little, and I have decided to use Mr. Toro initially as a guest speaker through Skype and then have him conference with students via Skype on their video productions of the elderly, which I described in my last blog.

Mr. Toro can offer my students technical advice about producing short human interest “video stories” in the initial teleconference, then when stories are posted on line, he can view the videos and conference with production crews to give feedback and advice on editing. The school web page will be used to post student videos. Mr. Toro will be able to view the videos here, then we will use Skype to conference in small production groups.  (The school website can be viewed at http://okhms.nelson.kyschools.us/index.htm .)

 I want my students to learn video production and human interest storytelling, but I also want them to develop an appreciation for the culture of Central America in addition to the photos, stories and artifacts that I bring home from my visits to Nicaragua. Therefore, part of the assessment will involve a look at student attitudes toward that area of the world, and Mr. Toro will share more than just technical knowledge—he will be sharing anecdotes and personal experiences. Most of the assessment for the video storytelling collaborative aspect with Mr. Toro will be affective as well. The video stories will be evaluated according to a rubric that students establish, but I would like to have an indication of the value students place on the knowledge they gain from Mr. Toro. They will be required to write down any information they gain from Mr. Toro and tell how they were able to use this information in their production.

Kentucky Core Academic Standards that will be addressed follow.
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly. 

1. Come to discussions prepared, having read or researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion.
2. Follow rules for collegial discussions, track progress toward specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed.
3. Pose questions that elicit elaboration and respond to others’ questions and comments with relevant observations and ideas that bring the discussion back on topic as needed.
4. Acknowledge new information expressed by others and, when warranted, modify their own views.

My second collaborating educator is Ann Kelley, 8^th grade communication arts teacher in Lamar, Missouri, near the home of Mark Twain.

Skype address: http://education.skype.com/users/13709

School e-mail address: akelley@lamar.k12.mo.us

 Ann Kelley and I will be leading book groups with 8^th graders in our respective schools. We will select books that related to our geographical area in some way—she mentioned Mark Twain since he lived near her town, and I thought about Cynthia Rylant, who writes about life in rural areas.

At the beginning of the year we will start out book groups, reading two books a quarter—one she selects and one I select. We will have one Skype book discussion group with our students to compare and discuss these books. The next semester, our students will select the two books that will be read. Being able to discuss the culture of the geographic area with people from that area will be valuable for our students.

Assessment will be done through student participation and comments during the Skype discussion and through extended written response questions that require students to compare the two novels read.

Kentucky Core Academic Standards addressed:

Reading 1: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Reading 2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

Reading 5: Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

Service Learning Project: Telling Your Story

Elderly people have acquired knowledge through experience, and our students could benefit from this. In this service learning unit, students will get to know an elderly person in their community and will use technology to help this person tell his or her story. These digital stories will then be posted on-line and will be available for viewing at the local public library and nursing homes in our area. Sixth through eighth graders in the technology (STLP) club will be conducting interviews in pairs at a local nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

To view this entire project, open the following document:

 https://acrobat.com/#d=N8zekf9MSibUUcmMEbAmlw

Using On-Line Resources in the Classroom

Getting to know your students is easy in a language arts classroom where students spend so much of their time writing about themselves, discussing books that related to them personally, and composing poems about their hopes and dreams. Next school year I am hoping to use technology as an additional way to learn about my students and to have them get to know more about someone else.

I am planning a digital storytelling unit in which they use available technology to record audio, video, and embed pictures and other documents in order tell a story about themselves. Once they have learned the technology and the basic format of a human interest piece, I want them to find someone else to interview--a grandparent, community figure, someone with a story to tell--and have them use technology to tell the story of that person. Two on-line resources I have found for digital storytelling are:

http://www.storycenter.org/

http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/
This project will change how I teach because it will be my first attempt to embrace technology in my classroom. I have worked extensively with a Smart Board and had my students in the computer lab for years working on Microsoft Word and Publisher, but these are relatively simple uses of technology. Creating digital stories will be a stretch for me. I have noticed with my own teenage daughter that the new craze is to make movies and post them to You Tube, and I think I could use the interest students have in movie-making to teach them basic narrative formats and human-interest feature stories.  Creating digital stories is a ready-made way to publish student work to a wide audience. We have a daily news program at my school, and I think our digital stories would be a nice addition to the morning news. Writing pieces typed on a word processor were much more difficult to "publish" to the school audience.School Tube has an example of  telling someone's story that I think would be a good example for my students.

Engaging Learners

For the past two years at my school, we have been  studying the methods described in Robert Marzano's Classroom Instruction that Works. The methods are research-based techniques that encourage rigorous learning. Since I tested and saw the validity of these techniques, I decided to read The Highly Engaged Classroom, also by Marzano and Debra Pickering.

One strategy I currently use to engage students is through personal connection. I make it a point to talk to them and get to know them personally. Relationship building with students is essential if you want to engage them in your classroom. In The Highly Engaged Classroom, chapter 2, Marzano discusses the importance of building positive student-teacher relationships in order to get them engaged.

Another strategy is through having them keep track of their own progress so that they know where they are now and where they need to be. Giving them more responsibility for their own learning is important. This is an instructional technique that is described in Classroom Instruction that Works and in The Highly Engaged Classroom, chapter 5.

A third strategy is through time management. Keeping the pace of instruction moving by changing activities often and allowing for little "down" time is an effective way to keep students engaged. This is mentioned in chapter 2 of The Highly Engaged Classroom.