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Five Keys to Engaging Students in Digital Learning Experiences

Page history last edited by Bill 9 years, 8 months ago

Five Keys to Engaging Students in Digital Learning Experiences

 

Direct Link to this Resource Collection:  http://bit.ly/CIU5Keys2014 

 

In his 2012 Kindle Single Why School, technology expert and educational change agent Will Richardson argues that classrooms as they are currently structured are failing our students.  "We focus on the easiest parts of the learning interaction -- information acquisition, basic skills, a bit of critical thinking, analysis -- accomplishments that can be easily identified and scored," he writes.  "Learning is relegated to the quantifiable" (Kindle location 227).  To create highly engaged learning spaces, Will believes, classrooms must instead be reimagined as places where students do work that matters with others -- a process introduced by sixth grade classroom teacher Bill Ferriter in this August 2014 presentation.

 


 

 

Today's Slides

 

Embedded below are the slides for today's session.  You can also download a PDF version of today's slides here.

 

 

 

VoiceThread Conversations as an Example of Doing Work that Matters

http://ed.voicethread.com

http://voicethread.com

 

Student sample: http://ed.voicethread.com/share/88781/ 

Student sample: https://ed.voicethread.com/share/4184340/ 

 

 

One skill that students must learn to be more efficient and effective learners in today's world is the difference between collaborative and competitive dialogue.  While competitive dialogue -- debates, advertisements, arguments -- have a place in our world, collaborative dialogue is far more productive for learning.  People engaged in collaborative dialogue see one another as learning partners -- members of the same team who can build new understandings together even when they disagree.  

 

Engaging students from classrooms on different continents in VoiceThread conversations about controversial issues could be a great way to give kids opportunities to have their thinking challenged simply because the cultural norms of a country will often define the attitudes and approach that individuals take towards finding solutions.  VoiceThread is a fantastic tool for cross-continent collaboration because the conversations are asynchronous -- which means differing time zones won't prevent students from interacting with one another in a meaningful way. 

 

Exploring Student VoiceThread Conversations

 

Working with partners, explore the student VoiceThread conversations titled Why Do People Hate and/or New York City Soda Ban.  Use the handout titled VoiceThread in Action to guide your reflections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Characteristics of Effective Communication

 

Even though participants in the best conversations see each other as intellectual equals that are worth learning from, persuasion -- trying to convince others to change their minds about the topic of study -- will inevitably make its way into most collaborative conversations.  Effective persuasion, Don Rothman argues, is not the kind of persuasion that students see modeled in most conversations.  Instead, effective persuasion is built on three key behaviors:

 

Respecting the views of others:  Truly changing someone's minds depends on finding connections between their core beliefs and the new directions you want them to consider.  That means the most persuasive individuals work to truly understand what other people are thinking.

 

Respectfully describing sources of disagreement: Changing minds also depends on being able to identify -- and then rationally explain -- the misguided arguments that people on issues.  When we understand the positions of others well enough that we can articulate them clearly and respectfully, we stand a better chance of pointing out flaws that need to be reconsidered.   

 

Sustaining conversations: The most persuasive individuals also collect as much information as they can about an issue before finalizing their own positions.  Doing so leads to a stronger final stance.  Collecting information depends on sustaining conversations with -- rather than silencing -- others.  As contradictory as it may seem, to be persuasive depends on careful listening.  

 

These handouts can be used by students to master Rothman's characteristics of effective persuasion:

 

Recognizing Multiple Perspectives

Collecting and Respecting Different Perspectives

Exploring Misguided Arguments

 

 

Structuring VoiceThread Conversations

 

Students need to learn the language of collaborative conversations before successfully participating in a VoiceThread conversation. This has to be practiced extensively in class.  Students also need to learn that good conversations are collaborative. In a collaborative conversation, they’re members of a team working together to explore a topic.  They should want to help each other learn more by listening to and challenging one another’s thinking.  Students are generally uncomfortable with these skills at the beginning of the year.

 

To help them develop a comfort level, I use these documents:

 

Learning About Conversation Behaviors

Scoring Student Participation in an Asynchronous Conversation

Commenting in an Asynchronous Conversation

 

VoiceThread Help Resources -- This link connects to the help resources found directly on the VoiceThread website.

 

 

 

Scoop.it as an Example of Doing Work that Matters

 

http://www.scoop.it

http://www.scoop.it/t/nyc-soda-ban

 

Student Project Handout:  http://bit.ly/TRContentCuration  

 

Recently, two of Bill's students used this handout to create a public collection of resources related to the New York City soda ban and to the costs of space exploration.  Notice that Bill's students posted a short annotation to every resource, explaining both the author's position and the rationale for adding that resource to their public collection.  Bill wrote about his experience with Scoop.it in the classroom here.

 

Curating public Scoop.it pages gives students opportunities to raise their voice on issues that matter -- an act of genuine agency that is available to everyone in today's easy-publish world -- and to have their thinking affirmed and/or challenged by commenters.  Public Scoop.it pages also give students opportunities to practice managing multiple streams of information and evaluating the reliability of online sources -- two additional skills that define literate 21st Century citizens.

 

But curating a public Scoop.it page is far less intimidating than maintaining a blog.  There's less content to generate and less writing to do.  That makes it a nice starting point for teachers and students that are interested in taking first steps towards publishing content for a global audience. 

 

 

 

#SUGARKILLS as an Example of Doing Work that Matters

 

http://sugarkills.us

https://wordpress.com/ 

 

The third example of giving students the opportunity to do work that matters that session presenter Bill Ferriter will share with participants is a #SUGARKILLS project that he integrated into his science classroom last year.  To learn more about the project and the role that it played in Bill's classroom, explore the following resources:

 

My Kids, a Cause and Our Classroom Blog - In this post written for Smartblogs Education, session presenter outlines the reasoning behind his #SUGARKILLS project, an effort to raise awareness about the amount of sugar in the foods that we eat every day that started after his students studied the ban on soda that the Mayor of New York City tried to put in place in 2013. 

  

#SUGARKILLS Blog - The final digital project that session presenter Bill Ferriter had his kids tackle when exploring the New York City soda ban was to use a blog to raise awareness about the amount of sugar in the foods that teens and tweens eat on a daily basis. 

 

#SUGARKILLS Interview - One of the most powerful testimonials about the impact that doing work that matters can have on students is this interview of the sixth grade student leaders of session presenter Bill Ferriter's #SUGARKILLS project conducted by the MiddleWeb website. 

 

Resources Used in Bill's #SUGARKILLS Project

  

Wordpress - While there are dozens of blogging tools to choose from, session presenter Bill Ferriter uses Wordpress for his classroom blogs.  It is not an education-specific product, but it is probably the most widely-used blogging tool used beyond schools.  That means the skills that Bill's students pick up while blogging in his classroom will translate to their work long after they leave his room. 

 

Three Classroom Blogging Tips for Teachers - This link connects to a bit on session presenter Bill Ferriter's blog that details three important tips for teachers interested in tackling a classroom blogging project. 

 

Blogging Resources for Classroom Teachers - Are you having trouble imagining just what role blogging can play in the classroom?  Do you need a few examples of classroom blogging projects that might be worth pursuing?  Not sure of just what blogging platform is right for you or your school?  All of those questions are answered in this post from session presenter Bill Ferriter's blog.   

 

Blogging Handouts - While session presenter Bill Ferriter has created dozens of handouts for structuring student blogging projects, participants generally find three to be the most useful.  The Teacher Tips for Classroom Blogging Projects handout includes a list of 10 different tips for structuring classroom blogging work, the Tips for Leaving Good Blog Comments handout is designed to teach students the kinds of steps that they need to take in order to effectively join conversations in blog comment sections and the Blog Entry Scoring Rubric handout can be used by teachers or students to evaluate the overall quality of student posts on classroom blogs. 

 

 

 

Kiva Lending as an Example of Doing Work that Matters

 

http://kiva.org

http://bit.ly/smskivavideo

http://bit.ly/smskivabecausewecare  

 

Doing work that matters in session presenter Bill Ferriter's sixth grade classroom has also centered around using Kiva -- one of the world's most successful microlending websites -- to fight back against poverty in the developing world by making loans to people who want to start businesses to improve the lives of their families.  Together with classmates, Bill's students raise money and then make regular decisions about who to make loans to.  To date, they've loaned out over $20,000 to over 600 people in 61 different countries.

 

Learn more about this project by exploring the links below:

 

One Tweet CAN Change the World - In this post from his blog, session presenter Bill Ferriter explains the origins of his classroom Kiva project.  More importantly, he details the direct connections between Kiva lending and his curriculum and provides a series of links to handouts and materials that other teachers interested in Kiva lending can use in their own work with students. 

 

We Kiva Because Video - In this video created by session presenter Bill Ferriter's Kiva Club, student members explain the reasons behind their choices to become Kiva lenders.  What resonates throughout the video is the sense that every student sees Kiva as an opportunity to do work that matters. 

 

Poverty's Real Video - This video was created by two of session presenter Bill Ferriter's Kiva Club students in order to market the work of the club to potential sponsors.  It is a sample of the kinds of meaningful curricular lessons -- lessons on persuasion, content creation, and visual influence -- that are possible when students are engaged in Kiva lending. 

 

Additional Microlending Resources - Because session presenter Bill Ferriter is so passionate about using microlending as a way to give students opportunities to do work that matters, he writes about it often.  You can find additional microlending resources on his professional development wiki here, in the materials that his Kiva Club used for a Simple K12 webinar here,  on his blog here, and in the handout section for his book on teaching with technology here

 

 

Finding Potential Partners

https://education.skype.com/

http://www.epals.com 

 

While many teachers will come to this CIU workshop with an international classroom to partner with already, others will struggle to find classrooms abroad that are interested in establishing a long term, focused relationships with other classes.  

 

The good news -- even for teachers and students in remote locations -- is that connecting in real time with others who share similar interests is just plain easy to do.  Most popular social media services -- including Facebook and Google Plus -- have made streaming video chats a central part of their platforms.  For educators, however,  Skype's Education Community should stand at the center of any efforts to connect students -- to one another OR to adult experts. 

 

The technology that Skype uses to connect individuals to one another is nearly identical to the technology offered by other videoconferencing services.  After creating a free account, one-to-one video calls are easy to pull off from any computer with a web cam.  The picture and audio quality of calls are satisfactory -- and users can even share their desktops AND their files with one another. 

 

What makes the Skype Education Community unique, however, is that it is designed to bring together teachers and students who are looking for partners for specific projects.

 

That makes it the perfect tool for supporting students who are pursuing their own interests in differentiated classrooms.  Have a student who is interested in knowing how the average German feels about World War II? Post a project description in Skype's Education Community and wait for a reply. Want to introduce students to the challenges of living in a developing country? Look for teachers working in one and see if they'd be willing to work with your class. 

 

In my own room, Skype provided a group of my students who were studying the impact that humans have on habitats with the opportunity to learn from an expert in Western Canada who volunteered her time to mentor them through a project.  In regularly scheduled weekly conversations, she reviewed their progress, asked questions, provided answers and pointed them in new directions. 

 

The key videoconferencing lesson that I learned early on was a familiar one:  While my students had no trouble using Skype, successful conversations with their digital mentor depended on structuring their thinking before, during and after their weekly conversations.  The technology wasn't a barrier.  Instead, it was the infinitely more complex skill of learning from conversations that caused them to stumble. 

 

To make sure that your students learn to conduct successful videoconferences, consider introducing them to these handouts:

 

Tracking Your Videoconference: This handout provides a series of questions to consider before, during and after a videoconference session.  While the questions may not be perfectly tailored to every circumstance in a differentiated classroom, any teacher can use it as a guide to craft their own set of guiding questions to share with students.

 

Student Videoconferencing Preparation Checklist: While students can generally figure out the technical details of using Skype, preparing for a videoconference means more than just knowing how to sign into the service.  This handout can help students -- particularly those that are working independently -- to know that they are ready for a videoconferencing session. 

 

 

Finding Partners with ePals

http://www.epals.com/#!/main

 

As described on their website, ePals "is the world's largest network of K-12 classrooms, enabling teachers and students to safely connect and collaborate with classrooms in more than 200 countries and territories.  Educators can join ePals at no cost to find collaborative projects, join discussions in community forums, and search thousands of classroom profiles to engage with others in authentic exchanges -- all within a safe, protected online environment.

 

 

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