Challenge #10: Give Students a Choice

For this challenge, I had to create a lesson plan and/or a project plan where students are given a choice in the outcome and topic for a project. Click the link below to view my lesson plan.

http://sablackburn.wikispaces.com/Choice+Rich+Environment

I have also include my lesson plan in my Blog.

Title of Activity
Responding to Literature
Grade Level and Subject Area
Fourth grade English language arts.
Alabama Course of Study Objectives
4.11 - Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
4.27 - With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.
4.35 - Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
4.36 - Add audio recordings and visual displays to presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.
Lesson Objective
The student will be able to describe the main idea, supporting details, and characters in the weekly reading story using technology.
Description of Activity
This activity is designed to be used as a way to check the student’s ability to describe the main idea, supporting details, and characters in their weekly reading story. This lesson plan was designed to be used with a fourth grade class when they are reading the story So You Want to Be President by Judith George illustrated by David Small. This story is the fifth story in unit two of the Scott Foresman Reading Street reading series. The comprehension skill studied in this story is main idea and supporting details.
The story So You Want to Be President explains that the job of President of the United States is tough but many people try to get it.  This story explains what it takes to be president. It also demonstrates how past presidents stayed true to themselves and their unique personalities while in office.
For this activity students will be able to choose from five different projects that assess their comprehension of the main idea, characters, and supporting details of the story. The students will work in groups of five to complete each project. The five projects are listed below.
Project One - Presentation to the Class
The students will create a Power Point presentation explaining the main idea, supporting details, and characters in the story. They will then present the presentation to the class.
Project Two – Newspaper Article

The students will read and review teacher selected newspaper articles. They will then create their own article that mimics the format of the teacher selected newspaper articles. The student’s article will describe the main idea, supporting details, and characters. The students will then publish their article on the class Blog.

Project Three – Video News Report

The students will watch teacher selected television news reports about various current events. They then will write a script for their own television news broadcast. Their broadcast will describe the main idea, supporting details, and characters of the story.  The students will record their broadcast and share it with the class. The video of the news class will be uploaded to the class website.

Project Four – Reader’s Theatre
The students will create a script for a play that describes the main idea, supporting details, and characters of the story. The students will perform their play for the entire class. A video recording of the play will be made an uploaded to the class website.
Project Five – Podcasting

The students will create a Podcast that describes the main idea, supporting details, and characters in the story. The students will then publish their podcast to the internet and share it with the class.

Assessment

For this lesson, I would use the same rubric for each project. The students would receive full credit for the project if they have correctly described the main idea, supporting details, and characters of the story in an organized manner. They would also be assessed on their contributions to the project and their ability to collaborate.

Challenge #8 Collaborate and Communicate

This week I was challenged to create and participate in a Wiki. I choose to use my Wiki to discuss how a Wiki can be used in an elementary classroom. I am a lower elementary teacher so I asked the participants in my Wiki to discuss how to use a Wiki in the lower elementary grades. The link for my personal Wiki is below.

This particular challenge was tough for me.  I had a lot of technical difficulties using the Wikispace website. For starters, I had my Wiki set on private and thought I had turned it to public but didn’t. I finally realized my error. But my good friends in the class contributed to my Wiki and alerted me to my mistake.

Links:

http://sablackburn.wikispaces.com/ My Wiki.

Wikis I collaborated on:

http://gartos.wikispaces.com/

http://studentsaroundworld.wikispaces.com/

Challenge Discussion:

What is the difference between cooperation and collaboration?

I think of the words cooperation and collaboration as synonyms. According to the Dictionary App on my phone, collaborate means to work with another and cooperation means to work together for a common goal or action. But after completing the Wiki challenge, I realized that they are actually very different.

In the context of the Wiki project, it seemed like the Wiki participants were only collaborating. We weren’t working together to complete one final and united project. We were simply adding our thoughts to a Wiki space. It didn’t matter if the information we were contributing matched or complimented another person’s entry. We were all just adding opinions or facts to the discussion on the Wiki.

Wiki Project vs. Traditional Group Work

The one big difference I noticed between the Wiki project and traditional group work was that there was no immediate feedback from my peers. There also didn’t seem to be much of a conversation about the topic we were discussing in our Wiki’s. It felt like we were all just posting facts and opinions and not really discussing topics. As a student, I find the conversation part of learning to be invaluable. Listening to other people’s thoughts on topics helps me to process new information. I found that the Wiki didn’t really allow for that aspect of the learning process to occur.

How can collaboration be taught?

Before collaboration can be taught, the teacher needs to teach students how to use the tools that are used for collaboration. Teachers cannot expect students to collaborate if they don’t know how to use Wikis, blogs, or social media. Once students have learned how to use collaboration tools, teachers can begin to create an online learning community within their own classroom. The online learning community, within their classroom, allows students to practice collaborating on projects with their peers. By starting at the classroom level, students are able to get feedback face to face from their peers about their ability to collaborate. When the teacher feels that the students have learned to collaborate at the classroom level, than they can begin to collaborate with others on a local or global level. 

Challenge #9 Assess

To assess the participants in my Wiki I used the Rubric that was included with our book. I found the Rubric in the PD tool kit. This challenge also required us to record our assessment discussion on the multimedia of our choice. I decided to record my discussion on You Tube. The link to my discussion is below.

http://youtu.be/ZE2B9UhOwps

Chapter 5 Challenges 6 and 7

The challenges in this chapter really got me thinking. First, I had a lot or trouble creating, finding, understanding, and completing Challenge #6 (creating a classroom monitoring profile). I would like to thank everyone who was so patient with all my questions about that one. Challenge #7, discussing social media use with a student, really got me thinking. Below are my reflections on the challenges.

 

Challenge #6 Creating a Classroom Monitoring Portal

After hours spent searching on the internet, tears, and probably some pretty stupid questions, I finally understand what a CMP is and can do for me. I am not hosting or participating in a project right now. I ended up creating a CMP page for my Flattening Classrooms experience. I have included a link to the University of North Alabama, my Blog, and my PLN. I have also added a Twitter feed for Flattening Classrooms, To Do list, and a news search widget. A CMP lets you keep tabs on everything that is happening with one glance. I can see how this is a very powerful tool for managing a group of project participants. It puts all the information in one spot. I have really learned a lot during this challenge. Below is a link to my public Netvibes CMP.

http://www.netvibes.com/stephblackburn#General

Challenge #7 Empower Digital Citizenship Action

For this challenge, I interviewed a fourth grade student who has a Facebook page. As a parent, teacher, and a private person by nature, I find social media a little daunting. After speaking with this student I realized just how important it is to teach children how to conduct themselves online. First a little background. The student I interviewed is ten years old and has had her own Facebook account for about one year.  She told me that her Mom only allows her to “be on” Facebook using the family computer located in the living room and can only accept friend requests from people she has met in person. Below are the questions I asked her and her paraphrased responses.

How did you get a Facebook account if the minimum age to join Facebook is 13?

She stated that her Mom set up her page and she didn’t know that you had to be thirteen to have a Facebook account. (This sounds like a question I needed to ask her Mom.)

Why did you want a Facebook account?

She stated that some of her friends, Mom, older sister, and other relatives had accounts and wanted to participate.

What do you do when you are on Facebook?

I look at the information my friends share on Facebook, chat with my friends, and keep up with what is happening in their lives. I also share photos and stories about my life.

Do you ever do anything on Facebook for school?

No.

Has anyone made fun of you, bullied you, or made you sad by the comments they made on Facebook?

Her answer was yes. She explained that a cousin of hers made fun of a picture she posted of herself. She stated that she thought she looked really nice in the picture and the cousin did not agree.

I then asked her how she handled that situation.

She said that it made her really mad and she told her Mom about. They discussed the comments and decided that the best course of action was to ignore the comments.

Have you ever made any comments that hurt someone’s feelings?

She said she didn’t think she ever had but if she did she didn’t intentionally set out to hurt someone’s feelings.

What do you like best about Facebook?

She said she liked talking with her friends and sharing pictures.

My Thoughts

As a parent of a young girl, I don’t think most young children are mature enough or understand the pitfalls of Facebook. Facebook has that age requirement for a reason. That being said, I thought this young lady seemed to be conducting herself as a good digital citizen. From the information she gave me, she seemed to be trying her best to be cordial. She was only communicating with people she had relationships with outside of Facebook. Therefore, she wasn’t unknowingly committing many cultural taboos or having many language disconnects. She did however experience some emotional pain from some mean comments made by a relative. Overall, I thought this girl was being a good digital citizen. I just wish she didn’t have to cut her social media teeth using a site that is so public.

Chapter 4 Challenge #5

Challenge #5 Go Mobile!

This time I was challenged to use my mobile device in an educational way. This is the first school year that I have used mobile devices in the classroom. One app that I find very useful is Reading Remedy. It costs $1.00 and works on all the Apple devices. I use this app on my IPad.

Reading remedy is an app designed to determine what basic literacy skills a student needs to work on. The description in the iTunes cite says the App was developed by reading coaches and teachers as an assessment tool to determine the skills students were lacking.

I am currently a reading intervention teacher. I work with students that are in need of reading intervention. Their general education teacher often tells me that they can’t decode words or are having problems with prefixes. Decoding words and prefix and suffix knowledge are two very large sub-topics of reading instruction. Reading Remedy allows me to focus in on the specific skill, letter, or phonics rule a student is struggling with. It has allowed me to effectively use the intervention time I have with the students. I would also like to state, that I use other forms of assessment to determine where a student needs help. Reading remedy helps point you in a direction rather than giving a definitive answer. I would never recommend relying solely on the assessments in Reading Remedy.

Link to the app download: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reading-remedies/id423213168?mt=8

Here is my posting for Chapter 4 Challenge #4. This book is really making me think out of the box.

Challenge #4 Communicate with new tools.

Asynchronous Communication Tool

An asynchronous communication tool is a tool used for communication. When using an asynchronous communication tool, the communication between the people does not happen at the same time.

I have personally communicated with others using asynchronous tools like email, blogs, discussion boards, and social networking sites. This week I have done a lot of communicating/posting on My PLN page. Reading posts and other information shared on the site has been very insightful. In our textbook, the authors stated that asynchronous communication tools do not allow two people to communicate in real time and face to face. I think for a child, and myself at times, you don’t feel like you are collaborating with a person. It sometimes feels like you are collaborating with another computer.

Synchronous Communication Tool

A synchronous communication tool is another type of communication tool. When using this tool, the communication happens in real time and in some cases the people communicating can see each other.

The synchronous communication tool I used this week was Skype. I Skyped with a colleague after work hours.  Skype allowed us to communicate with each other at a time that was more convenient for us. As teachers we all know how hard it is to find time to talk to colleagues during the school day. Because the conversation was happening at a mutually agreeable time, we were able to discuss things at a greater length. I can see that Skype is almost essential for any global collaboration. The fact that you get to see someone face to face and talk with them in real time allows for a deeper conversation. The face to face contact probably leads to more learning for the students.  

I was unable to use Skype or discussion board posting in a synchronous and asynchronous way. I do see how people could communicate synchronously via discussion posts. They would just have to be on the discussion board at the same time and reply immediately to each other’s post. Skype could also be used asynchronously. A person could record themselves talking and send it to someone else. A teacher could also record themselves presenting a lesson and share it with their students.

Well I have had a very productive afternoon. I am working on Challenges 1-3 in the Flattening Classrooms Engaging Minds textbook by Julie Lindsey and Vicki Davis.  Let me give you the low down.

Challenge #1 sign up or create an RSS Feed.
I did it. I created one on Net Vibes. You can check it out at this link. www.netvibes.com/privatepage/1#elementary_education_news  So far it looks pretty interesting. I know that I will have to tweak it a bit to better meet my needs but it does look promising. In my personal life, I belong to a RSS feed of sorts for diet tips. The chance articles I have read on that feed have given me lots of information on health issues that I would never have read about.

Challenge #2 Create a Blog.
I had already created a blog for a previous class that Dr. Kinney taught. I decided just to add to that blog. It was originally created for a discussion on  Acceptable Use Policies but I have now turned it into my thoughts about flattening classrooms. They are a plenty.

Challenge #3 Connect and Reflect
Connect
For this challenge I created a My PLN page. Here is the link to My PLN page. Check it out.
http://edupln.ning.com/profile/StephanieBlackburn  I also created a PLN on the Flattening Classrooms page. But they are the exact same thing. Here is a link to that profile.
http://flatclassrooms.ning.com/profile/StephanieBlackburn  I am still trying to get my profile picture up but my computer is not cooperating. I will keep trying.
Reflection
So what have I learned from this challenge. I learned that connection is very powerful. Especially connecting with the right people. For example, before I started this module I checked the course discussion board. I read posts from other classmates that said they  were having trouble creating RSS feeds. I also noticed that one classmate shared her connections and blog URLS with the class. By looking at her connections and using the information she shared  showed me pathways that allowed me to complete this module quickly and easily. By creating a Flattening Classrooms page I stumbled upon a discussion about the Challenges in the this book. The people having the discussion lead me to the Netvibes page that allowed me to create my RSS feed in a matter of minutes. Some of my other classmates are and were not having that same experience. Collaborating outside the walls or confines of the classroom is powerful. I am sold.

Greetings fellow educators!!!

I am once again enrolled in a technology class that is challenging my entire teaching belief system. This semester I am taking a class that deals with the flattening of your classroom. If you are like me you are thinking what does flattening mean.

Flattening in this case refers to taking learning and teaching outside of the physical four walls of the classroom. This is accomplished by using student, teacher, or outside resource collaborations.When a classroom is flattened, the instruction, or learning, is student centered. The students create the knowledge pathways, styles, and learning for themselves. The teacher is just a guide on their path to learning.

As a graduate student in education and drawing on incidental experiences I have had with collaboration I can clearly see that this is the future of education. My only question is has anyone told the people who create learning policy about this?  Correct me if I am wrong, but don't Alabama public school teachers need to use the Scott Foresman reading series and spend ninety minutes a day on reading?!?! Well if a classroom is flattened and students are directing their learning, they probably won't use Scott Foresman to learn about sequence.

Just something to think about. I will keep you posted on my findings.
Steph-