I spent some time working with and experimenting with ways to incorporate Symbaloo into my future classroom. I've discovered that it can be a useful tool for sharing information with parents, giving students quick links to fun enrichment, and building a central sharing space for all the research we will do! One of my favorite units from the fall semester was about dinosaurs.
Learning to navigate the internet safely is something that takes time and practice. For millennials, there's a certain amount of experiential knowledge that goes into knowing which sites will yield which kinds of information, and for what purpose. Some might even call that exploratory knowledge "Internet street smarts." (Okay... that's a term I just made up.) Alan November spends the fourth chapter discussing the role of students as researchers. "Clearly, the Internet has become a dominant medium for information in our society," he writes, "and our students must be trained in how to validate the content they find there." Any teacher or educator would agree. November argues that teaching students to assess websites for context, tone, and purpose will help them develop not only as researchers, but as academic citizens. Though younger students (second and third graders) might not have enough experience to assess an author's tone, older students would benefit from in-depth Internet-based lessons in how to decipher an author's purpose, as November suggests. A clever teacher might take advantage of an Internet-based research project to immerse students in a series of ongoing lessons about tone, purpose, and responsible research. For teachers who want to give their students practice with Internet research, but don't necessarily have the time or the resources to let students explore the Internet unguided, November suggests making a custom search engine. Making a custom search engine is a very quick project that will bring a lot of life to a technologically enriched classroom. (Here is one I created for second graders researching dinosaurs.) An added benefit is that the sites can even be tailored for lower reading levels! Reading levels can be adjusted in a general Google search by going to Search Tools > All Results > Reading Level. The second and third chapters of November's book are titled, "The Student as Tutorial Designer" and "The Student as Scribe." He argues that having students generate their own tutorials and having students be responsible for collaborative note-taking are very effective ways to allow students to have more ownership of their learning. While the evidence in favor of this approach to learning is very persuasive, I feel frustrated that November spends these two chapters exhorting their value, while providing fewer pieces of evidence (he only cites MathTrain and Bob Sprankle). A Google search for elementary school student-generated online resources yields mostly Powerpoint presentations about November's book and links to iPad applications. (There are, however, many examples of classroom blogs that could still enable elementary school students to access a global audience.) It's not until the end of the third chapter that November acknowledges the challenge of using home-made tutorials and class notes in an elementary school classroom. For my readers, a few questions to consider:
For my class reading, I chose Alan November's Who Owns the Learning?: Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age. I'll be compiling my notes, highlights, and annotations from the text on Diigo. Follow along as I sift through and compile some of the most interesting aspects of the text, from arguments about effective student-centered instruction to advice on how to create a world-wide learning network in the classroom. I'm so excited! One of the most stirring quotes from early in Chapter 1 is also evidence that teachers need to redirect the focus of student work. "Few young people have opportunities to pursue work that has a purpose." The chapter this quotation is lifted from accomplishes several things. Firstly, it clarifies something that I'd long believed, which was that learning should be less task-oriented. I was wrong--learning should not necessarily be less task-oriented, but more purpose-oriented. A purpose-oriented assignment gives students an authentic audience for their work, a tangible product of their learning, and a meaning to apply to the process. November interweaves the tenets of his argument with wonderful suggestions about how to connect students to the world, both in real-time and via technology. He distinguishes the need for technology for technology's sake, and advocates using technology as a way to build meaningful connections. One suggestion I'm utterly in love with: staging a live debate via Skype about the purpose of the American Revolution, with students in a British classroom! In the fourth grade classroom I worked in last spring, I presented a short documentary from YouTube about the history of the controversial Los Angeles Aqueduct. Students voiced some insightful things about the need for water in a growing urban zone versus the need to respect nature as a finite resource. However, November's idea inspires me to do something greater: why not have fourth graders write a letter to an urban planner from Los Angeles, asking him or her to a chat about the subject via webcam? Or an interview with pre-written questions? The possibilities are wonderful and practically endless. |
AuthorI'm a lifelong learner, and a graduate student in education. These are writings based on some of my adventures! Archives
May 2014
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