Leveraging Tools, Texts, and Talk in My Teaching Context:
Designing specific practices to help support students' practices beyond the screen can be a challenge. However, after reading, supports can be implemented to ensure the quality of learning beyond the screen. For example, as a teacher, a major part of the job is planning and designing instruction to be able to get the most out of your students' capabilities. Students can go through many tools, such as a blog or a group project (Semingson, 2017). The article regarding digital literacy tools discusses the Voicethread app and the capabilities and opportunities it can bring into the classroom for students (Semingson, 2017). This reminded me of a project I do in my third-grade classroom. We compose a persuasive speech, and we plan and draft it in a packet. Then we transition to online to a Google document. A tool I utilize is voice-to-text on Google Docs. This is a more enjoyable way for the students to compose their speeches as well as further their skills with tools to make learning more effective and fun for them. Once we are done with the speeches, we use an app called Canva to create a background for our speech. Lastly, we incorporate a green screen and use a smart board with their speeches on it, and record the speech. To wrap it up, we create QR codes to put on their desk for at open house to scan to watch their speech. The unique process of this is that once we have recorded, we have a celebration day to allow students to watch each other's speeches. I display questions on my smartboard, and the students have meaningful conversations about what went well during their speech and what they could improve upon. It allows students to utilize the digital tools as well as practice their interpersonal skills with their peers (Garcia, 2017).
Garcia discusses the importance of not turning the two practices against each other, of digital and nondigital, but rather evaluating how to complement them. This stood out to me because I think before this course, I looked at digital tools as a way to replace specific instructional tools rather than pairing them together and allowing students to incorporate them in the task they’re working on (Garcia, 2017). Therefore, I think a way I can encourage students to be more willing to have the balance of using digital tools and non-digital ones when working on specific projects or tasks in class, to keep the balance of verbal collaboration and digital collaboration. In terms of equity, I need to keep in mind the availability of technology to all students. Another area in terms of engagement is having an appropriate, time-consuming assignment. A fear is that I rely too heavily on my digital tools, ignoring the importance of balance between digital and non-digital work. However, another project that we do in my class is a research project related to animals. I am proud of this project because it allows the students to use literacy collected from our library and our online platform to research collections related to their animal. They keep physical notes and keep them on a large Post-it note in our room. Each student has a category they are responsible for. Once completed with research, we transition to our digital tools such as Canva and Google Docs, and Slides. From there, the students are all responsible for a specific number of slides. After they all go through each other's pages and leave digital comments. This creates productive collaboration and positive improvement to their whole group project. Overall, I definitely gained many new tips and tools from this week's readings to be immediately implemented into my classroom now and in the future.
Garcia, A. (2017). NONDIGITAL SKILLS. Literacy Today, 35(3), 24-25. https://sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fnondigital-skills%2Fdocview%2F1966005428%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8067
Semingson, P. (2017). DIGITAL LITERACIES FOR YOUNG READERS AND WRITERS. Literacy Today, 35(3), 30-31. https://sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fdigital-literacies-young-readers-writers%2Fdocview%2F1966005551%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8067
Joe-I absolutely love the activity that you shared with the planning, writing, and design of the speeches. The QR code is a fantastic way to access and share the work and I am already thinking about how I can do something like that in my classroom.
ReplyDeleteWhen we did a unit of feeding relationships I took my students on a virtual field trip to the Bronx Zoo and then assigned each student their own animal to research. We then reviewed menus from different restaurants and the students had to design a menu of food that they would provide to their animals if they were caring for them at the zoo. I encouraged them to be creative with their dishes and what ingredients they used but all food items had to be something that the animal would consume in their natural habitats. The students each used their own Google Slides for planning and design but after reading about your research project I think that next time I will have them use a shared Google slide so that they can leave feedback for one another. Thank you for the great idea!