This was by far my most exciting learning week thus far for me. Not only were the ideas technology based, but that learning at it's best is meant to be fun for all. When I decided that I wanted to be a teacher it was because I wanted to include games and having fun into learning. Somewhere along the way I lost that drive and got steered in the wrong direction. I finally feel as though I am finding my way back to my true intentions as an educator.
The article that I loved the most was Peter Barnes idea to relate (Science) Ninjas as highly trained persons that use their sharp thinking skills as in the movie Kung Fu Panda's journey to overcome challenging obstacles using Perseverance, Curiosity, Stamina and Collaboration to learn grow. The idea that they make mistakes and push through difficult tasks as a part of their journey. He gave great ideas to use scavenger hunts based on various units. He was talking about Test Prep, but I was thinking that these strategies of classroom themes to teach growth mindset, perseverance and grit throughout the year. I was so inspired that I want to get an Breakout EDU Box to do the educational material scavenger hunts based on a reward system according to the units we are working on or as an anticipatory set for the next unit. Gaming is the practice of memorization or trivia in a fun game-like setting. Gamification is the idea of building on skills to learn mastery through problem solving and possible collaboration. Games are a fun method to engage and teach skills and critical thinking. According to Jordan Shapiro who wrote Games in the Classroom: Overcoming the Obstacles", says that games are not to teach the curriculum, but to give a different perspective on the skill being addressed. She definitely gave some great ideas of sites and resources to check out:
Gabe Zichermann, in "How Games Make Kids Smarter" introduced the 'speed camera lottery' which blew my mind as a real life game-like experience that changes the negative consequence mentality of a community and culture by rewarding the law-abiding citizens. I have three boys (11, 9, and 7yo) and I am always the mom that refuses to join in their love of video game heaven. They play Mindcraft, Fortnite, Apex, Slimeracher and Idle Miner. After watching this Ted Talk by Gabe I really want them to teach me how to better connect and teach my students in their virtual worlds of learning that is fun. It was a real stop and smell the roses kind of moment, not only for time spent with my own kids, but time spent with my students. He also said that playing violent video games does not make kids violent (unless they were exposed to violence in real life, it makes it worse) according to research that has been done for years. This information actually made me feel better as a mom that I wasn't ruining my kids via Fortnite and Apex, which is apparently more violent.
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The tools that I played around with this week were EdPuzzle, an Add-On for Google Docs called Kaizena (Voice Comments) and VideoScribe. I just loved EdPuzzle because I already tend to choose a lot of videos and voice over with out recording. I usually just pause the video and ask questions which is exactly what the program does for you with perfect timing and grace. It also makes the student recall an answer that is needed to retain and be listening, which is GREAT! And it's FREE! A teacher's dream come true. I used the EdPuzzle for my Washington DC presentation for this coming Wednesday. I changed and modified what was already there, shortened it, deleted and made my own questions. It should be a fun add on to introduce the beginning of the trip in June.
Lately, in my Language Arts support group, I was asked to edit work that is being done in their core Language Arts class. The first day I started to use the suggestions editing mode, thinking that I was really looking cool and awesome and helping them a lot to learn new technology features in Google Doc. After sitting down with each student one-on-one and editing their work using suggestions and explaining why it needed work after they read it back to me, they would go back to their desktop and just click the green check marks and say, "I'm done!" They learned nothing and it wasn't their work. In comes the Add-on Kaizena (a voice comment). So I went back to the Google Doc's that were shared with me and recorded where the student could stand to use some improvement and where they were strong in conveying their points. Instead of it being a correction to change where I do all of the work, it is now a correction that they have to listen for, find and change on their own. I will be using this all of next week to get my 5th graders to look at their own work and make adjustments with my direction, but not one on one with the teacher. This will give me the freedom to facilitate and encourage peer editing and self-grading with a rubric. Again, this was a free Add-on that can change a teacher's life with direct student feedback that John Hattie so much adores in his Visual Learning book. And then there was the VideoScribe. VideoScribe was generous enough to give a 7 day trial with lots of pushes towards purchase. It is not cheap and I thought that it would be more user friendly. I am no techie, but if you are going to charge so much for something I would prefer it would be link friendly, slide friendly, insert into anything friendly; it was not, at least for me. I spent 6 hours trying to create, load, insert and then I went back and they two slides that I had created were gone. To say the least, I was frustrated and then some. I do not just pick up technology in one swoop and it did have some tutorial videos when I came across things that I repeatedly clicked on and a link to watch a video for more understanding would come up, but it wasn't enough to make me successful enough to get my creation the way I wanted it. I decided to just let it be in a simple form and put it as a link for the other part of my lesson and loaded it to YouTube and it disappeared, downloaded it to the screen on my laptop and it wouldn't upload, and then put it in a Power Point and didn't have a way to do anything with it but put it on my desktop screen. I honestly, did like the potential of what the program can do for me in my classroom when it comes to visual access, but with the high pressure sales, non-usability, I really struggled with its use. I would love to know if someone else tried it and got a better result because it would be worth it to share a membership with team teachers or grade levels at the school site for Anticipatory sets to introduce a lesson or tell a Social Studies story about something historical or even for teaching science concepts and just share the log in. |
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