For my final post I’ve decided to focus on one digital tool that I am likely to try out in my classroom, and explore a bit about the logistics of how that should take place. Now that I’ve tried Twitter throughout the summer I can honestly say that I’m not a fan. Maybe I’m just too long winded, but I find the restriction of 140 characters annoying, and it’s just as annoying when someone else’s tweet is really interesting but lacks real content because of the very concise format. My students have already created their own web sites (private to the school) so that hardly counts as an exploratory topic. Also, I want to focus on my grade 7/8 students’ writing skills. They need to not only write consistently, but even more importantly to focus on improving their writing through multiple revisions and edits. So …

Blogging:

Since the focus is on writing and editing, the digital tool has to accommodate plenty of text, be openly available for other students to read, be accessible for further editing, and provide an authentic audience for beginning writers. Though I have yet to use blogging with my class, what follows is some of the preliminary research necessary to do so, along with others’ accounts of their own work with students.  In all cases the feature that most attracts me most to this digital tool is the editing and revision work that students are willing to do when they know a real audience will be reading their work. To be sure, there are other ways to provide real audience, (printed books, school newsletters, local publications, letters to the editor) but they tend to be labour intensive and/or prohibitively expensive.

Here is an inspiring story about a teacher transforming her classroom writing program using blogging. The amount of student writing in Michelle Lampinen’s class increased and their willingness to revise their work also increased. This is only one example among many similar stories of students increasing their writing and editing because of an authentic audience. Not only did students write more and edit more in this example, but they also began to think and write more persuasively. (Lampinen, 2013)

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-in-21st-century-classroom-michelle-lampinen

In another Edutopia article Jon Schwatz describes the surprising transformation of one of the non-writers in his grade 4 classroom into an actively participating writer, producing more than 100 words per blog post. (Schwartz, 2011) Jon’s description is not only an inspiring example of an authentic audience adding engagement to the writing process, but also an illustration of how a blog can work for young students.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ell-digital-divide-jon-schwartz

Rebecca Alber’s piece on student revision of their work focusses not only on student writing, but on their willingness to revisit their work in the presence of an authentic audience. (Alber, 2016)

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/4-strategies-teaching-kids-how-revise-rebecca-alber

Finally, Traci Gardner shares a sequence of steps that have worked for her in teaching students how to blog. (Gardner, 2016)

http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teaching-with-blogs-30108.html

Examples abound, of success stories using blogs as writing platforms, and of how-to descriptions of processes for teachers and students. It would be impossible to visit or mention all of them; the few that I have mentioned barely scratch the surface of the available information about blogging and student writing. The point is that there are many potential benefits to having students blog. Here are a few that I have encountered in my reading:

• The audience is authentic. Student work is read by more than teacher, and parents, so feedback is also authentic.
• Student engagement increases.
• Students are more open to revisiting, revising, and editing their work.
• There can be an element of student choice in the selection of topic.
• Information is available everywhere about how to begin blogging with students, and how to further enrich the blogging experience  once the initial work has been done.
• Blogs can be internal to the school or district to protect student privacy
• There are no “lost papers” in blogging. If a student has submitted his/her work then it is evident without debate.
• Blogging is age appropriate for all ages of writers.

All in all, this seems like a winning strategy. Frankly, I can hardly wait to try this out in my classroom.

 

 

 

Alber, R. (2016). 4 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Revise. Retrieved August 25, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/4-strategies-teaching-kids-how-revise-rebecca-alber

Gardner, T. (2016). Teaching With Blogs - ReadWriteThink. Retrieved August 25, 2016, from http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teaching-with-blogs-30108.html

Lampinen, M. (2013). Blogging in the 21st-Century Classroom. Retrieved August 25, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-in-21st-century-classroom-michelle-lampinen

Schwatrz, J. (2011). Using Blogs to Engage English-Language Learners. Retrieved August 25, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ell-digital-divide-jon-schwartz

 

 

What is Interactive Online Learning?

Interactive learning online is not “interactive” in the old-fashioned, traditional English-language sense of “requiring people to talk with each other or do things together.” (Merriam-Webster, 2015) It is a much more individual, even isolated, process. For a long time now, this has been a struggle for me to accept. When I plan interactive activities in my classroom the focus is always on encouraging students to move physically (even if only within the classroom) and to work together in a way that requires communication and mutual effort.

In contrast, interactive online activities usually involve one person interacting with a computer program that is “designed to respond to the actions, commands, etc., of a user.” (Merriam-Webster, 2015) This has always seemed like a contradiction to me. The only real interaction is with an electronic device, and other human beings are mostly excluded from the process. All of this seems inherently anti-social, and almost the opposite of what has for a long time been thought of as interaction.

But Then …

This year I have been forced to re-think my position on the usefulness of interactive applications online. Our 9-year old son, who has struggled with reading since grade one, worked with an individual tutor this year, in conjunction with an interactive training program from Lexia Learning (Core 5), also made available through his tutor. This program assessed his reading ability using specific phonemic markers to measure his recognition and use of certain letter and letter combination sounds. It used this information to choose an appropriate starting point for our son then set him on a course of improvement that included activities in categories like “Sight Words”, “Prefix Meanings”, “Passage Fluency”, and “Simple Analogies.” As he worked his way through several levels it became apparent that the isolation was not a detriment to his learning, rather an advantage in some ways. His normal level of distraction when with friends was virtually (no pun intended) eliminated, his level of concentration was heightened for shorter but consistent periods of time, and the program reported out on his learning with greater specificity than a human being could even achieve while supervising a classroom full of students. His progress in reading was remarkable, to the point where he now reads by choice and for enjoyment.  This is not meant to be an advertisement for Lexia Learning, though their program is excellent, rather a recognition that students working individually using digital technology can benefit in marked ways in specific skills. There are many interactive applications available, some more effective than others, but the point is that the digital training was effective in catching him up to grade level in reading within a period of only a few months.

 

 

Another example of digital learning (or training, since the applications usually target specific skills) is one that I have not experienced personally, but only read about. Norman Doidge, in his book The Brain That Changes Itself, highlights lifelong plasticity of the human brain. He features a story about a young woman whose efforts to re-train her brain led to the development of a brain-based listening and reading program called Fast ForWord. The program deliberately targets specific areas of the brain, and encourages rapid improvement in skills that might otherwise remain undeveloped for many years, if at all. The story of Barbara Arrowsmith Young’s efforts to improve her own brain function, and the program that resulted over a long period of partnerships and scientific learning, is fascinating. Again, students working with Fast ForWord are mostly working individually, interacting with a single computer rather than in a social way with other human beings … but accounts of improvement in reading are remarkable.

 

 

Is This Really Interactive?

 

In the case of our son, I must caution that his improvement in reading cannot be attributed exclusively to a digital tool. Both his classroom teacher and his private tutor focused on this skill, and used the interactive program as a supplement to his schooling. Along with the digital tool that he used in the evening, he attended the local public school, played with his friends at recess, did other online research in the form of class projects, participated in all the planned classroom learning activities, and carried on with a very social, interactive life as a student.

 

I really don’t know whether the kind of training employed by these digital programs is “interactive”. At some level it seems unimportant what the label is, as long as learning is evident, especially in ways that would not likely be accomplished through ‘normal’ human effort. I do think it’s important to recognize that social media and other forms of digital learning are not all just individual, isolated, and specific to a particular skill. Other examples could easily highlight human connections that are achieved through digital media, sometimes between individuals, classes, communities, or even over international borders. Online communities offer potential for learning in many other ways: ways that deserve exploration and consideration … but that is for another time.

 

Honestly, when I encounter “interactive” games and applications, the “interactive” part still seems like a bit of a misnomer. But there is certainly a place for these activities in teaching and learning.

 

 

Arrowsmith-Young, B. (2013). The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: Barbara Arrowsmith-Young at TEDxToronto. Retrieved August 20, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0td5aw1KXA

 

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. New York: Viking.

 

F. (2008). The Reading Brain and the Fast ForWord program. Retrieved August 20, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsSUamFekwI

 

Lexia Learning. (2016). Retrieved August 20, 2016, from http://www.lexialearning.com/

Merriam Webster. (2015). Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved August 09, 2016, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interactive

 

Z. (2014). Lexia Reading CORE5. Retrieved August 20, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjCaslS4iBU

 

 

Being Interactive, Online and Offline!

 

I know this is old fashioned, but two of the words that I have found most ironic in connection with online activity are “social” and “interactive”. The visual image of a teenager (or any ager for that matter) staring intently at a screen, often next to others doing the same thing is such a picture of isolation and anti-social behavior that it boggles the mind to call this “social” media. Similarly, when I search online for “interactive” activities or games for my Math classes, the response is innumerable online games and activities that are played by one player with one computer. Interactive? … with who?

This is not meant to be a negative rant about the influence of technology, rather an inquiry into how technology can help to make a classroom truly interactive, and in some cases more authentically social. No doubt many educators have the same purpose as they work toward integrating technology into their classrooms. The search for digital products that fit our pedagogy can be grueling, and the last thing we want is to waste a bunch of time sifting through potential products, simply because their designers decided to use the word “interactive” in the product description.

What Does Interactive Even Mean?

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has two very different, and in some ways conflicting simple definitions of “interactive”:

1. Designed to respond to the actions, commands, etc., of a user
2. Requiring people to talk with each other or do things together
   (Merriam-Webster, 2015)

It seems interesting to me that the first definition is clearly the most recently developed, and relates directly to electronic media. It is this definition that makes website designers accurate when they call a product “interactive”; almost without exception online learning activities are designed to engage a learner with the program in a series of incrementally more challenging steps, or in different types of challenges reinforcing an idea or specific learning.  They are in one sense interactive. But the problem is that this form of interaction often includes only one human being, and may not always be the definition that educators are trying to achieve when choosing interactive activities for their classrooms. In my own classroom it is very often the social aspect of the second (much older) definition that I am looking for, as a complement to other more ‘traditional’ ways of learning that involve whole group instruction and individual completion of work.

Learning Socially

Albert Bandura’s social learning theory and Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory show that social interaction is critical in the process of cognitive development. (Online College, 2011) Vygotsky recognized that “learning always occurs and cannot be separated from a social context” (Neff) The challenge then, is to replicate the kind of genuine social activity in an online learning environment, that can occur with relative ease in a classroom where students are physically present.

I have a class set of interactive white boards in my classroom. They are sheets of white plastic that students can use to write on with whiteboard markers. The activities they are used for usually involve partners or small groups solving problems and displaying their thinking and solutions on clearly visible surfaces with non-permanent ink. They involve students talking together, looking over one another’s shoulders, making corrections in response to others’ work … they are objects of conversation and collective writing. They are truly interactive whiteboards!

So the challenge I am now faced with is to use technology and even social media in a way that allows students online to converse and share ideas in a similar way to that of my students in the classroom.  As anti-social as it appears when I see students staring intently at the screens of personal devices, Danah Boyd argues that teens using social media really are being genuinely social, and that they are essentially using social media as a means of connecting in ways that previous generations of teens would have done in common public areas. (Boyd, 2014)  If this is true, then maybe social media provides a means of greater student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction online than many of the so-called interactive activities.

Maybe social media is worth a second look as a learning tool. I still value the face-to-face time with students in my classroom and will not be substituting internet for physical presence anytime soon. But if technology, and even social media, functions as a tool of engagement then I am at least interested in pursuing them as options for teaching and learning.

 

Boyd, D. (2014). It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press

Neff, L. S. (n.d.). Lev Vygotsky and Social Learning Theories. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from https://jan.ucc.nau.edu/lsn/educator/edtech/learningtheorieswebsite/vygotsky.htm

Staff Writers. (2011, July 14). Social Learning: An Introduction. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www.onlinecollege.org/2011/07/14/social-learning-an-introduction/