Whew! I'm back from 10 days with no power or heat and a road trip to Oregon. I often hit the road to help teachers and students integrate
technology in a way that makes sense.
Technology should not be layered on top of what teachers do, it should be
used as a tool to make what we do better.
In the case of collaborative technology, we are increasing student
engagement and participating in the lesson and giving them an authentic
audience. Being digital natives,
students instinctively “figure it out” while many educators fear that “figuring
it out” will take precious planning time.
The truth is that many simple tools take very little time for teachers
to set up and even less time to get students started in them. In fact, using these tools can make a teacher’s
life easier as student engagement takes the place of student management and working
online saves time at the copy machine!
While at the recent AMLE conference, I got a lot of great
information on what needs to be done in the classroom in order to meet the new
Common Core State Standards. What I
heard emphasized was a shift from persuasive writing (emotion based) to
argumentative writing where students need to be able to make a claim, recognize
and acknowledge opposing claims, and use credible sources to support their
claims. In my own house, this
would translate from “Mom, I need the new iPad because you have always been the
coolest mom with the coolest stuff and I need to maintain that image for our
family” to "Mom, I need the new iPad because I will be able to do the
following: access over 100 free
educational apps, keep all my notes from school organized and in one place, and
store over 100 books on it.” The common
core is moving students to argumentation because it relies on more “substantial
reasoning” based on logic and evidence and therefore has increased rigor (not
the dead kind).
Simple Tools for Complex Learning
It seems to me that there are a number of simple online
tools where students can practice these skills without increasing the physical amount
of work (in pounds) or time that it takes to set up, implement and assess.
Catlin Tucker, an expert in the blended
classroom and
integrating technology in
the Language Arts classroom wrote a great blog “
Common
Core Standards and Argument Writing” which includes great ways to use
Collaborize Classroom,
YouTube, Google Docs, and
Ted Talks in the classroom to get this done. She includes great screen shots and easy to follow examples to help teachers see the value of using these simple tools.
The
SCAN
tool found at
TregoED is another simple tool that requires minimal set up and implementation in the classroom. Scan features a library
full of scenarios that include four different points of view.
Students go to a private url to participate in a guided online
discussion following the four steps of SCAN (Stop and think – what are the
issues?, Clarify the issues, Ask what’s most important, and Now, what should be
done).
Along the way, students are asked
to support their claims, acknowledge other points of view, and collaborate to
solve the problem.
This is precisely
what the common core is asking us to teach our students.
SCAN offers free timely lessons for teachers
in all content areas.
With a cheap
subscription ($45/teacher/year – unlimited use) teachers can write their own
lessons to address particular needs of their students or curriculum.
Better yet, they can have their students
research different perspectives and evidence in a highly engaging topic (such
as the death penalty) and post their own SCAN Lesson!
Students can then share their SCAN session with
teachers all over the world.
Relevant
argument writing with an engaging tool and an authentic audience – doesn’t get
any better.
What tools are you using to reach the core?
