Shared Lesson II

My main goal when searching for a resource that could be applied to the second shared lesson was to locate something that could be related to both special education, which I just finished teaching, and language arts, my specialty. Many lesson plans are so specific that it would take much effort to modify them enough so that they could be applicable to such differing domains. The article "Virtual Technology: Bringing the World into the Special Education Classroom," offers some really intriguing possibilities for both the special ed classroom and the English realm.

The authors, Therese M. Smedley and Kyle Higgins, suggest employing technology in order to create such activities as simulations and virtual field trips. I really liked the idea of the virtual field trip, which can be utilized as both an advance organizer and a stand-alone lesson. The most interesting possibility would be engaging advanced students, such as college-prep juniors and seniors, in a lesson that takes them to places that they would otherwise be unable to go, such as the distant setting of a novel or the environment of the author as he/she created a work. One idea that I had pretty immediately was the notion of supplementing James Joyce's Dubliners (1914) with a virtual field trip to the various cityscapes of each of the work's fifteen short stories. There is certainly an abundance of information, photography, and video available on the web that could reflect the Irish landscape, as well as the moods of the characters during the period. This sort of exposure and imagery is otherwise unavailable, short of a very expensive physical field trip. I can easily imagine students developing a greater interest and appreciation for the book when offered such an involving task.

The virtual field trip is a class activity that could easily be applied to many age groups, from elementary classes to college courses, as well as many achievement levels, which seems to be its most valuable asset (an impending trip to the zoo could be anticipated with a virtual field trip to the African jungle, or the zoo itself). This is an exercise that has a lot of potential and flexibility, and one that increases the odds that meaningful learning ensues.


Applicable standards (NETS-T):

IB. Demonstrate continual growth in technology knowledge and skills to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies.

IIA. Design developmentally appropriate learning opportunities that apply technology-enhanced instructional strategies to support the diverse needs of learners.

IIIC. Apply technology to develop students' higher order skills and creativity.

Learning by Design

The "learning by design" model described by Koehler and Mishra is clearly an advancement of the typical methods undertaken by teachers and pre-service teachers in professional development exercises. While we have often been influenced to merely learn the basics of technology, and resigned to the constraint therein, the learning by design approach dictates that a more profound and beneficial process results. Facets of this technique, such as collaboration, problem-solving, and intensive involvement, offer teachers and prospective teachers the opportunity to not only learn how to effectively integrate technology, but also how to pass on such skills to their students, which is obviously vital.

Admittedly, many of my own classroom experiences have been hampered by a relative deficiency in technological skills, which has prevented me from being able to fully explore the advantages of classroom integration. I am improving, however, and many of the issues from the article parallel the trial-and-error qualities of creating my home page, which is still a bit of a sad work in progress. Although the dominant role of collaboration has been lacking in this activity, constructing the home page has forced me to learn many skills from scratch, slowly, rather than merely being reliant on lecture notes or textbook nonsense. This is representative of a design problem from the article, "Designing is a Holistic Skill," and it has certainly been useful to experience the process firsthand. I know that this will be highly productive in my classroom, as I now will be a much more confident guide for my students when they are faced with similarly challenging tasks. This is the most important aspect of the learning by design approach: developing an experiential understanding of the obstacles that they will certainly encounter and the frustration produced by them, as well as being much more adept at scaffolding their efforts throughout difficult lessons. Good news for me...and for them.

Small group without the small group

In "Examining Literate Lives as Students Engage with Multiple Literacies," Tierney, Bond, and Bresler further our discussion of educational technology, and offer relevant points of view related to both the benefits of integration and the obstacles preventing it. For me, the most intriguing elements of their article are the student excerpts, and the manners by which students responded to new forms of communication and collaboration. Although group projects take many forms, I was drawn to the flexibility and range afforded by engaging in multiple literacies within the small group framework. Yet I was reminded of the difficulty in maximizing such potential within a language arts curriculum, and consequently sought an article offering examples of the utilization of technology as a catalyst for writing instruction. In Making Thinking Visible: Writing in the Center, Mary Nicolini describes the writing-as-thinking focus of Penn High School (Mishawaka, IN), and outlines several manners by which technology can facilitate learning.

Nicolini writes that "the best use of technology to teach writing is that of a "nudge." The obvious implication is that pushing students toward discovery, as opposed to the "production of essays," enables students to learn how to think, as well. Speaking as a classroom teacher, the hard part always seems to be coming up with ways to inspire students to look beyond what they "know" of reading and writing- that it is boring and unnecessarily time-consuming, and they'd rather be sending text messages to their friends. In a way, my favorite example from the article offers the best of both worlds. This process involves the formation of literature circles, with a writing-center chat room serving as the "small group" of collaborative learning. Students adhered to groups which had been initiated in the traditional classroom, but in this case a "moderator" led the discussion by writing as opposed to speaking, and the "connector" and "summarizer" followed suit. This reminded me of the Tierney article, and the range of roles evident within the context of multiple literacies, and seems to be the most significant educational advantage of technological integration. Whether it be through a frequency of communication or the variety of responsibilities, such learner-centered and collaborative tasks not only improve achievement, but also motivate students to stay involved. In this case the chat rooms model text-messaging, and offer students a domain that they are accustomed to. In addition to Daedalus, the chat program, Nicolini also cites Inspiration, a graphic organizer, and PowerPoint as tools that can be employed in a technology-supported curriculum. The "nudge" characteristic (as applied to tech-based learning) is certainly at work here, and one which teachers should focus on in order to truly move beyond the "show-and-tell" quality that we have previously discussed. It is important to be able to supply students with skills relative to the modern world (without overwhelming them), and both this piece and the Tierney article offer positive methods for doing so.