Sarah Bernard
The most interesting
aspect of this article, which seems to be to be exactly like a high end blog,
is that Sara Bernard covers several different types of technology. She moves
swiftly from explaining how her students blog while she's teaching, using an excellent website that allows for live
updates and commenting, to going a bit stone age on us and suggesting that kids
make videos of war battles.
Another interesting
idea that Bernard puts out there is creating Facebook (though when the article
was written, she also used MySpace as an example) profile out there using
historical figures. Instead of making a profile page you can make a private
group, that details the persons life, and then you can "friend" them
with other historical people. It's a lot of work if JUST the teacher is making
these pages, but say you had one student make one page for one relevant figure.
They can get start up information from Wikipedia and use that site to move on to more …
accurate sites or articles.
This is one that I
just created. It took me 10 minutes and that included blocking out my name in
Paint, the most ancient of all the ancient standard software. If you click on the picture and you're logged into Facebook, it'll take you to the page. They are super
easy to create and a fun way for kids to learn about the presidents, or anyone.
If this didn't pique
my interest enough, Bernard went a step further. I was intrigued just from the
title, given that I want to teach Social Studies and don't want to be one of
those teachers that spends 45 minutes just blathering on about dates no one cares
about. Even worse would be if I had to have students learn about other
countries from a map on the wall. Other countries have so much culture that
some children will never be exposed to and Sara Bernard gave me a new way to
teach about them.
In case any of my
readers don't know what Skype is, I'll give you Sara's take on it. "Skype
is a way to communicate with people all around the world. All you need is a
computer, a special camera that you can connect to the computer, a speaker, an
address on Skype, and the other person's address." That's all well and good for personal
business but it's also excellent for teaching about, say, South Africa. All you
have to do is find, preferably, for me, another teacher that is willing to chat
with you. Another option would be to have their students Skype with your
students and then have your students give a short report on what they've
learned. I can assure you it'll be more informative and interesting creating a
trifold tourism pamphlet.
In this article
Bernard gives another excellent example of how Skype works in the classroom,
this one using elementary school students.
One elementary school teacher in Michigan, Mrs. Lykowski, is having her
fifth graders chat with kids in Colombia.
I think that this is excellent, because she's exposing her students to
another culture, and she's doing it with the technology they already know
about. Another interesting and very forward thinking strategy Lykowski has is
having her students make podcasts and write blogs, both of which are available
on her class wiki.
As I noted in my
last post, I was a bit throw back by all of the new technologies being used in
classroom, I used to be a big proponent of lots of lecture time and less time
doing hands on activities. I think that had to have been before I realized
there were TONS of hands on activities that aren't, for lack of better word,
boring. I have to say though, if I was 100% against tech in the room before, I
am 100% for it now.
Learning Outcomes
Addressed:
1. Demonstrate the
understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student
learning. This
article gave several ways of teaching with tech and I only chose the ones that
struck me as informative and interesting.
2. Evaluate and use
a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance
students technological literacy. Both Podcasts and CoverItLive, the blogging
tool, are ways to evaluate student learning.
3. Design meaningful
and authentic digitally based learning experiences with multiple and varied
assessments. The fact that I could create a
Facebook page in under 15 minutes shows me how easily students could create
one.
I really enjoyed reading your post about Sarah Bernard's article- you came away with some great ideas for how to integrate these new technologies in your future classroom! I like that the tools are some that students are likely already familiar with (facebook and skype). Although our kids may already use these tools, they probably don't consider the educational impact of them if they're used in a different venue, like a classroom. Not only would these be exciting lessons to conduct, but it would hopefully shift the students' perceptions of these applications from pure recreation/socialization into more of a learning tool that can be used both inside and outside of the classroom! I also loved that you made your own sample facebook page as a trial, what a great idea for a teacher (if only our districts allowed us to do these fun things in our classes...) Just a note that you may want to check your links-- all of the ones I clicked on didn't automatically open into a new tab...
ReplyDeleteGreat post though, I'm looking forward to reading more of your ideas!
I thought that both this article and your post were very interesting Sarah. I never knew that you could create these Historical Facebook accounts but I believe that children would be excited to create their own. It's an easy and fun way to learn more about a historical figure. Throughout most of my educational career, I have been lectured and lectured at, in nearly every Social Studies class. While I enjoy lectures with discussions, I realize that other students have different learning styles. This activity could engage them because you could bring the students to the library, have them collect information about the figure, and then flush out their Historical Facebook account. Technology in the classroom, such as Facebook and Skype, has the potential to really engage students in learning because it is relevant to their generation. I use Facebook and Skype all the time and I hope that in the future, I will be able to teach in a school-district which allows this technology in the classroom environment.
ReplyDeleteI think Social Studies is one of the most exciting areas to incorporate technology. The world is such a big and ever-changing place, and technology can bring students there in ways that were never available to them in the past. My son recently did a project on the Ivory Coast using Google Earth. While he began it reluctantly, he was completely engaged once he got into it. Instead of memorizing state capitals, students in the Geography class at my school use GPS's to to engage in urban planning in their own town. Pretty cool stuff, and kids love it! These are really active ways to bring history and other social studies classes alive for students. Unfortunately, access to technology in my school is somewhat limited, so it tends to focused in classes that absolutely require it to function. However, the core classes of English, social studies, science, and math is where we are frequently losing students at the high school level. Technology would certainly raise the level of engagement and the quality of instruction in those critical areas.
ReplyDelete