Cool tools without exemplars may be like a project without a rubric

This is a long overdue post about some of the basics of using technology in the classroom. A lot of this came about as I was trading thoughts with Amanda Ballard, a middle school social studies teacher in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Amanda was wrapping up a revolutionary war project, where students were asked to create a wiki to show arguments for/against colonial rebellion. She shared some of the successes and struggles with the project.

From our email exchanges, I realized how careful we have to be as educators when we try to introduce a technology piece into a lesson/unit. For many of us, we are subjected to a new textbook, or even revised standards, so we are often in a state of upgrading/modifying/enhancing on a very frequent basis. It might be tempting to see technology as another tool in our bag that we might "slip in". Yes, we hope to jazz up the students, but we truly want them to be using the tools and methodologies of today. Why not a wiki to show colonial rebellion - better than a Pro-Con T-chart...!!!

When we do any project-based activity, it's fair to say that exemplars go a long way toward letting students see what we will be expecting from them. If we budget our time correctly, walking students through exemplars (good, bad and ugly!) gives them a chance to ask questions and gives us a chance to point out some specifics in depth of information, style and presentation. However, I rarely see any mention of exemplars when teachers talk about technology-based projects. We assume students are 'tech-savvy' and can immediately translate our concepts of a wiki, blog posting or facebook page into reality.

It got me thinking that we have so many how-to sites to help us learn HOW to use some new tool, but no way to easily round up samples for students to review. Maybe we should start thinking about putting out the call for student exemplars. We could create an exemplar website and have pages of links that teachers can go to when we start a project......?

We're busy putting together our own PLNs (which is great) - we need to make sure we tap into that and provide students with authentic instances of this technology.

Animoto?

In case you haven't seen the FLOOD of messages on the #sschat Twitter feed, NCSS (National Council of Social Studies) held their 2011 conference this weekend in Washington D.C. Among the many presenters were a number of the "heavy-twitters" from SSCHAT.

Ron Peck was kind enough to post a link to his presentation about Video in the Classroom. It gives a great overview of Common Craft video formats as well as Animoto. Ron also posted an amazing set of links that I spent hours pouring over. I knew nothing about either technology, so I decided to take a look.

Common Craft seems like an awesome style of video. Their bare-bones characters and 'animation' (which consists of literally dragging paper images on and off the screen) make the end product look very home-spun and simplistic, but powerful at the same time. The sample video, Electing a U.S. President (in Plain English), is a great example of Common Craft at its finest.

On the flip-side, there was also a link to a 'behind the scenes' video that shows one class' experience creating a Common Craft video. I almost passed this one by, but when I saw it was from Paul Bogush, I took note. (I'm a huge fan of Paul and his excellent blog). This video put Common Craft-ing in a different light for me. The planning, creation and execution of all those zillion little moves - all to tell a 2-3 minute story - seemed like a big hurdle for me and my students to leap.

Then, I started down the Animoto path. Now, this was something that seemed a bit more manageable for me in the classroom. Once I had an idea for what I wanted to capture (in this case, it was the recent flooding in Thailand), it turned out to be very simple. (To be honest - the hardest thing was settling on a soundtrack!)..

Anyway, after finding a few pictures and converting my moldy WMA file to MP3, this video took me all of 3 minutes to create:





I am going to ask around and get some feedback from teachers using Common Craft videos. (I'm not giving up yet!)... In the meantime, I'm going to start thinking about "Animoto-izing" a few future assessments.

Thanks for the creative shot in the arm, Ron!!

My attempts to use WallWisher...

Richard Byrne at (FreeTech4Teachers) recommended a webservice called WallWisher. It is a way to do online sticky notes.

I decided to try it out and "build" my first curriculum unit for Ancient Civilizations.

Once I got the hang of it, it was pretty easy to use. The 140-character limit was a bit tough to take, BUT it made me think about what I wanted to say (and not just blast out some long narrative.

Here's what I came up with: Unit 1 - Early Humans+Mesopotamia by Mr_Padula

Welcome to my blog!

This is my FIRST attempt at a blog, so I hope all the time and effort is worth it!

I hope to keep track of my journey toward integrating technology with History/Social Studies in my classroom. Currently, I teach grades 6, 7 and 8 at the Lyndon Pilot School in Boston, Massachusetts.

If you want basic teacher-ish information about History classes at the Lyndon School, you can visit my Wiki at lyndonhistory678.wikispaces.com