Connected Classrooms Assessment Task 2

Daniel Piacquadio s3283229

RMIT Bundoora

In their book “The 12 touchstones of good teaching” Goodwin and Hubbel (2013) explain that often more than 50 percent of what we learn in schools is forgotten, with the process beginning within a day of the completion of the exam for which it was learnt. Much of this forgetting seems to be explained by the type of learning engaged in to learn the information in the first place. Shallow knowledge and learning, or even strategic learning, tend not to produce long term knowledge gains in students (Goodwin & Hubbel, 2013). It was with this in mind that I first went about planning my three part series. While it was obviously important for the purpose of this assessment to incorporate information, computer technology (ICT), my primary concern was to create an activity series that would foster deep learning and engagement. Only having done this would I try to choose the ICT that would best compliment this goal.

Throughout my observations I was beginning to get the sense that one of the primary determinates of success within school was motivation. Student intelligence being equal, motivation had the greatest impact on how a student engaged with a class. Given this, I noticed some potentially very bright students, engage much less, and put in far too little effort, to be properly benefiting from class. The same applies to struggling students, with some working tirelessly to achieve standard, and others disengaging completely. But while aspects of student characteristics are generally out of a teachers’ control, like intelligence, confidence and sociability, much has been written on how to generate student motivation (Gilbert & Hoepper, 2014; Goodwin & Hubbel, 2013), particularly with reference to the incorporation of ICT (Hoffman, 2014; Wang & Reeves, 2006; Cook & McDonald, 2008). My three primary goals then, were to create a lesson series that harnessed ICT and complex, deep questions to bolster student motivation to learn. The content of the lesson was to follow the strain of work they had been doing in English, studying the film “Bridge to Terabithia”. Undertaken in the final week of term, I hoped to introduce students in two year 7 classes to complex questions surrounding the comparison of the book with the film.

A final consideration I had to take into account when planning this series was the very wide spread of ability within the classes I was teaching. Appendix 1 shows two examples of student work collected in the week prior to planning my lesson and demonstrates the difference in ability. Some students, such as those exemplified by appendix 1.a struggled to pull out the deeper meaning behind the films narrative and set. Further still, what meaning they put forward, they struggled to logically demonstrate and provide evidence for. On the other hand, a handful of students such as appendix 1.b were working at a level determined to be 12 months ahead of their year 7 work. This is an important fact to keep in mind as I wanted to create a series that was challenging enough for all levels of ability, but without excluding anyone outright, leading to that disengagement which I had seen so many times during observation. How this was done will be outlined below.

The ICT I decided to incorporate into my lessons to help foster my goals were primarily Google Sites and PowerPoint. The reasons why I chose these two will be explained shortly, but first I want to spend some time discussing the ethical considerations behind using these tools. Some of the potential risks of using ICT is the associated exposure to unplanned-for content that can be accessed through the internet, particularly if you are actively asking students to research information (Selwyn, 2009). “Thankfully”, my placement school has some of the tightest restrictions on web browsing use I’ve seen in a school setting, so these types of risk were not a major concern. What was concerning however was trying to make the full use of Google Sites without requiring students to login. One of the barriers to technology use within the classroom is learning how to make full use of an application within the constraints of the school you’re working in (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Becta, 2004). Unfortunately my placement school doesn’t utilise google applications, which usually require an account holder to be over 18 years old without parental consent. As I will later discuss, this

constraint had a significant impact on how the final lesson series came together. Yet I felt it more ethically sound to work without exposing students to contracts and accounts, the implications of which they might not be fully aware, and of which the school doesn’t usually require. Either way, I was determined to incorporate Google Sites because its use facilitates the goals outlined in the AusVELS Interdisciplinary Learning standards of: communication; design, creativity and technology; information and communication technology; and with my intended use, thinking processes (AusVELS, 2015). PowerPoint was used for much the same reason. While I considered more recent parallels, like ‘Near Pod’, PowerPoint, although discussed in the literature as if on its way out (Cook & McDonald, 2008), still offers the benefits of providing rich information in the form of colourful presentations , pictures, MP4s and GIFs. Not to mention it is familiar to everyone, eradicating the need to spend time teaching it.

To now properly discuss my lesson series, my primary questions were about how to foster motivation and deep analysis. Literature suggests that a number of factors contribute to student motivation within the classroom; challenge is often mentioned as one of these factors (Goodwin & Hubbel, 2013; Gilbert & Hoepper, 2014). I stated I wanted to challenge all students, including those high achieving students who were at risk of disengaging. As such I created three separate web tabs on Google Sites (housed by a Bridge to Terabithia site). Each tab provided students with scenes from the movie, along with the associated text extracts from the book. Using these scenes, students were to compare the book with the film on the basis of a topic and prompts. By creating a website, I believed I was providing students with rich learning resources that included a range of multiple communication types (visual, audible, written). As one of the benefits of ICT use (Bell & Federman, 2013) it was important to create content that would appeal to the various learning styles; such as visual, verbal linguistic, interpersonal etc. (Parry & Gregory, 2003). My placement school grades students only at a ‘Below’, ‘At’, or ‘Above’ standard, and as a result these three topics were designed to provide an appropriate, but difficult challenge to these three levels (although students weren’t made explicitly aware of this). Topic three in particular, based on character emotion, was deliberately very difficult and abstract, well beyond year 7 standards outlined by AusVELS. Group work is also often highlighted as not only an important skill to teach (Gilbert & Hoepper, 2014) but as an important benefit to motivation that is often bolstered by ICT inclusion into a classroom (Shober Et. al., 2006). I elected to choose the groups myself for an important reason; I wanted to put bright but lazy students into the higher topics they would tend to avoid, and I wanted all groups to fit within the challenge level appropriate for them. Lastly, a student centred approach is hailed as being one of the major drivers to student motivation and learning (Harsanto, 2014). According to the literature, students learn best when problem solving, and when class time is devoted to students actively participating in the learning process through activities and research, rather than being explicitly taught by teachers (Ehlers, 2009; Goodwin & Hubbel, 2013; Hoffman, 2014). As I will discuss during my reflections on personal learning, this was one of the major benefits of using google site, of which at least one entire paper has been devoted to the subject (see: Harsanto, 2014). But, with this in mind, I created the google site with the activities in mind so that enough information was included so that students could work towards the instructions provided, while I devoted my time to trouble shooting questions and encouraging further analysis. Overall, I aimed to generate student curiosity in the first lesson by introducing them to the extracts from the book and engaging them with research. The second lesson would introduce them to the extended task of creating a presentation examining major differences between the book and film along a chosen topic, and the third lesson would be devoted to them presenting their findings to the class.

As alluded to earlier, some of my aspirations for the series were hampered by the context of the school I was in. Using the SAMR model as a guide (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition) I had planned for a level of ICT incorporation that would signify a complete modification of the learning tasks. I wanted the google site to operate as a foundation for student peer cooperation in creating a fully student created cite that showed and discussed what my topics would eventually come to represent. Unfortunately, due to the nature of Google Sites, this level of classroom active participation is only achievable if everyone has a google account. Due to this fact, PowerPoint was included as a separate placeholder for this functionality. As a consequence of these limitations I would suggest that my incorporation of ICT ended up allowing me to augment the traditional learning tasks of text comparison, providing increased functionality and depth of media presentation, without fully innovating the way students approach this kind of task.

Reflecting on my implementation of the lesson series a number of very important lessons were learnt. Before considering lessons learnt around ICT use in particular, I would like to discuss broader observations around student motivation. After the first lesson my mentor expressed doubt as to whether students would be able to produce the work I had set for them by the conclusion of the second lesson, ready to present for the third. However it can often be the case that teacher expectations can be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy for students (Goodwin & Hubbel, 2013), where low expectations will produce low results. I therefore decided to go ahead as planned, and even amongst student disbelief, I retained my original series plan. The result was that every group completed a presentation both within time, and above the expectations of my mentor. This highlighted one of the first major benefits of my particular use of ICT, the lessons are accessible outside of the classroom; meaning that the one group that didn’t quite finish by lesson 2, was able to finish it as homework. Even unmotivated, high achieving students put in great effort to produce complex comparisons.

In terms of ICT: the use of ICT does not lead to a lowered requirement for teachers to be across the normal domains of teaching, namely pedagogy and curriculum. As discussed by Mishra and Koehler (2006), ICT should be used in conjunction with these other domains to produce a three part model to teaching; referred to as the Pedagogical, Technological Content Knowledge Model. While I had little scope to reflect and change my lessons from one to the next in the series, I had plenty of opportunity to change each particular lesson as I delivered them from one class to the other (see Appendix 2 for examples of this). After my first lesson, I realised that I had failed to properly explain the task in the first instance to the class, thinking instead that all the instructions on the google Site would suffice. As a result the class was disorderly at the start as they tried to understand what they had to do. For the next class, I was more explicit with my instructions at the start, and this resulted in a much smoother opening. In other words, the temptation with technology use in the classroom is to believe that it absolves you of the responsibility to properly implement the standard functions of a teacher, believing that this will be taken up by the technology, when this is of course not the case.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I took from this series however is the ability of technology to provide more time within the classroom for meaningful teacher-student interaction. While it is true that a barrier to ICT use is the great amount of time needed to learn how to properly include it (Becta, 2004). The time it can provide within a class is worth the effort. To be fair the time gained may have been affected by the nature of the task I was asking students to do. Different subjects may not so readily provide an avenue for activities which can be largely created on a website or similar resource, ready for students to work on with little explicit direction. But within the context of my placement, I found this ICT use to take away much of the explicit teaching I had to perform. While students worked towards their extended activity I had ample time to walk amongst the groups, challenge

their ideas, field their questions, and promote further thinking. As a bonus, I could do this within a classroom where students were, for the most part, genuinely enjoying the task. Greater still, while there is some doubt over the legitimacy of the idea of the digital native (Selwyn, 2009), it was exciting to see a couple of low performing students meaningfully engage with and add to the performance of their groups. These students, for some reason or another, had an excellent command over digital applications of which I am personally completely ignorant. As a result, their presentations included media and visuals which added to the overall effect of their presentations. It is a shame then that students’ personal laptops in this school are under-utilised, as professed by the staff working there.

In summary, ICT use within the classroom comes with it a number of limitations that can impede on a teachers’ ability to properly innovate the teaching process. As such, its inclusion in the classroom can be somewhat limited and tokenistic. Properly explored however, there seems to be an avenue within its use to properly foster the learning theory around student-centred learning, collaboration and peer-to-peer teaching; while simultaneously empowering both students and teachers with greater autonomy, and time, to engage with one another.

References

Becta. (2014). A review of the research literature on barriers to the uptake of ICT by teachers. Becta ICT Research, 1-29. Retrieved from: http://becta.org.uk

Bell, B. S., & Federman, J. E. (2013). E-learning in postsecondary education. The Future of Children, 23(1) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1519297777?accoun

Cook, D. A., & McDonald, F. S. (2008). E-LEARNING: Is there anything special about the "e"? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 51(1), 5-21. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/233167663?accountid=13552

Ehlers, U. D. (2009). Web 2.0 - e-learning 2.0 - quality 2.0? quality for new learning cultures. Quality Assurance in Education,17(3), 296-314. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09684880910970687

Gilbert, R., & Hoepper, B. (Eds.). (2014). Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences: History, Geography, Economics & Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum. Cengage Learning:Australia

Goodwin, B., & Hubbel, E.R. (2013). Touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying focusedevery day. McRel: Denver, USA

Harsanto, B. (2014). Innovation to enhance blended learning experience: Applying google sites in higher education. Information Management and Business Review, 6(1), 17-24. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1513214827?accountid=13552

Hoffman, E.S. (2014). Beyond the flipped classroom: Redesigning a research methods course for e3

instruction, Contemporary Issues in Educational Research, 7(1), 51-62.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

Parry, T., & Gregory, G. (2003). Designing brain-compatible learning. SkyLight Professional Development

Selwyn, N. (2009). The digital native- myth and reality. New Information Perspectives, 61(4), 364-379. doi:10.1108/00012530910973776

Shober, B., Wagner, P., Reimann, R., Atria, M., & Spiel, C. (2006). Teaching research methods in an internet-based blended-learning setting, Methodology, 2(2), 73-82.

Wang, S., & Reeves, T.C. (2006). The effects of web-based learning environments on student motivation in a high school earth science course, Educational Technology, Research andDevelopment, 54(6), 597-621.

Figure 1. Big idea activity sheet of student work considered below standard

Appendix

Appendix 1. Samples of student work

Figure 2. Big idea activity sheet of student work considered above standard

Appendix 2. Lesson series Note on appendix: for a full representation of the lesson and activity plans please visit the google site associated with the series at this URL: https://sites.google.com/site/brooksideyear7btt/home

Lesson 1 7D

Lesson 2 7D

Lesson 3 7D

Lesson 1 7E

Lesson 2 7E

Lesson 3 7E