The state of technology integration in K-12 schools today is sornethinq of a paradox:Access to tools and resources is continually expanding, and most teachers reportinterest in educational technology, yet widespread and pervasive use of technolo-

gies in classrooms remains elusive. And while it's easy to find examples of innovativeand creative uses of classroom technology, systemic change has been slow to material-ize. There are many possible reasons for this, including limited access to tech tools, thepressure of high-stakes testing, and the compartmentalized structure of middle and highschools that limits interdisciplinary projects. But perhaps the most fundamental and persis-tent obstacle to effective tech integration is the complexity of knowledge it requires.

Think about the different kinds of knowledge teachers must draw on in the planning andimplementation processes. Ws not enough to simply find and learn how to use an interest-ing tool or resource. They must also determine the right fit between the tool, the curricu-lum, and the learning activity. This kind of integrated knowledge is called technological,pedagogical, and content knowledge, or TPACK.

Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, the developers of the TPACK framework, suggestthat one way for teachers to build this knowledge is through "learning by design." In thisapproach, teachers collaboratively design a solution to an instructional challenge. Thenthey put the solution to the test in the classroom, reflecting on and modifying it based ontheir experience. It is through this process of design, reflection, and tweaking that teach-ers can develop their TPACK.

While this is a great way to create new lessons, for many experienced teachers, TPACKcomes into play more in ore-imagining" un~s they have already planned. Candace Schafer-Southard, a high school history teacher, has put many of her tried-and-true lessonsthrough the learning-by-design process to effectively integrate appropriate technologies.Read on to find out how she successfully remade one project into a technology-infusedhistory lesson that students would not soon forget.

-Mark Hofer

I redesigned the project to include use of video and audiosoftware to enhance the end products and expand theamount of information I asked students to include.

New School, New ToolsMy professional teaching experiencebegan in a living history museum.Hands-on experiences, artifact analy-sis, and the inquiry method were myfavorite teaching techniques. WhenI began teaching in a high school, Ihad to figure out how to adapt thesemethods I had used in the museumto the classroom, where my access toauthentic artifacts was limited. Overtime. I was able to replace those arti-facts through the use of multimediatechnologies. But it was a slow transi-tion because I didn't have access tomuch technology at first.

That all changed in 2007. when Itransferred to Warhill High School inWilliamsburg, Virginia. Billed as Wil-liamsburg- James City County PublicSchools' "technology school," Warhillopened with an array of technologies.including computer labs, four com-puter stations in every classroom. tab-lets, in-room projectors. wireless key-boards. a plethora of online resources.and access to many types of software.With these new tools came the ex-pectation that teachers would modifytheir lesson plans and teaching meth-ods to include the new technologies.Fortunately. our school's instructionaltechnology resource teacher (ITRT),Patti Bowen, was there to guide andassist the teachers with this daunting.challenge.

Training and Collaborative PlanningDuring opening week. Bowen offeredmandatory training sessions to intro-d~ce the available technology and helpconvert traditional classroom activitiesinto high-tech lesson plans. First sheasked us to look at our lesson plansand projects to see where technologymight enhance the learning objectives.Once we had made our selections, sheoffered more in-depth training ses-sions for the technology applicationswe selected and worked with us to

February 2014 I Learning & Leading WIThTechnology 17

ensure the technology did not over-shadow the objective of the lesson.

The ITRT was also available to meetwith us during our planning periods tobrainstorm ideas about using technol-ogy to enhance our lessons and teachus how to use the programs. This wasthe collaborative part of the learning-by-design method.

Old Project Meets New TechEager to use the tools available to me, Ilooked through myoid lesson plans insearch of a project that would benefitfrom the incorporation of technology.I zeroed in on an end-of-unit projectfrom my World History II class (ISOOto the present) focusing on the mon-archs of Europe during the ages of Ab-solutism and Enlightenment. I chosethis project as my first conversionfrom "old school" to "techno-school"because it was successful as originallydesigned, but it held the promise ofbeing even better with the addition oftechnology. Going into the conversion,I truly believed that the technologywould enrich the students' educationalexperience and improve the outcomeof the project without dominating thelearning objectives or the focus of thelesson.

My overarching goal for the proj-ect was to help students to not onlyremember monarchs from the agesof Absolutism and Enlightenment,but also have some creative fun withthe information. I encouraged mystudents to find interesting personalstories about the monarchs that wouldmake them more "real" and help bringthem to life. My hope was that if thestudents could identify with the mon-archs as people, they would be morelikely to internalize the informationand make connections.

My original approach to the proj-ect required students to create amusic CD cover that highlights 10monarchs from this era (see someexamples at monarchs.wmwikis.net/Cfr+example). As part of the CD

Using the new programs greatly enhancedthe project and helped the students create a

much better overview of each monarchfor the class to enjoy.

cover, students created song titlesthat described each of the monarchs,wrote a few sentences overviewingeach monarch's reign, created a titleand illustrated cover, and wrote anintroductory paragraph about the eraduring which the monarch reigned. Itwas a fun and interesting project thathelped students express their creativ-ity while learning about the accom-plishments of key rulers.

I redesigned the project to includeuse of video and audio software toenhance the end products and expandthe amount of information I asked -students to include. In this new ap-proach, the students worked in pairsto develop the CD cover as well asa short documentary on one of the .monarchs. They found images andperiod-appropriate music online, thenused either MovieMaker or PhotoStory to create a 3- to S-minute docu-mentary focused on the featured mon-arch's reign and accomplishments.

Testing It OutThe learning curve for me in this lessontransformation was tremendous! Be-fore I could expect my students to usethe technologies successfully,I neededto learn how to use them myself TheITRT helped me get started with thesoftware. Then I went through everystep that my students would be takingwhile working on the redesigned proj-ect: I selected a monarch, completedresearch online, wrote the narrative,located the visuals and period music,and documented my sources. I usedAudacity to record the narrative anddownload the musical selection, andthen I exported the audio into Movie-Maker along Withthe visuals to createthe final documentary.

~8 Learning & Leading with Technology I February 2014

L

The experience I gained from com-pleting the project as the studentswould was invaluable. It allowed me towrite detailed directions for the classto follow, determine the pacing of theproject, troubleshoot problems withimplementation of the programs, andanswer students' questions based onmy personal experiences. Completingmy own project, though, was only thebeginning. Once I finished my sampledocumentary, I began the preplanningfor my classes, which included:

• Determining the dates• Reserving the computers• Identifying useful websites and

bookmarking them online for easeof student access

• Reserving time with the media spe-cialist to teach students how to usedatabases and print resources fortheir research

• Writing the project plan• Creating handouts for the students

The Students' TurnOn the first day of the project, I dis-tributed detailed directions to the .students that included a pacing guide(goo.gllSsUjzO) and grading rubric(goo.gllw3wFbM). I then showed thestudents the example project I hadcreated (goo.gllsvKGCf), followed bya brief discussion of my requirementsand expectations for quality.

Next, I gave a brieflesson on howto use the software programs as wellas the media center resources avail-able. Then the students selected theirpartners, brainstormed documentaryideas, and decided how to divide proj-ect responsibilities. We progressedthrough the project in the followingsequence:

ISTE,

i, I~ II

The benefits to our students are well worththe effort and apprehension on our part.

learning each achieved, the vocabu-lary they used in the narratives, andthe lengths of their documentaries.The GT students included more in-formation in the descriptions accom-panying each song title and went wellbeyond my requirements to includemore personal information and in-teresting stories about their featuredmonarchs in their documentaries. Thestudents in the heterogeneous classincluded the required information butfocused more on basic facts and omit-ted some stories about the monarchsthat had perhaps been more difficultto uncover in their research. The GTstudents' narratives included vocabu-lary that was more academic and sim-ilar to historians' language, while thestudents in the heterogeneous sectionused intermediate-level vocabulary.

Good ResultsI admit that I had reservations aboutincorporating unfamiliar technologyinto an already successful project. Iwas apprehensive about my ability touse the software and concerned aboutthe project's pacing. Mostly, though" Idid not want the use of technology toovershadow the learning objectives.I'm happy to say that my fears wereunfounded.

Using the new programs enhancedthe project and helped the studentscreate a better overview of each mon-arch for the class to enjoy. Studentsactively sought more informationand interesting facts to include in thedocumentary portions of their proj-ects. As a teacher, I enjoyed seeing mystudents get so engaged and discover-ing how incorporating pedagogicallyappropriate technology could enhancea curriculum-based project.

iII~~: .2.0__ L_p_~a_r_n•.in.g__&.L.e.a.d.ln.g__ W.it.h.T.e.C.h.n.O.IO.9.Y••• I __ F.e.b.ru.a.~•• 2.0.1.4•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• .J

Day 1: Introduction, sample project,topic selection, !nitial brainstorming

- Day 2: Creation of CD cover, includingimages, song titles, and descriptions;research.Including image search

Day 3: Polishing and recording ofnarrative, beginning of MovieMakerproject, importing audio

Days 4-5: Production of films andfinalization of CD cover

Day 6: Student film screening

Differentiating by Skill LevelOne of the classes that completed thisproject was designated gifted arid tal-ented (GT), and the other was a classwith heterogeneous ability levels. Bothclasses completed the project success-fully but used different software at dif-ferent levels. The GT section complet-ed the full project using MovieMakerand Audacity, while the heterogeneoussection used PhotoStory.

Since the GT section progressed at afaster pace and had a few extra days todevote to the project, they were able tocomplete the project in a more com-plex way, using software that providedmore advanced features. The hetero-geneous class needed the shortenedversion of the project and the morelimited movie creation software tokeep up with the pacing of the course.Both groups, however, were able tomeet the learning objectives while de-veloping and applying different modesof creative expression. Both were fo-cused on their research, excited aboutfinding quality images to representtheir monarchs, and intent on creatinginteresting CD covers.

The main differences I noticed be-tween the groups was the depth of

Allowing the students-who, as digital natives, "~~1~~','thrive on technology-to be creative within the ;;:~J~~~.~.)":'.~.'J;\:".parameters I gave them resulted in a memorable iI}f/::.: U);:.~}~:.learning experience and some well-rounded ~:; . .'~'"finished projects.

. I used a rubric to assess student workon the project. The best projects showedcreativity and included information thatshowed the monarchs as real people.Each group presented their CD case andvideo (MovieMaker or PhotoStory) tothe class. This helped students see themonarchs in a variety of ways, and itserved as a review before the test

At the end of the unit, the studentscompleted a traditional multiple-choice and short -answer assessment.The classes that completed the movieproject outperformed my previousclasses that did this lesson the originalway by an average of eight percentagepoints. That shows me that studentslearn at least as much from this newway of teaching the project. But mostimportant, many have repeatedly toldme that the remade project was thehighlight of the course for them.

Lessons LearnedLike the majority of the faculty, I cameto Warhill to take advantage of thetechnology. Some of my colleagueswere overwhelmed with the prospectof effective tech integration and didnot pursue more than we had to. Oth-ers maximized the opportunity and.continued to find ways to incorporatemore technology into their lessons,either by retrofitting or creating newlessons that use tools in pedagogicallyappropriate ways.

The learning-by-design process hasbeen challenging for me at times too.At first I was concerned that the toolswould become the lesson rather than

. enhance the lesson. Then I was worried. that if I gave the students too muchcreative license, they would not pro-duce the desired results, and the proj-

...ect would not end up enriching their

'::"3 ."understanding. But I discovered that thebenefits to our students are well worththe effort and apprehension on our part.

We did have some technical difficul-ties, but they were easily solved. Forexample, when students failed to savetheir progress in secure folders, otherstudents unfortunately were able totamper with them. We rectified this byreminding the students to save theirwork in the proper place. We alsohad initial problems with unchargedlaptop batteries, which I addressed bybringing in power strips so studentscould plug in their machines beforethey lost any work.

I also found that being conscien-tious and choosing the right technol-ogy to enhance a lesson is critical tosuccess. Allowing the students-who,as digital natives, thrive on technol-ogy-to be creative within the param-eters I gave them resulted in a memo-rable learning experience and somewell-rounded finished projects. I wassurprised at how amazingly creativethey are and how they were able totake their projects in directions I hadnot imagined while still meeting theirinstructional objectives.

Candace Schafer-Southard is asocial studies teacher and de-partment curriculum leader atWarhill High School in Wil-liamsburg, Virginia. Prior totransitioning to the classroom,she presented museum educa-

tion programs at the [amestown- Yorktown Foun-dation and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Mark Hofer is an associateprofessor of educational tech-nology at the College of Wil-liam & Mary. A former highschool history teacher, he nowfocuses his research and devel-opment on curriculum-based

technology integration.

K-12 InternetResource Center

K12IRC.ORGOver 2,100carefullyselected andannotated linkswillprovide you with thetools you need tocreate exciting,topical lessonplansand curriculum. Likean InstructionalResource Center in the realworld, you will find ...

Informationand Resourcesfor the K-12community

• a solid foundation forsupporting standards andassessmentpractices,

• classroom projects, lessons,units, field trips, extendedstudies, and internationaldatabases in almost everysubject and across subjects,

• ideas & resources to integratemedia into your curriculum,

• tips for school, family, industry,and community partnerships,

• tools for planning andmanaging your environment,

• professional development andpublishing opportunities.

TheK-12 Instructional ResourceCenter ischockfull of the best-of-breed resources for designing,implementing, and refreshinglessonplans and curriculum.

Create a great resource?And now it needs a new homeon the Internet? Check out ournew, free archiving service.

(Check the link below for detailS.)

Your One-Stop Resource ForCurriculum And Professional

Development.

http://www.k12irc.org/isteK121MCorg is a not-for-profit resource.maintained by Dr. Bonnie Tenenbaum.

February2014 I Learning& Leadingwith Technology 21

. I