PROJECT BACKGROUND
I currently work at ICHK-HLY as the Digital & Information Literacy Leader. I’m a non-class based teacher who works across the school, from Nursery to Year 6. When not in a classroom, I spend a lot of time planning, purchasing, completing whole-school admin jobs and sorting maintenance issues for all things ICT. Although at times I feel like I wear way too many hats, I do love my job and the flexibility it provides.
I enjoy working with other staff members, teachers, students and classes in order to help improve technology integration and standards at our school. With my position I have the unique opportunity to get into all of the classes and see the progression from the Early Years right up to graduation in Year 6. It’s fun to be able to work with a varied group of learners as I often walk away from lessons with more questions then I answered.
Having been in this position now for a little over a year now, I have seen quite a bit of change, not only amongst students and their capabilities, but teachers too. Don’t get me wrong, we’re no model for other schools to copy just yet, but we’re progressing and moving forward as a whole.
One of the things I have tried to do differently this year, when compared to last, is to spend more time with the younger students early on. Last year I spent quite a large chunk of time in Year 5 and 6 and that was most likely due to the fact that I had been a Year 1 teacher for 4-5 years and was ready for some deeper conversations…and less tears. But what I learned from that first year out was that it’s best to start young and have students work their way up then it is to spend the majority of my time with older students who are soon graduating. So I’ve reversed my teaching spiral as you may call it and am now working on building up the skills in the younger years so that by the time they get to Year 5 and 6 they are equipped with the skill sets that we need them to have to complete more in-depth projects.
flickr photo shared by throgers under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license
One common skill set that I have found to be of concern is the research skills of our students. Often times what you would expect to see in a finished product, that includes the element of research as part of their process, to be lacking in detail or clarity. Teachers tend to question why basic skills need to be re-taught and not merely expanded upon.
So, this is why I have chosen to once again work with the Year 3 students on their “Where We Are in Time and Place” unit of inquiry. This central purpose of this unit is to research an explorer who has made a discovery in our past. The research topics that students can explore, but are not limited to, include:
- Space exploration (20th Century / Recent)
- Age of exploration (Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus)
- Science Inventions
- Ends of the Earth (Deep sea, North Pole, Himalayas)
- Flight and transportation
For their summative task, students are to choose an explorer or inventor to research and be at a ‘Wax Museum’ that is going to be open to parents and the school community to come and check-out as a Mini-Exhibition.
When I look back at my notes from our collaboration last year, I noticed a few changes in how I would like for this time around to be different. I’m hoping that those reflections will lead to greater success and better results – both for students and teachers alike. And in the process continue to improve student information literacy and research skills that I talked about earlier.
The proposition that I had for this year was to have teachers use Blendspace to organise their lessons for the unit and to then have students create their accounts to organise their research. For those who don’t know, Blendspace (formerly Edcanvas, now part of TES) is an online multimedia Web tool for teachers and students to create presentations, WebQuests, projects, online courses and more. It’s a great resource if you’re looking to ‘flip your classroom’ as you can easily collect and share resources from YouTube, Dropbox, Google Drive, Flickr, Website Links, My Computer, Bookmarks and more. However, after using it more extensively in Year 5 post Y3 unit last year, I am moving away from it as there was too much troubleshooting for my liking.
Google Classroom
With the development of Google Classroom I have now proposing the two Year 3 teachers move all their student work into the cloud and on to Google Classroom. Students have had their GAFE accounts for a little over a month now so I think they will enjoy the fact that they’re going to be working online, doing research in their docs and managing their own workflow. Does this address their difficulty in understanding the text: no. But the research tool built into Docs provides teachers with an excellent way to see and track individual student progress in real time when their work is shared back through the Classroom. It also allows for teachers like myself to see where the mistakes are being made and use them as teaching points.
When we did this unit last year, we had one teacher who wasn’t as comfortable with the tech side of things and pushed students to create their final Wax Museum projects on paper. It looked great, like an old science fair almost. But when compared to the students who completed their work primarily online, a stark contrast in the skills they learned was ever-present.
This year, for those students who choose their mode of presentation to be an infographic, I would like for them to get away from the boring posters of old and create something that is worthy of presenting at the Wax Museum. It’s hard to walk around town nowadays without seeing an infographic somewhere. There are reasons for that…they catch the eye. They are appealing and they have concise information that tells the audience a clear message. I would like to take the time to properly teach them the skills behind a great infographic as I believe this unit, on sharing about explorers and inventors, is a good medium for that kind of presentation.
With a year under my belt in this position, and having been a part of this unit in the past, I am looking forward to bringing more tech into the classrooms to increase the engagement students have with this UOI in a way that boosts both the research skills and their presentations skills.
Watch this space for an end of unit reflection.
Thanks for reading!