Category Archives: Educational Design

8th Grade English Students Show Off Their Creative Chops on Google Sites with The Polson Press

Posted on by
Reply

After I touted the potential of the new Google Sites in a recent post, the 8th grade Language Arts teachers at Polson have done some pretty awesome things with its implementation. Martha Curran, Mary Rothfuss, Kristen Cinque, and Crystal Procaccini came to me at the start of their creative writing unit with the idea of publishing students’ finished works in a digital format. Blogger and Sites both came to mind, but they settled on Sites. The results are fantastic. Every student across the grade chose the piece they were most proud of for publication in what they dubbed The Polson Press, be it short story, vignette, poetry collection, or chapter 1 of a potential novel. While browsing the site, it doesn’t take long to realize how personally invested students were in their work. As a former English teacher, I was impressed by the quality of the work, but I can’t say I was surprised. On workshop days, I witnessed students’ focus as they went about their business on Chromebooks in the 8th grade commons area, situated just outside the 8th grade LA classrooms. It made me wonder if raising the stakes with the imminent publication of their work was the incentive needed to encourage students to produce their best work.

Due to privacy concerns, Google Sites created by Madison teachers and students are only accessible to other madisonps.org account users. But parents can enjoy seeing their kids’ work by simply asking them to sign in to Google when they visit the site. Go check out the results at the link above, but be sure to have your Google sign-in credentials on-hand. And if you’re interested in doing anything with Google Sites in your classrooms, don’t hesitate to reach out! It’s a great platform for students that can feature not just their more creative endeavors, but any intellectual pursuit you guide them through.

Explore Perspectives and Limit Biases with These News Source Tools

Posted on by
Reply

Since the dawn of 24/7 cable news some 30 years ago, the lines between fact and opinion in our news reporting have become increasingly blurred. The dawn of the Internet has amplified this effect, bringing with it many different perspectives across the political spectrum through which we digest our news. This can be a good thing as it has given previously marginalized voices a platform, but it has also facilitated the spread of “news reporting” that not only contains obvious biases, but outright falsehoods and flimsy conspiracy theories–actual fake news. Now that we have a president that has weaponized the term fake news for his own political gain, the very concept of reality can seem to be up for grabs. It’s no wonder the public’s faith in the news media is at an all-time low.

So how can we and our students better navigate the media landscape to detect bias and determine fact from fiction from opinion? Two news source tools that I’ve come across recently that are up to the task are AllSides.com and Read Across the Aisle. The former is a website that presents every news story with three articles: one that slants right, one that slants left, and one from the center. This is similar to KCRW’s excellent Left, Right, & Center podcast. Read Across the Aisle is a mobile app that aggregates current news articles from over 20 news sources across the political spectrum, ranging from HuffPo to FOX News, and it comes with a handy reading habits meter that tells how balanced your media diet is. As you can see at the bottom of the image to the right, I’m doing pretty well staying in the middle. The other cool thing about this app is that embedded in all of its articles is the research-backed BeeLine Reader the that displays color gradients that wrap from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This, according to the app’s website, facilitates visual tracking and enables the reader to focus on other aspects of reading, such as decoding and comprehension. Another great tool that Polson Library Media Specialist Dawn Fiorelli discovered recently is Factitious, a fun, interactive game designed a to test users’ ability to detect fake news from real.

If we’re to succeed in our collective goal of producing well informed media-literate citizens who will someday chart the course of our nation, these tools are vital. For every standard-bearing “rock-solid” piece of reporting, there is a revisionist counterpoint article that seeks to invalidate its claims, calling into question what is real. Even the sober-minded fact-checking sites we sometimes direct our students to, like FactCheck, Politifact, Snopes, and many more, have come under attack for being biased. The result can leave one feeling unmoored, head spinning, out of touch with objective truth. Who do I believe?! Or worse, we end up feeding our own confirmation biases by retreating to our respective media silos. To co-opt a term from our Tweeter-in-Chief, Sad! Hopefully, with some carefully designed learning activities that leverage some of the tools linked above, we, as educators, can reverse this unsettling trend and foster in our students a balanced media diet. Let me know if you’d like to explore the possibilities together. You know how to reach me.

Revisiting Bloom and Webb in the Digital Age

Posted on by
Reply

Bloom’s Taxonomy is one of the oldest, tried and true educational design principles that we all learned in our certification programs. Created in 1956 by educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom, its main purpose was to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts. As such, it works well for planning instruction. It was revised in 2001 to put more emphasis on the cognitive processes by which learners encounter and work with knowledge. Notice how each level was renamed to a verb or gerund–an “action word.”

Those of you who got certified more recently may have come across some variation of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy in your coursework, while more veteran teachers may have come across it during a PD activity or through a PLC. This updated version aims to expand upon the skills associated with each level by matching different technology applications to each level and the skills associated with them. Common Sense Media does a nice job explaining how technology affects Bloom’s Taxonomy in the video below, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

 

When planning instruction, finding the right piece of technology to foster the higher order thinking skills you’d like your students to develop can be tricky. As always, I’m happy to help design learning experiences with this in mind. When it comes to choosing the right piece of technology, I often turn to the SAMR model. To see the connection between Bloom and the SAMR model, here’s another great read from Common Sense Media.

I also found these visual representations of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy helpful. The second one does a nice job marrying the Bloom and SAMR models…

When it comes to planning assessments Webb’s Depth of Knowledge is king. Similar principles to Bloom regarding higher level thinking but with more emphasis on the thinking processes required of students, which is why it really helps us as educators as we assess student learning. That said, here are some technology uses that align with Webb’s DOK…