I love Storybird!
This is a digital writing tool kids really get into. The basic premise of the tool is this: A massive gallery of artwork created by hundreds of artists worldwide provide the illustrations for the original stories your students write. There are four writing formats: poetry, long form (think chapter book), comic and picture book. Students have a choice of one format and literally thousands of pieces of art to illustrate their books. Students can search for themed collections. For example, if they are writing poems about a cold, rainy day, they simply type in "rain" in the search box, and hundreds of rain themed pictures pop up. The drag and drop feature is very easy for chubby little fingers to use. Storybird will alert students to misspellings with the familiar squiggly red underline. My kids toggle back and forth between Storybird and Dictionary.com or Thesaurus.com for assistance in spelling and word usage. I use the free version and it's still amazing. I can input my entire class roster, assign writing projects, and easily keep tabs on student progress. Kids are assigned passwords that are stored on my class list, so if anyone forgets their password, I have it. As students write more and more books, they earn "coins." They can use those coins to buy a photocopy of their original book. I wish I had a color printer at school. I bet their books would look amazing in color. This is the fourth year that I've used Storybird in my classroom. There are some glitches that leave me stumped, and sometimes, I can't figure a way out. It has been four months since my class used Storybird to write an original narrative. I hope that whatever glitches the program had are gone because this is truly a wonderful digital tool to utilize in any classroom: elementary, middle, high school and beyond!
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The focus in my classroom is writing. Reading is as equally important, however Writing is the favorite twin. After all, someone had to create writing before someone else could claim that they were able to read.
I know that like explicit writing instruction is necessary to produce skilled writers, explicit instruction in digital-literacy is essential for successful achievement in writing. In my classroom, my students have been introduced to two fundamental digital skills that went hand in hand with writing expository essays this past trimester: * Citing sources. Giving credit where credit is due. * Respecting other people's ideas, and avoiding plagiarism. The next skill we will address is "Protecting private information online." This past week, one of my poor fourth graders was hacked by a high school student. Her entire writing file was erased and replaced with pictures of puppies and hearts. Her final writing project was in the lost collection. I seriously don't know how I did it, but I was able to retrieve her final writing assignment. It was a real-world lesson to all the kids in class. They witnessed first-hand how devastating "hacking" is to the victim. I'm using Google's Be internet Awesome's interactive games and companion lessons to teach my kids about being safe online. I feel this should be cemented in their minds before we attempt to conduct research online. I don't have much time, but I think dedicating 15 minutes every other day to online safety is very important, especially since two-thirds of the year is over, and soon they will find themselves in 5th grade fully immersed in the internet. My goal is for every one of my students to fully understand how to protect themselves online. In the ICARE document, under the Reflect heading there is a question that came to haunt me over and over again as I read the article From the Mind's Eye of the User by Brenda Dervin:
"So, how did YOU make SENSE of it?" I am not one to boldly wave my shortcomings around like a white flag, but to answer that question, I didn't. At least, not with the first reading...or even the second. It turns out that the problem is not the subject matter, but the way that it is presented. Ms. Dervin has a very unique and creative way of using the same gerund as both adjective and noun in the same sentence. Sometimes, for sheer whimsy, she'll use it as the verb in the sentence, too. She seems to be a fan of the run-on sentence. Plus, it is quite evident that she likes the words "the individual" and "thus." Therefore, it is not an easy read. I read the first nine pages right off of my computer screen before I decided, "Nope, that's not gonna work." So, I printed the entire article, found a quiet spot to read and highlight all the "AHAs!" I could find. Unfortunately, this article was not the quick read I was hoping for on a cold Saturday morning between loads of laundry and peeks at the pot roast that needed to be done by 5 o'clock. After an hour, I went online to research what Sense-making is all about and why Dr. Dervin wrote about it because her article was not promptly giving me the answers I was looking for. I found three videos on Youtube that were useful introductions to Sense-making. They helped set the foundation for the third attempt at reading Ms. Dervin's article. I've listed them here for quick reference. If I were trying to teach the content from Ms. Dervin's article From the Mind's Eye of the User to a high school English Literature class, I would definitely start with these videos. The material in each of these videos is very clear and visually engaging. What is sense-making? And why should you care? Found on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkExPEBspNU Sense-making Found on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2NnjyGqw8k&t=81s What is SENSE-MAKING? What does SENSE-MAKING mean? SENSE-MAKING meaning, definition & explanation Found on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVp2WKR2NZc "So, how did I make SENSE of it?" I was looking for a connection between Sense-making and my research study. The following quote from the article was the biggest AHA! that I found hidden within that labyrinth of words: "What this means is that sense-making has been used to study human sense-making in situations where humans reach out for something they called information, used something they saw as a potential source and judged whether it helped or not, or created an idea about an institution based on experience with the institution" (page 68). How does this make sense to me in connection to my research? For three weeks I gathered quantitative data from my students' writing, as well as qualitative data in the form of informal interviews with students and casual observations. The information I gathered told me that my students were not self-motivated enough to put much effort into improving their writing. The use of computer word processing programs was incidental. However, from what I understood from Ms. Dervin's article, that is my perception of what the information is telling me. Since I am human, living in my particular time and space, a product of my past, my perception is based on my individual experiences. As I move forward in my experiences, I'm constantly working on making sense. In connection to my research, I had initial questions about what I wanted my study to answer. But there is still a big gap between what I know and what I want to know. Dr. Dervin uses the metaphor of a GAP BRIDGE to illustrate the next steps I need to take in order to find the answers to the next set of questions I have about technology in the writing classroom. She also uses a triangle metaphor to illustrate how researchers "circle around the experience." In this case, my experience is searching for definitive answers to my next set of research questions regarding how much student motivation plays in proficient writing. Every time I move back to my study, I'm dealing with the situation of finding answers, therefore creating sense. Dr. Brends Dervin's article definitely is not a quick read. It ain't no People Magazine. To be kind, her syntax and word usage might be a bit confusing at times. However, if you look beyond her dense rhetoric, the subject matter is fascinating. It seems that sense-making should be obvious to us since we are human, since making sense is a very human ability. But like a tub of pinto beans, there is a lot more under the surface. Sense-making can be found in military, technical, social, organizational, cultural, psychological, medical and operational applications. In other words, everything that makes us human. As a writing teacher who strongly supports the addition of technology to the writing process, I feel that it is extremely important that my students not only learn how to fine tune their word-processing skills, but also their internet skills. During my own writing practice, I rely heavily on the web to research everything between alliteration and verisimilitude. Honestly, I'm pretty good at finding exactly what I am looking for in those deep, murky internet waters. But not my kids. They are very young and very inexperienced, and they need a guide because they still don't know where the sharks are lurking. There are three areas that I want to explore as digital citizens in my classroom. The first area is Online Safety. Despite the fact that they are still fourth graders, my kids think they have a handle on how the internet works. You make a video. You post it on Youtube. You become a millionaire. The future is golden! Lots of them know how to use dad's credit card to buy video games off of Amazon. A few days ago, one of my students explained to me how he used his mother's credit card to buy "skins" for his avatar on some video game he is currently playing in an online gaming community. The "skins" don't cost too much so sometimes he buys them for his online friends. Who are these friends? Other kids he guesses. Thankfully Google has created Be Internet Awesome, an interactive web-based game that teaches students how to be safe online. This is exactly what my little gamers need. Be Internet Awesome is all around awesome. However, the best part of the program is a series of lessons for teachers that support the online experience for the kids. In my classroom, I will focus on three lessons that I believe are essential before we proceed with any online browsing. Lesson Two: Don't Fall for Fake, Lesson Three: Secure Your Secrets and Lesson Five: When in Doubt, Talk It Out seem to have been written especially for my class. Like I wrote earlier, my students are very young, very inexperienced and very naive. Despite their tough personas, they're still little kids and they fall for all kinds of nonsense. They fall for the fake. Michael McDowell said that 80% of what our students are learning, they learn from other kids AND most of the time it's wrong. I believe that these three lessons will help steer my kids in the right direction (See link below). The second area is Plagiarism. The more rigorous CAASPP test requires that students as young as third grade read more than one text source, process the information, analyze the prompt and write a well-written composition. In addition, starting in fourth grade, they must cite their sources. Very few of our students seem to understand how this is supposed to work. Too many of them either write absolutely nothing, or copy straight from the reading passages. I've seen students literally copy and paste an entire article into their text box. Plus, very few, if any, cite the source. This, of course, is detrimental to test scores and self-esteem. I found a very good lesson on understanding plagiarism in Common Sense Media titled Whose Is It, Anyway? (See below for link). The explanations in the lesson are very easy for students to follow. It quickly makes a connection to students' feelings about respect and ownership. A mini-lesson on citing a source is included. I adapted the lesson to fit the current ELA unit we are working on, so it can stand alone or be easily modified to fit your curriculum. The third area is Online Credibility This third area makes a loop right back to Online Safety. You could say that Online Credibility is the cousin of Online Safety. Like I wrote earlier, my students are very young, very inexperienced, and very naive. They believe a lot of nonsense for the simple reason that "someone told them." Last year, my students were working on research papers. They wanted to browse through Youtube because it's chock full of great information. Being the mean, old teacher that I am, I said no. Youtube was not a reliable source. I made it very clear that you could not trust the validity of the information on Youtube. "Why not!? Youtube is so much funner!" Well, I'll share this: one of my students found out I celebrated Passover, so she went on Youtube to find out what Passover was all about. What she found were some very disrespectful videos. She came back to school with some malignant information. And it spread. I feel that it is very important that we teach our students how to assess the credibility of an online source, especially now that so much of our information comes from online sources. This is a skill that will follow them way past college and career. I believe that of all the skills I teach them, this is the one that they will use their entire life. I found a lesson in the Stanford's History Education Group website titled News Search. This is an upper elementary school and beyond lesson. Students look at a CNN web page and try to determine which of the articles is the most credible: an opinion piece or a news article. A rubric is included in the lesson that helps both the teacher and the student understand if they can distinguish which is a more reliable source. I searched other lessons. There is one that may be for older students, but a teacher can provide scaffolding for upper elementary students through the lesson and see successful results. It's called Claims on Youtube. Students can be guided in identifying markers that signify that a video is not what it claims to be (See links below). Our society will never go back to the way things were in the 20th Century. We are living on a much smaller, much faster planet. As educators, we should be thinking about lessons beyond the three Rs. Teaching our kids how to use Google Docs and Padlet is just the surface. We need to dive deeper and teach them how to navigate through an internet civilization that is constantly expanding and moving forward. We need to help them learn how to stay out of trouble and make smart decisions about how they behave online because the world wide web is in our classrooms whether there is a class set of Chromebooks or not. The influences of the internet follow our kids wherever they go. We must teach them to be in control of this glorious and exciting beast. Google Be Internet Awesome pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-interland.appspot.com/en-us/hub/pdfs/Google_BeInternetAwesome_DigitalCitizenshipSafety_Curriculum_.pdf Digital Citizenship Lesson “Whose Is It, Anyway?” https://www.commonsense.org/education/system/files/3-5-unit1-whoseisitanyway-2017.pdf?x=1 Claims on Youtube https://sheg.stanford.edu/civic-online-reasoning/claims-youtube News Search https://sheg.stanford.edu/civic-online-reasoning/news-search HAS MY ESSENTIAL QUESTION CHANGED?
A year ago, before I introduced myself to Dr. Redmond and shared with her my intentions to go after my master's degree in Innovative Learning, I was already firmly set on developing a research study around the effects of technology on student achievement in the writing process. I worked on an essential question that clearly addressed what I wanted to study: Will the use of digital tools and 21st Century Skills Encourage Active Student Engagement in the Writing Process? Despite the fact that there was a mountain of research that supported the hypothesis that the use of technology actually hindered the writing process in most young students, I was determined to prove it all wrong. I desperately wanted my data to show that with solid writing instruction and explicit instruction in word processing and keyboarding, technology would indeed be the catalyst to encouraged student engagement, thus greater achievement in writing. How did your findings influence your thinking about the bigger challenge? My findings were very disappointing. My students did not make any significant growth in the three areas that I tested: understanding of expository writing, organization and structure, grammar, word usage and mechanics. The reason for such disappointing data is that my students refused to collaborate with each other on an academic level. They wanted to talk about Fortnite, fourth grade gossip, and other nonsense that had nothing to do with the assignment. Plus, they complained constantly about being bored, about having to do boring work, and about not having any fun so close to the Winter Break. They were sure that nobody else in the entire school was being subjected to such boring activities. Some students refused to open their Chromebooks because they were too bored to do so. One student wrote three words in the span of five days because he was just too bored to write any more than three words. While I was creating my magnificent writing and technology lesson, I failed to take into consideration student motivation. If there was one huge challenge that I have to consider is how to motivate these kids into wanting to writing their best. What do you know now? I know that teaching the writing process and techno-skills are not enough. I have to get them to see how writing is both beautiful and powerful. When I was a little girl, my father shared a often quoted saying that never leaves me because it is so profound on so many levels: the pen is mightier than the sword. To spread the belief that writing is capable of doing the unimaginable, I would add to my research questions to following: 1. How do you motivate students to write? 2. How do you do get kids to enjoy writing? I don't think I'm too far from getting kids onto my "Writing is Awesome" bandwagon. During our small group writing workshops, I've noticed that my kids are beginning to give some pretty insightful feedback to each other. They are generous with complements and kind, but honest with their critiques. That's a very good sign. What do you need to find out and how will you discover it? Recently, I've taught my kids how to write an outline in preparation for an expository essay. During several conversations with many of my students, I've discovered that they do not like to use Google Docs to write any of their outlines or rough drafts. They prefer to use paper and pencil for all the rough draft work, then when it has been reviewed and revised, they use Google Docs to write the essay. This is surprising because prior to the onset of the research study, my students shared that they enjoyed writing on the computer much better than paper and pencil. However, they soon realized that was not the case at all. They found keyboarding much too difficult, but didn't want to come across as "uncool." This is what I needed to know: did my kids truly like using a computer to write? The answer was no. Perhaps, this why I was getting all the "I am so bored" gripes during the study. Students have been known to avoid certain situations not because they are bored (mad, tired, etc), but because they can't do the work. In this case, the computer was a hindrance. What data will you collect to inform you? My plan is to continue to teach the full writing process: brainstorming ideas, drafting, peer review, reflection, revising, rewriting and publishing. However, all except for rewriting and publishing will be completed using the pencil and paper method. Students will use Google Docs to rewrite and publish their work. This will allow them to concentrate only one assignment to type, giving them room and time to practice their typing skills. During the study, students worked in a groups of three without my assistance during collaboration. This time around, I will actively participate with groups of six, modeling what true collaboration looks like. At the end of two weeks, I will analyze the essays. I hope to answer if allowing students to use a more familiar pencil and paper method for the rough drafts before typing the final draft help improve essay scores. I also hope to answer if actively modeling collaboration with students helps them understand how to best use the skill. How is your research innovative? Honestly, I don't know how innovative my research is. I hope it can be defined as good teaching. I was not pleased with the results of my initial study, so I must develop another plan to help me kids become better writers. Good problem solvers keep looking for solutions. We have a terrible problem at our school. Almost 90% of our students failed to meet the ELA standard on the 2017 CAASPP. But there is a solution. I am very excited about this semester's course work. I expect to learn more innovative ideas that will help me find a solution to our writing crisis. Competency-based learning, Personalized learning, and the work by Michael McDowell all sound like a step in the right direction. |
Tess Giner
This is my 25th year as a public school teacher. I've taught every grade between Kindergarten and 12th grade. I hope to encourage my students to love writing and reading as much as I do. Archives
July 2019
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