Shelton's Period 6 English 8 CP

May The Tech Be With You

EDU 2.0 is used throughout the Santa Barbara district, and the more I use it the more effective it seems. Oddly, many teachers are barely skimming the potential of the program, while others have blended their classrooms and regularly have students take quizzes, communicate with the blog option, and keep parents up to date with news and other items from the class and the school.

Useful and colorful at the same time.

At its simplest level it's used as a grade book, but with the ability to incorporate Skype, Google Forms, and provide full analytics on student lessons, including both teacher-created and default Rubric forms from all disciplines and from college level courses, it's somewhat astonishing that more teachers aren't merging their entire curriculum into the program. It also has a plug and play option to map lessons and units into the Common Core ... and if you get confused it even has a searchable Help Center.

One aspect of this tech integration is the number of students who still don't have ready access to devices.

Totally cool: a built in CSU writing rubric.

I've talked to several students who are either failing or are about to because their teacher assigns multiple assignments digitally, many of them on EDU, and the student gets zeros because he doesn't have access. I asked if the teacher had assessed the class for digital accessibility, and the student just laughed, saying he couldn't take the quiz because it was online—and he doesn't have a computer at home.

While that student was partially being lazy, considering that schools have computer labs, computers in the library, and public libraries also have digital access, the problem is real. Most students won't go out of their way to be one of a very few who have to use the computer lab as their primary source of internet access. Further, the internet, as superb as the whole concept is, still falters on a regular basis. A teacher in my PLC had a 20 minute online intro for her lesson to ready the students for the play of Anne Frank's diary, but three minutes into The Secret Annex online, the internet decided to take the day off.

Back to the hardcopy.

The amount of data that EDU 2.0 provides, if used correctly, could allow teachers to manipulate their lesson plans for slower and faster learners. Plus, with incorporation of Google Forms and other frequent assessments that students might even consider fun because they're quick and online, the teacher could get regularly feedback as to the student's comprehension and enjoyment of any particular lesson.

The App Map

It's absolutely crazy how many apps there are, and quite sad how many of them are rather funky in their usability. After scrolling through hundreds of them, these three appealed on several levels. Read on.

Total Recall—Mind Map is a brainstorming app that allows for unlimited canvas size, to truly explore your thoughts. 

Not a map created in Total Recall, but instead a clever visionary paraphrase. A paravision?

Maps like this are used many times during an exploration of a text, and some students really don't like the process. For the more spatial learners this would be a fun way to explore the theme of a play or short story, rather than the standard pen and paper method.

Room Arranger gives students the ability to create a floor plan of their apartment or a whole house. This would allow spatial learners to get a better idea of where the characters are in a story. For instance, in Of Mice and Men, the bunkhouse is a key setting, and students could build the bunkhouse based on the descriptions in the text. 

We'll be reading The Diary of Anne Frank (the play) soon, and with eight people hiding out in a setting no bigger than 800 square feet, students could get a very real sense of the limitations on space that Miss Frank and her people were subjected to. Of course, you have to be sensitive to the reality that many students live in similar conditions with their families. This would actually allow them to relate to the story more, and once they've created the physical space in this app, the connection will be complete.

iTunes U I cannot over emphasize how huge this resource is. There are hundreds of lectures, lesson ideas and collaborative and differentiated courses. As an example, a course that I subscribe to, Comm 2221: Writing and Editing for News, posted an assignment called a Police Reporting Exercise.

The assignment gives you some facts, a deadline, and a source you're supposed to 'call' to fill in the gaps in the details. The finished piece is posted to a class blog.

If nothing else, iTunes U is a source for lesson ideas. If you take it further and students have access to a device, they can follow some prompts as to what "class" they need to find. This could be multi layered, as they might do the assignment from iTunes U, but post the answer on EDU, then discuss their answers and the concept in class the next day.

Endless opportunities.