Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and the Project Sketch for Grade 7

The Team 7 Humanities teachers have developed a unit titled "The Connected World" which embraces all facets of Bloom's revised taxonomy. I have attempted to apply these categories to our new unit by applying the Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) to our new unit.


Remembering: We are incorporating "blog journaling" to help students discuss and explore various topics around the world. Within their blogs, the students will use bullet points, highlighting, bookmarking, social networking, social book marking, and googling. They will learn to "comment and annotate" on other blogs and documents that they will share with students in different classrooms during different blocks. The students will "subscribe" to various blogs to better inform them on their chosen topic.

Understanding: The students will be able to "upload and share" websites and various materials that support their research and opinions. Their blog work will consist of a series of personal reflections/journaling about what they are learning through http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ and other good websites for MS students to learn about current events and blogs from other countries.

Applying: The students will be able to "link" with students from classrooms around the world. They will be able to discuss and "validate" their viewpoints and opinions about their topics with students from a variety of viewpoints. Our 160 students will create a link/resource filled 7th Grade online 'hyperText' book about the regions of the world. This will be a resource for next year's students in their regional studies. Students will work online and collaboratively with their regional-counterparts in the various classes. They will work on their section of the wiki - each writing enough about their issues to put together a solid chapter on the region backed up with evidence, examples and sources.


Analysing: The students will be able to use "constructive criticism and reflective practice" through the use of blogs. Students will be "collaborating and networking" through their blogs twice a week. Once a week the students will reflect on a blog in two ways. The students will reflect on the process itself and on the topics in their individual regions.


Evaluating: Within the next few weeks of study, the students will be working on "directing and producing" a 2 - 3 minute video about their issue/problem. The videos will serve the function of educating their peers about the problem they have identified. This phase of the project is based on one of the Flat Classroom projects. We would now group the students by issue, rather than by region. There will be approximately 8 students per issue, each group would be responsible for making a 2 - 3 minute video about their problem. Their videos will serve the function of educating others in the school community about their issues. Because they will now be working with students from different regions, they will be working together to understand the similarities and differences of how their issues play out in different regions.


Creating:
The final phase of the project will have students working together once again to create a project or action plan that has the students becoming part of the solution. They will create project ideas/plans to help or address the problem (other than through education) and they will present those ideas at a project symposium to a panel of teachers (maybe experts as well) their fellow students and they will post these solutions or action plans on a publicly accessible website. This is when students will have made connections between the EQs and the EUs. They will have evaluated and synthesized research and information about complex global issues. They will have educated others and finally, they will have come up with a plan that aims to help solve the problem.


I believe this will continue to grow throughout the process.

Read more...

Team 7 Project Sketch

Below is a working draft of our project sketch as written by Robin Ulster http://checkitoutonetime.blogspot.com/2009/02/project-sketch-itself-connected-world.html . Her writing, which came from a day long meeting of 7th grade humanities teachers, is in black, with some additional comments from me in yellow.

This was honestly the best day I have ever spent working collaboratively with my team. Each of our strengths were showcased, and I am truly excited about where the curriculum is going over the next semester and hopefully into next year. As a student I have always found that once I make a personal connection to a subject, whether it involves Shakespeare (by studying the roles of women in each play) or studying Psychology (by trying to understand the dynamics of my own family), I am committed. One of my main goals as a teacher is to provide the same opportunity for my students. This project allows 7th grade students to begin to look outside their world and make connections about issues in regions of the world I used to dream about. I want to be a student in my class. I believe the next few months have amazing potential, and my team did a fantastic job bringing it all together. I have been at a loss as far as what else to add because Robin said everything so eloquently. Here is what we have so far:

At the end of each part of the project, Robin has identified the NETS Standards that component meets. At this point it feels like every step of the project will demonstrate most of the standards, but minimally, they will include Standard #6. Technology Operations and Concepts.

1) Blog/journalling - Each of the 160+ students in 7th grade will keep a blog, using ideas inspired by Clarence Fisher. We will assign our students one of 19 regions of the world and one of 8 global social issues or problems. We will do this together because we want to make sure that among our 8 classes, we have the students divided into good working groups for the next phases of the project. Each student will work on a different issue for each region. Their blog work will consist of a series of personal reflections/journaling about what they are learning through globalvoicesonline.org, other good websites for MS students to learn about current events and by reading blogs from other countries. This addresses Standard # 3: Research and Information Fluency. This week we had Chad Bates come into our classrooms and set up blog accounts for each of my students through my.isb.ac.th. He will also be coming to all of the 7th grade classrooms to help us introduce igoogle and writing blogs with our students. One way we will be connected is through http://my.isb.ac.th/pg/groups/1805/connected-world-gr7/.

2) The second phase of the project is also inspired by Clarence Fisher. Our 160 students will create a link/resource filled 7th Grade online 'hyperText' book about the regions of the world. This will be a resource for next year's students in their regional studies. Students will work online and collaboratively with their regional-counterparts in the various classes. They will work on their section of the wiki - each writing enough about their issues to put together a solid chapter on the region backed up with evidence, examples and sources. One of their required sources will be communicating directly with someone from the region they are studying. This addresses Standard #5 Digital Citizenship. This also addresses Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making. I recently created a rubric for grading the blogs for our students. I looked at different versions on-line and began to establish a working document for our team to use. This process may have taught me more about what I should be doing, than what my students should be doing. I need to remember how valuable writing a rubric can be for my students.

3) The third phase of the project is based on one of the Flat Classroom projects. We would now group the students by issue, rather than by region. There could be as many as 8 students per issue, so we may divide them into smaller groups for this phase. Each group is responsible for making a 2 - 3 minute (we haven't decided on the length yet) video about their issue/problem. The videos will serve the function of educating their peers about the problem they have identified. Because they will now be working with students studying different regions, they will work together to understand the similarities and differences of how their issues play out in different regions. This will get back to the idea of making connections. They will present their videos to the 7th grade. Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

4) The final phase of the project will have students working together once again to create a project or action plan that has the kids themselves becoming part of the solution. They will create project ideas/plans to help or address the problem (other than through education) and they will present those ideas at a project symposium to a panel of teachers (maybe experts as well), their fellow students and globally (we're not sure what format to use). This is when students will have made connections between the Essential Questions and the Enduring Understandings. They will have evaluated and synthesized research and information about complex global issues. They will have educated others and finally, they will have come up with a plan that aims to help solve the problem. This addresses Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

Read more...

Where does high school fit in the move towards more technology?

Marc Prensky's article "Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom 21st-century schools need 21st-century technology" http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt, brushes upon a few items that I have thought quite a bit about over the past week. The four step process of dabbling; doing old things in old ways, doing old things in new ways, and then doing new things in new ways seems to find its grass roots in elementary and middle school education. Since changing from the high school to the middle school this past year, I have noticed a significant change in the amount of technology I am using in my classroom and that my students expect and wish to be exposed to on an everyday basis. Why is this? Why am I sitting in a room full educators and the majority of my colleagues are from the middle or elementary grades? Is the high school so bogged down by curriculum that there isn't time to incorporate the technology? In general, is the high school the last to change because they are the most resistant to change? The high schools that I have taught at over the years do not fit this bill regarding a resistance to change, but flexibility may be at the heart of the matter. As a high school teacher, I have never felt more of a rush to get through a given curriculum. Technology initially takes time away from content until all users have similar backgrounds and knowledge of the tools available to them. In an elementary school setting, we know where their starting point begins. But as students progress through the educational system, their comfort level in terms of technology can range from novice to expert in the same class. In an international school, students come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences that become harder to predict. By the time a student reaches high school, a teacher can not begin with technology 101, nor can the teacher assume that every student knows how to create their own blog or wiki. At least not yet; but what happens when they do? Will higher education be able to keep up with what is coming its way? Will IB change its policy to allow computers for writing assignments? Or will all of this technology stand still while our students progress through the works of Shakespeare and Advanced Biology? The more I learn, the more questions I have not just about who I am, but who I would like to become. The same can be said for my students. What do I want for them and what is the best way to get them there? I am still searching for the answers.

Read more...

Is Technology Worth it in the End?

I am full of frustration. I have spent the last two days working on two separate ways to incorporate technology into my class, and in retrospect, have lost a teaching day in the process. I began with trying to make a sort of dumping ground for my student's writing. At the last EARCOS conference I attended in Malaysia, Margriet Ruurs gave a fantastic seminar titled "The Power of Poems", she showed us this amazing website http://www.kalwriters.com/kidswwwrite/read.html where students submit their writing to enable each student to be published and shared with other classmates. My students just finished an amazing poetry project and each student has at least one poem worth sharing. I was surprised by the level of thought and purpose so many of my students displayed in their writing, especially some of my somewhat disinterested male students. Their poems are great and I wanted a safe place for them to share them with their classmates and feel a sense of accomplishment. Instead I spent hours trying to put something together http://inside.isb.ac.th/wattswriting/ and it is still not half of what I want it to be and I am not sure my students can access it the way I envisioned it at all. I am not going to give up on this one, but my level of frustration is at an all time high.

Then there is my big adventure into Wikiland. The 7th grade students just arrived back from the school trip to Korat. I thought I could help out my colleagues, and myself, by creating a wiki for the students to place their Korat photo essays http://korat2009.wetpaint.com/ . I thought the wiki would provide a nice place to showcase their hard work and provide students for next year an exemplar to model their essay from. Ahead of time I had my WWW student teacher try this out to make sure that it worked. He successfully submitted a photo and I was ready to introduce it to my class. Little did I know that a large percentage of my students are not old enough to join a wiki. And the ones that are old enough can download the pictures, but not the captions that they have spent the last two weeks working on. Now thanks to Chad, I have found a new way to correct this problem, but honestly the project is due in 3 hours, I do not have laptops booked for today, and it will be easier to have them dump the projects into StuShare into a folder for me to read. I feel like a fool now that I spent the time trying to create this, a fool for dedicating class time to something my students can not participate in due to their age, and a fool for thinking I created something great that my colleagues could use and then shared it to have it blow up in my face. Wouldn't scrap booking have been easier for my students and me? I know I am a neophyte, but at times this process can be incredibly frustrating. I could have spent this time with an amazing good book.

Read more...

Finding Information Online: Truth and Bias

The concept of truth and bias in a classroom, a textbook, in the media or the printed page fascinates me as a reader and a citizen. I continuously watch loved ones at home believe anything they read, see or hear. If I can't get my own family to understand the concepts of truth and bias, how do I get my students to understand and analyze the information that is presented to them each day? I need to learn more ways to model this behavior for my students and my children. I think I have always questioned people and their motives. That level of inquiry comes naturally to me and when others do not question, I am at a loss. Jeff brought up an really good analogy when he said, "At what age is your child old enough to go to the playground by themselves?" That answer is different for every parent and child. The same can be held true for every student in a classroom. "At what age do we trust them to know truth from bias?" I have students in my 7th grade class that mentally have yet to leave elementary school, where in the same classroom I have students ready to really question everything around them. Each person is different, although the Socratic method teaches us that the unexamined life is not worth living. By applying this to my teaching, I need students to learn to utilize those skills while online, watching a youtube video, and listening to the world around them.

Read more...

Thoughts on Personal Learning Networks

Personal Learning Networks can be utilized as an amazing source for news and information that I have a vested interest in studying. But in a world so filled with grading, mixed up school schedules, lesson plans, emails, three young children, and the minutia of everyday life, I am still unclear how to incorporate time in my life to read and think for myself, much less read what everyone else is thinking about. I know I need to learn how to better manage my time since I mentally wrote this blog over a week ago, and I am just posting it now and attempting to make sense of my notes. I was fascinated by Clarence Fisher's presentation and discussion about how he incorporates personal learning networks into his classroom every day. I loved his idea of having my students subscribe to globalvoicesonline.org and have each student subscribe to one feed from one country and have that become part of the student's required reading. Having the students then post a blog commenting on their blogs is an excellent way to reach the students and make their learning more meaningful. The one 8th grader had over 23,000 hit on her blog within a 6 month period. This is unbelievable and an amazing tool for students to realize that they have a voice that is being heard. Although I believe I subscribed to many of my colleagues blogs, I am still unclear of how to access them on a regular basis. I am also concerned with the concept that if the teacher becomes the learning hub, how long will it take before we are obsolete? If student have this amount of control over the information, how will different ideas be expressed and taught so that we do not all end up only believing what we want to believe? In college, the true learning that I experienced happened when I ran into people that did not believe the same ideas as myself and we challenged one another to see the world differently. The world is changing and I am trying to change with it.

Read more...