4.3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness. (PSC 4.3/ISTE 5c)
Reflection
The artifact is an engaged learning project that I facilitated with a first grade class in the 2014-2015 school year at Harbins Elementary. I created the lesson plan based on my discussions with other teachers on Twitter, and blog posts from two primary grades teachers, Karen Lirennman and Kristen Wideen. Classes collaborated through pictures on Twitter, blog posts on Kidblog, and a Skype chat at the beginning and end of the project.
Before beginning this project, I helped the participating teacher start a classroom Twitter account and find several classes to collaborate with. My facilitation of this project also included modifying blog assignments and scribing for some ELL and special needs students, showing my ability to support diverse student needs. Also, I reached out to several educators on Twitter to set up the Skype session, specifically seeking a diverse global range of classrooms to collaborate with in order to increase students’ cultural understanding and global awareness. The nature of the project (weather & geography) also helped to increase students’ understanding of different parts of the country and the world.
If I were doing this project again, I would modify the timeline to include a couple of “Mystery Skypes” before beginning the project. Mystery Skypes involve two classes connecting via video conference and trying to guess the location of the other class through a series of questions and clues. This experience would have helped the students learn videoconferencing etiquette and have some practice before beginning the project. I would also find a way to address more language arts skills and standards, since the blogging and project work took up a large portion of the language arts block for several weeks.
Teaching this lesson with a 1st grade teacher helped to spark interest in videoconferencing throughout the grade level and the school. Our media specialist had a lot of interest in her weekly videoconferences and was able to include several more classes in this learning experience. I also taught several of the same blogging lessons for other teachers in the following months, although I was only able to include this one class in the Engaged Learning Project. Students began to see the power of communication and get excited about comments on their blog. Their learning conversations helped to deepen engagement and give them a place to showcase their work and reflect on their learning. The impact of this lesson sequence could be measured by a technology assessment on the ISTE-S Communication & Collaboration standard. It could also be assessed by local & state assessments on the writing strands of language arts and science.
Before beginning this project, I helped the participating teacher start a classroom Twitter account and find several classes to collaborate with. My facilitation of this project also included modifying blog assignments and scribing for some ELL and special needs students, showing my ability to support diverse student needs. Also, I reached out to several educators on Twitter to set up the Skype session, specifically seeking a diverse global range of classrooms to collaborate with in order to increase students’ cultural understanding and global awareness. The nature of the project (weather & geography) also helped to increase students’ understanding of different parts of the country and the world.
If I were doing this project again, I would modify the timeline to include a couple of “Mystery Skypes” before beginning the project. Mystery Skypes involve two classes connecting via video conference and trying to guess the location of the other class through a series of questions and clues. This experience would have helped the students learn videoconferencing etiquette and have some practice before beginning the project. I would also find a way to address more language arts skills and standards, since the blogging and project work took up a large portion of the language arts block for several weeks.
Teaching this lesson with a 1st grade teacher helped to spark interest in videoconferencing throughout the grade level and the school. Our media specialist had a lot of interest in her weekly videoconferences and was able to include several more classes in this learning experience. I also taught several of the same blogging lessons for other teachers in the following months, although I was only able to include this one class in the Engaged Learning Project. Students began to see the power of communication and get excited about comments on their blog. Their learning conversations helped to deepen engagement and give them a place to showcase their work and reflect on their learning. The impact of this lesson sequence could be measured by a technology assessment on the ISTE-S Communication & Collaboration standard. It could also be assessed by local & state assessments on the writing strands of language arts and science.