Standard C Artifacts
How-to videos for using new applications or programs:
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese proverb
Tutorials and podcasts can not only help differentiate instruction but they are also an excellent aide in remediation. My school has an extremely high turnover rate (fewer than 1/4 of our population attends the entire school year) and being able to bring students "up-to-speed" as quickly as possible is a great strength in supporting their academic access.
4-22-12: Even though the caption track is uploaded, this video's captioning is no longer showing. It was enabled and worked perfectly well yesterday but it appears that YouTube is updating their captioning abilities. Another video embedded in this site now has an interactive transcript available when viewed on YouTube; this option wasn't there yesterday. I've uploaded the text for the wiki video in the files at the bottom of the page.
Online discussions:
Moodle Forums-
This year, I taught 3/4 of the 11th grade English courses at my school. We're a small school with a diverse population and most of the kids know each other. Building on that sense of community, I developed assignments that would capitalize on their familiarity with each other, taking the ease of their social realm and attempting to include it in an academic one.
Forums were structured to foster dialogue opportunities by engaging the students in discussion via multiple arrangements. My 100+ English students were assigned to read one of the seven suggested novels I chose for our unit. I hoped that it would increase student engagement if they chose their book rather than have one imposed on them and would therefore foster deeper, less teacher-driven analysis (the jury is still out on that).
The variety of novels allowed for some self-assessment on the students' part; after browsing the options, most of my second-language-learners opted for the shortest book. Another of my students told me how delighted he was that The Good Earth was one of the choices. While he didn't become a great fan of the novel, he still maintained that he was drawn to the subject matter due to his race and appreciated the opportunity to feel connected to his heritage in an academic setting.
I monitored the discussions, initially responding to all in order to welcome them to the discussion. Later, I would only reply when students had made interesting points or needed to be reminded that an adequate post wasn't the equivalent of a text message; their answers needed to be thoughtful.
VoiceThread-
The beauty of these forums is that they can be structured to promote analysis in a variety of modes and in a very interactive fashion. VoiceThread is particularly versatile, allowing students to post responses via text, audio or video. For a teacher, being able to add links to images while providing a voiceover is just as good as offering face-to-face instruction. Actually, it's better because it can be reused at will and infinitely without wearing out the speaker.
Group Assignments:
These can be the bane of any student's existence unless the activity is well-organized and planned. I regularly assign group work and encourage students to step out of their comfort zone and work with various classmates. Being able to work online in an asynchronous fashion alleviates some of the stress of that situation by helping them map out their roles and the expectations for them.