Pedagogy & ICL (E-M)

eFolios (Digital Portfolios)

Portfolios have been around for a long time and for good reason. They offer a truly authentic way to help students, teachers and parents see student learning develop over time. One obstacle though, is simply the management of all the paper and ownership of the portfolio year after year. eFolios take care of the paper and management problems. As our students create more and more digital work to communicate their learning, it makes sense to have them house their portfolios on the web for easy access. eFolios provide a platform for instructional strategies, especially questioning, to guide students to use higher order thinking skills as they reflect about their learning. eFolios also offer parents access to their child's thinking and learning. One way to support ongoing "celebrations of learning" is to periodically ask students and parents to have sharing of learning time at home using the eFolios. Look to send home a scaffolded questionnaire for students and parents to follow and answer as they review the latest information the students added to their portfolios. These events can be followed up in class with students sharing about their celebration time with their parents. An additional benefit of this strategy is that the students whose parents are too busy to attend in school celebrations won't feel left out as they celebrate at home. This process further develops a culture of learning in one's classroom guiding students to think about the process of learning and not just the finished products. And do note that eFolios offer educators a place to document their work and professional learning over time.

Here are a few resources:

• eFolio Rubric from U of Wisconsin-Stout

• Reasons for Digital Portfolios

• Teacher eFolio Examples: Andrea Smith | Kim Cofino

Engagement Cards

Engagement cards provide multiple strategies to support remembering, discussing, sharing, justifying ideas and summarizing to name a few. Take a look at this slideshow created by Allison Ruttger to see examples.

Field Trips - Museum Visits - Exhibit Creation

Field trips can involve four stages of learning for our students. ICL can support all the stages.

In Stage 1, we can provide books, articles from databases, Web sites, videos, 3D views of objects in museums and when visiting museums, a review of its Web site. Carefully crafted questions help students use research skills to begin their understanding of what they will experience during the field trip. By building their foundation knowledge, they are able to make the most of their time on the excursion.

During Stage 2, the students take their trip. This is when they can experience the roles of photographer, videographer, reporter and/or subject matter expert who gathers information. Student learning can be amplified when they work individually or in teams to use cameras and/or iPads to take photos and videos. They can play the role of reporter being video recorded to explain museum exhibits, give details on a site they are visiting, etc. Internet connected mobile devices provide students instant access to further information as questions come up during the visit.

Stage 3 of the learning occurs when students return from the trip to begin processing the information they gathered. Technology supports collaboration when using information storage and storyboarding resources like Google Docs, Mindmeister, and Padlet.

Stage 4 engages the students to report their learning depending on the teacher assigned assessment.

Connecting students to other societies through geography can be supported through tools like Google Maps and Google Earth so check the next section on "Geography Connections".

There are so many museum Web sites that offer rich student learning opportunities. Here are a few resources:

• CyArk to Explore Places in 3D including excellent Lesson Plans

• Field Trip Zoom provides connections to museums and subject matter experts for video conferencing

• Google Arts & Culture to create your own online exhibits

• Google Earth's Voyager tool

• 77 Online Museums

• Khan Academy History of Art Through the Ages

• Smithsonian Learning Lab Inspiring Students to Explore, Connect and Learn

• Smithsonian X 3D to Explore Objects from Multiple Perspectives

A few possible projects and tools to support field trips:

• Documentary using student recorded images and video of their in person visit or online visit. Great way to share with parents and greater community.

• Google Expeditions

• Google Tour Builder lets you build a virtual tour using Google maps, YouTube and other resources.

• Newscast using student recorded images and video of their in person visit or online visit

• Online or In Person Presentation of a field trip using Tool from our Presentation Technology Matrix

• Pull image of art from the museum collections in Google Arts & Culture for virtual tours that students can create within the Web site.

The following videos demonstrate the empowerment of students using iPads to document their experiences on field trips.

Games

There are a great many video game software makers. One that educators are finding valuable is Mindcraft. Teachers are seeing that it can help students with their understanding of social studies and STEM while engaging students to create, problem solve, and most definitely make their thinking visible. The gamification movement in education brings teachers and students together as designers, problem solvers and creators.

The following are a few resources to get you started in seeing the possibilities.

• Breakout EDU for problem solving immersive games

• Game-Based Learning with comparison to gamification

• MindcraftEdu to Purchase the Game for School Use

• Mindshift Guide to Gaming

• Minecraft in the Classroom

• Professional Development for Teachers in Using Mindcraft

World Peace Game and John Hunter

Another game that has caught the imagination of many educators is the World Peace Game. This low technology use game involves students working in teams representing nations who interact with a large three dimensional playing board. Students are given challenges that over weeks of collaboration and problem solving have them finding peaceful solutions to the many obstacles, emergencies and prompts that the teacher facilitator throws at them. Talk about getting students to understand complexity, cause and effect, political intrigue, etc. while expanding their global awareness! Definitely think about getting the book to learn from John Hunter the creator of the World Peace Game. I sat in on some of his World Peace Game classes during my days in Charlottesville and I can say that John is a true master, constructivist teacher who from day one puts students in charge of thinking, making connections and managing their learning. You also can watch his TED Talks video for inspiration.

Between software/web-based games and simulations like the World Peace Game, we need to ask ourselves how can we best support students to have opportunities to simply play. We see how much students learn in their interactions with one another and adults in early childhood classrooms when they play and have choice over how they play. The challenge is as the students progress through elementary and onward to high school, how can we help them engage in play where they design and manage the play?

Games are obviously all about play. The challenge is how much "free" play we can make time for in our very structured days. We need to do our best to be the guide on the side as students make choices of games and how they wish to play. Peter Gray, an expert on the value of children having free play, presents several important points in a dated but valuable article.

Geography Connections including Educating for Global Competence

Let's Take A Google Lit Trip

Have your students use Google Earth and Google Maps to embed annotation and media connected placeholders to connect geography to your study of literature, social studies, science and other areas. This strategy is called Google Lit Trips as it started with teachers having students explain the geography of people and places in books they read. It has now moved on to cover other disciplines. Google has developed a new tool called Google Tour Builder to help students make connections to geography.

Resources to help in using Google Earth:

• Overview by Suzie Boss

• Google Earth listing of resources and lessons

• Google Lit Trips

• Teacher Created Virtual Field Trip

• Transdiscipline Example

Mapping and creating timelines are enhanced by using Google Earth, too. You and your students can use the myHistro app to make your study of history more visual. Users insert placeholders into Google Earth and add annotations, images and video displayed over time. Take a look at the myHistro Web site for examples of maps/timelines that you can use.

The photographs that Google provides definitely helps students visualize the place and people they will be learning about. Helping our students to further their understanding of others via geography and visuals helps in the process of expanding their global competence.

An Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) approach to global citizenship and understanding provides students with the tools, information and audience for them to search for, analyze, curate, create and communicate their learning about other people and societies around the world. A terrific resource to support educating for global competence is the Innovation on Earth Web site and blog of Sara Krakauer that includes a Technology Toolkit to help students connect, create and communicate their global understandings.

Image Analysis

Students quickly become comfortable in doing the See-Think-Wonder thinking routine. We work together to help them develop their visual and media literacies. One way to enhance our students’ experience in analyzing images and media is to use tools to annotate and mark up images. An excellent tool among many is the ThingLink app which lets students add text, audio, video and links to images and to videos. Students explain what they see while making connections in their learning. Get started with a short introduction video tutorial to learn how to use ThingLink. Here is a webinar tutorial to provide more information about using ThingLink. Look to follow Susan Oxnevad's blog and Twitter (@soxnevad) as she is real leader in using ThingLink. A key tutorial she provides is how to have students sign up for ThingLink accounts via their Google accounts. Another technology tool that helps students make their thinking visible as they analyze images is in using a screencasting app like Explain Everything or Educreations. Students download images to the iPad and then use a drawing tool to point out aspects of the image while recording their explanation. They play back the video to communicate their understanding. Students can also post their videos to Google Drive and/or an online video site.