Included in my personal professional and academic goals is to incorporate technology use by my students in the classroom. This is also a standard expressed by the government, required of both teachers and students. I feel it is important our students enter the working world with a level of comfort about technology and how they can use it to enhance their learning experience.
To inspre technology appreciation with my College Prep class, I have them logged onto the SFHS moodle. This space allows us to do a plethora of online communication as a class. Currently, groups of students are asked to compile information regarding one of the six major poets from the Romantic Period that are included in our textbook. Today was our first day in the lab using this moodle, and of course we ran into the unexpected. I had wiki pages set up for each group, but it turns out that they can only be formatted by people who know how to write in HTML. This is okay. What will happen is differentiation: those students who know HTML can choose to still compile their information on the wiki page and use HTML to edit and format the text. Those who are unfamilar with HTML can compile their information on their author in MS Word and upload their file for their classmates to see.
I think it is great that we ran into a roadblock I hadn’t expected and that we are able to run with that and see the different solutions that groups come up with. I think my students are creating some beautiful documents in MS Word where they are confident to play with different fonts, sizes, colors and formatting. Those who are very literate in HTML are able to do the same thing through a medium they have experience with.
I was feeling the pressure last week because the students didn’t really hop on board with this assignment and wasted a lot of time. Today, after some confusion as to what we were actually doing, they realized they had a lot of work ahead of them and got down to business. Those groups that slacked in the beginning of this assignment will be pointed out as the incapable, since they are responsible for teaching their classmates about their author. Their presentations will be lacking numerous qualities, and hopefully a little unhappiness expressed by their peers will be motivation to work harder in class when the teacher gives you time.
More to come on the results of this assignment…
