Lewis' Learning Lounge

Throughout the educational technology course I’ve taken this semester, I’ve engaged in the design process to help (re)design a unit that I teach in my classroom. While I’ve found this process to be extremely valuable in helping me identify the needs and desires of my students and developing solutions to help address them, I’ve come to the realization that the design process itself is really a model for how students should engage in learning. Students, especially teenagers, want to learn about topics that matter to them, and they want reassurance that their learning will actually be used later in life. Year after year, I’ve heard students share their frustrations with the content they are taught in school. This year, their opinions on the American school system were confirmed during our unit on rhetorical analysis. To analyze the persuasive techniques that speakers use, students viewed and read a variety of videos and texts throughout the unit. In particular, we watched YouTuber, Prince Ea, enlighten us about the issues present within our past and current school system. In his video, he discusses the need for students to be taught authentic skills that help them learn how to think critically and creatively and problem-solve to make the world a better place. Students in my classroom were instantly fired up about this topic after viewing the powerful video in which he “sues” the school system for its wrongdoings and faulty actions of failing to adapt the curriculum to today’s learners. It was through this discussion that I knew I had to create a unit that would help students to see how their learning can be powerful and relevant.

It was directly after this unit that my class on design thinking began. When we were asked to identify a lesson or unit of our own that needed redesigning, I immediately began to consider how I could incorporate a meaningful project that would address my students’ needs into my next unit on dystopian literature. In thinking about the way the protagonist of a dystopian novel typically responds to their realization of a problem in society, I had an epiphany to have students take on the role of a protagonist in our own society by identifying a problem or issue that exists in our world and devising a solution or action plan to address or help combat it. It wasn’t until I entered the second or third phase of the design process that I realized I was actually having students engage in a design process of their own. As I revised and adapted the project I was creating for students, I altered it to resemble a true design thinking project. In doing so, my goal was to devise an authentic learning experience that would excite my students (and Prince Ea!) and help them to realize how literature, and learning in general, can be applied in real-world settings to better the world.

While learning about the various phases of the design process, including Discover/Empathize, Define/Interpret, Ideate, Prototype, Experiment/Test, and Evolve, I found so much value in having students understand and experience the meaning and relevance behind each phase. I discuss developing empathy with my students quite often, but to present them with an opportunity to truly put it into practice would allow me to show them the worth I place on the skill. I was also excited to facilitate their learning through the other phases to help them take an idea from start to finish and actually share it with people outside of the classroom. It was then that I was introduced to the ADDIE model, which to me, appeared to be a student-friendly version of the design process I was working through in my course. This model sparked the steps I would then take to create a learning experience for my students that met the learning needs they desired.

You can read my Design Brief that outlines my (re)design process here.

You can read the project handout I provided to students here.

You can view a video in which I model the way I introduce the project to students here.

After recently completing this project with students, I can firmly say that it not only met my students’ needs and desires, but it sparked their interests and increased their motivation to learn and focus on an end goal. My original epiphany of realizing that the design thinking process should be practiced by students as often as teachers was further confirmed upon seeing the students’ final proposals. Students need to design and implement action plans to help combat existing issues in society because they are passionate about making the world a better place, and they need to utilize technology to effectively and efficiently design and implement a plan to combat issues in society because they need to practice the skills of collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Failing to provide students with an opportunity to engage in this type of learning experience is a disservice to students, teachers, and society. 

In his video, “I Sued the School System,” Prince Ea shares, “I don’t have much faith in school, but I do have faith in people. And if we can customize health care, cars, and Facebook pages, then it is our duty to do the same for education: To upgrade change and do way with school spirit, ’cause that’s useless, unless we are working to bring the spirit out of each and every student. That should be our task.” The authentic, meaningful project I redesigned really did bring the spirit out of my students. I was able to see the passion ignited in each of them as they thought about pressing issues in our world. Whether students chose to address the issue of slow fast food restaurant drive-thrus, tangled headphones, racism, or mental health, they all took on the role of being active, upstanding protagonists and citizens, and without the design process to help guide them through it, they wouldn’t have had such a meaningful experience. Students who rarely finish assignments on time, if at all, were posting their website proposals on their Instagram page. Students who rarely converse with their peers or teachers were interviewing others to gain their perspectives on an issue or topic. Students were sharing their ideas with their parents at home and asking for their input on issues like taxes and government spending. Their fear to discuss controversial issues was diminished, their reluctance to work on school-required project was nonexistence, and their spirits were positively activated for all to see.

As I continue my teaching career, I am always going to consider how I can provide students with the opportunities to engage in learning that will allow them to build important skills, apply them in authentic settings, and visualize how they can transfer them to other areas. If you have yet to encourage your students to engage in design thinking, I beg you to consider it. You’ll be amazed and what you can learn about your students through a personal, meaningful project.

You can view my students’ final projects here.

You can view resources to help with the design process here.

As an avid game-player myself, I value using games in the classroom to promote positive learning experiences. Not only do gamification and game-based learning increase motivation and engagement within students, but they help to promote the practice of 21st century skills, such as problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking. Additionally, they provide teachers with the opportunity to show students how competition can be used as a positive motivator to achieve success. While gaming in the classroom can take on many forms, I’ve been choosing to reflect on the roles, benefits, and drawbacks of technology-infused games. Check out this video I made, in which I share many of my current thoughts, experiences, and revelations about gamification in the classroom. I would love to hear others’ perspectives on this topic and successes you’ve had with using games to increase motivation and engagement within your students!

I’ve recently been introduced to a variety of different design thinking models as approaches in creating and evaluating lesson and unit plans. After weighing the pros and cons of the various models, I’ve decided that I especially value the ADDIE method of design thinking. Standing for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate, the model aims to guide teachers through the planning process in an effective manner.

As I am beginning to plan my last unit of the school year, I thought I’d revisit my introduction to the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. When I first planned this unit two school years ago, I wasn’t aware of the structured ADDIE model. I am always mindful of my instructional goals and outcomes during planning, and I always reflect on my lessons after implementing them, but I have never referenced a specific set of guidelines to help me do it more meaningfully. Because my introduction lesson to this unit is one of my most valued, I thought I’d walk myself through the steps of ADDIE prior to implementing it this year after spring break.

Analyze

I had never read this novel until I was an adult, and it continues to touch me each time I read it with my students. After reading the novel for the first time, I knew that I wanted and needed to focus on the social implications of the story’s content as much as the literary techniques. Engaging eighth graders in a novel study during the last six weeks of the school year can be quite a challenge. To introduce this novel to students, I knew that I needed to make the relevancy of a classic story very apparent. My students spend a lot of time throughout the year analyzing the pathos, or appeals to emotion, that authors make in their writing, so I thought I would utilize a similar approach in my introductory lesson. Typically, when engaging in a novel study, students have the task of identifying and analyzing themes throughout the story. This time, I thought I would decide to highlight a common theme within the novel, empathy, prior to the students beginning their reading. Living as a citizen in an increasingly diverse society, students need to be mindful of the way they think about and perceive people unlike themselves. Learning how to engage in perspective-taking thinking is a skill many middle school students still need to develop. I set out to devise a one-period lesson plan that would emulate empathy to students in a meaningful way.

Design & Develop

I immediately remembered an activity that one of my undergraduate professors had us participate in as a way to empathize with students who have disabilities. Because this activity has stuck with me years after doing it, I knew that it would do the same for students. Prior to learning about the historical background and context of the novel, I decided I would have students engage in the same activity that I had in my class. Essentially, they complete a series of stations that each emulate living with a specific type of disability.  Click here to view the various stations that students complete. Following the activity, I wanted students to read a text about empathy and reflect on their learning experience. I found this informative article for students to read, and created this Google Form for students to share their reflections.

Implement

Last year, I implemented this activity for the first time. I had introduced the novel in more traditional ways in years past but finally took the risk of trying something new. I was delighted with students’ engagement and the way in which the activity allowed students to understand what empathy really was.

Evaluate

I find this piece of the design process to be one of the most essential. After reflecting on this lesson last year, I wrote up a lengthy, detailed outline of my thoughts to share with my administrator as a part of my evaluation for the year. I recently found this reflection as I was looking through my materials from last year, and I decided to reread it so that I could make necessary changes for this year. To showcase my reflection, I’ve created a video that highlights my epiphanies, successes, and critiques of the lesson.

Although I knew I valued this activity, I was considering how essential it was to use it this year, as I find that time is running short. After reviewing my reflection from last year, I know that I need to do it again. I think I will make a few tweaks to it, using my ideas shared in the video reflection, but I know that the base of the activity needs to remain a part of the novel’s introduction. Students likely won’t graduate from my class remembering the specific simile that Harper Lee used to illustrate Scout’s adventurous attitude, but they hopefully will remember what it means to be empathetic.

This year, I’ve decided to take students’ learning beyond the classroom and devise an activity to help them explore and develop their own empathy. Click here to check out the activity I recently created. I am so excited to put it into action!

I have found that walking through the steps of a design thinking process, like ADDIE, is useful even after a lesson has already been taught. In fact, it has deemed to be even more meaningful when there is already a prior experience to reflect on. I encourage all teachers to engage in a similar process to feel the challenging and rewarding experience that it offers.

As my journey with educational technology evolves, I find myself become more inspired and motivated to transform the learning that happens in my classroom. I continue to be amazed at the number of technology tools that exist to help teachers and students become more powerful twenty-first century learners. I have always been enthralled with technology tools, but I recently had an epiphany in relation to technology tools. I’ve realized that tools and apps are only a part of what educational technology integration encompasses. More important than the tools themselves are the technology models and standards that should help teachers to inform and drive instruction.

Prior to last week, I was familiar with the SAMR model of technology integration. It helps teachers to evaluate technology use. My teaching team had the opportunity to work with a technology trainer, Ben Sondgeroth, from The Learning Technology Center of Illinois. He not only shared many new and useful tools to use in the classroom, but he also explained the SAMR model to a great degree and shared his opinions on it. He did express the model’s ability to help teachers evaluate and enhance their technology integration, but he also discussed the many flaws with the model. He pointed out that the model is very subjective. What one teacher considers to be augmentation, another might view as modification. Additionally, it doesn’t take the pedagogical decisions that are an integral part of the teaching process into consideration. He contrasted the SAMR model with the TPACK method, which considers content and pedagogy to be equal components in the technology integration process. He said that the two approaches should really be married when evaluating technology use. He also criticized one approach to which some people view the SAMR model, considering it to be a ladder in which teachers need to advance from one level to the next. In opposition, he believes that the model should be viewed as a swimming pool, as demonstrated in this visual:

In considering the swimming pool analogy, he asked us to think about where we spend the most time when in the pool. For most people, the shallow end is the common answer. People swim in the shallow end because it is easy and comfortable, whereas swimming in the deep end requires a lot more work. Using technology in the classroom works much the same way, but he noted that swimming in the shallow end isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has to be done at some point, or eventually, the swimmer would begin to drown. Teachers will and need to revisit the substitution level of the SAMR model, even after they’ve mastered integration of the redefinition level. Too much redefinition would cause students to feel overwhelmed. Learning can still occur while “swimming laps” between the two ends of the pool, and teachers need to realize that it is okay, and even advantageous, to view the SAMR model as fluid as opposed to a set of steps.

As a teacher who becomes equally overwhelmed as she does inspired at the thought of redesigning instruction, this lesson was powerful and comforting to hear. It’s so important to realize that each and every day of the school year can’t be filled with global learning. It’s okay to have students read a textbook or complete a series of online questions from time to time. I find myself sometimes creating lessons for the sake of using technology, and I realize that this approach is backwards. Technology should be integrated as a support to the learning; the learning should be at the forefront of instruction. The two images below represent my two varying states and feelings in regards to technology integration in the classroom.

An introduction to the ISTE Standards has also helped me to process this need for balance. I find these standards to be so practical for educators. They truly encompass what teachers should naturally be striving to do for themselves and their students. I plan to keep a copy of these at my desk to help drive my instruction from here on out!

As I begin to redesign my instruction informed by these models and standards with the integration of new tools, please follow along! I plan to share ways in which I’ve approached this redesign process as well as the results and products. In the meantime, check out the Symbaloo I created over the summer as a curation of some of the tools I’ve engaged with since I’ve began integrating technology into my instruction! They are labeled according to the area in which they could help students engage with various technology skills.

I’ve always been a bit of a “technology buff.” I’ve loved digital design for as long as I can remember! In middle school, my friends and I had our own website in which we posted blogs, videos, and pictures of our daily summer adventures! I didn’t know it at the time, but I was actually coding and working with HTML to design the webpage! I’ve designed numerous invitations and flyers for family parties and events, and I would spend hours working on school projects online when the requirement was merely to create a poster!

When I became a teacher, I had little knowledge of what technology can do to empower students in the classroom. Personally, I was passionate about and good at using technology for my own needs, but I didn’t quite know how to create learning experiences for my students that would help them to develop an intrinsic desire to showcase their skills in the way I have! It has certainly been a learning process. As my district has provided students with more opportunities to use devices, and as I have learned more about effective technology integration in the classroom, I’ve been able to help transform learning for my students in a positive way. The journey has been constantly changing and improving, but I’m excited with the technology options my students and I now have to make reading a more engaging, authentic experience!

Using Timeline JS, I decided to create a map of my technology use in the classroom over time. Specifically, I decided to map out my technology journey in relation to the independent reading programs I have created throughout my four years of teaching. This is a big component of my curriculum that is important in helping students develop a lifelong love of reading! I would love to hear feedback from fellow reading teachers in regards to how you engage readers in your classroom.

Check out my timeline below!

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1alorvKPKnxOTFxez5Uta5br3hOu-PiSzDea9_EDCR7k&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Successful educators have a fluid vision of what teaching and learning looks like and means to them. This image represents my paradigm of learning. Annotations have been embedded in the image to show the connections between climbing a mountain and becoming a successful lifelong learner.

My process in creating this image closely followed the learning process I outlined within the metaphor. Thinking about your own perspective of learning can be challenging, but it was refreshing to rekindle my initial thoughts about teaching and learning, as they often drift away from time to time.

Prior to creating this image, I tried to think of a way to represent the sociocultural model of learning, as it best represents my personal paradigm. I wanted to find something that showed collaboration among students as they voluntarily took charge over mastering learning through experience. My initial thought was also that learning is a challenge, so the idea of climbing a mountain came to mind. I then thought of all of the various factors that play into the learning process, including the students, teacher, lesson or learning experience, end goal or learning target, and prior knowledge. It was quite surprising how naturally all of these ideas fit into the image! I think the ease at which I had creating this further proves that learning is an experience. Every authentic, real-world activity resembles a learning experience in some sense, which is why teachers need to create a variety of experiences for students to choose from to collaborate and learn through participation. When I was originally searching for images, I started with one that had only a single mountain climber. I then realized that this didn’t fully represent my paradigm of learning, as I think students should interact with others and take on some learning experiences by collaborating. The visual metaphor actually helped me to remind myself of the type of teacher I want to be. It can be challenging to constantly practice the model or theory of teaching and learning that you believe in most; sometimes, it is simply easier to stick to a “safe” or “common” lesson plan. It is always good to remind yourself to consider how you can transform a lesson from time to time to best reflect the paradigm you want to subscribe to.

Thanks for joining me on my journey in sharing my love for teaching and learning!

“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice. — Brian Herbert