How to Foster Empathy in Students Using Project Based Learning in an ELA Classroom.

Image Credit: Pixabay User fancycrave1 / Public Domain

Noisy and energetic like any scene during lunch, my students can be found sprawled throughout my classroom, intent on seizing the coveted title: Inventors of the Year.

Though my story may be seem to be specific to my English language arts classroom, I think there are larger implications of the importance of incorporating empathy with project based learning. In this instance, every year, my students read Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon,” a fictional story about a man’s extreme quest for intelligence and his willingness to undergo a radical surgery to increase his mental abilities. My students are always fascinated by this story, and they enjoy debating the merits of the operation. They write reflections, engage in discussions, and compose essays during this unit – all classically rigorous activities that require critical thinking skills. However, I wanted my students to do more than just study the story from an academic perspective. I wanted them to not just appreciate their natural-born abilities but for them to realize and explore what it would be like to live with a disability, hopefully leading to an empathic understanding that will last a lifetime.

An Invention for People with a Disability
As I pondered this one night well over 10 years ago, I did what I always do when coming up with lesson ideas. I asked myself how I could design an assignment that could simulate real experiences, a life outside the walls of a classroom and the world in which we lived. Then inspiration hit. I could ask them to become scientific inventors and imagine the impossible.
My students were challenged with creating a product that will improve the life of someone with a disability, in essence, an Invention of the Year.  The product must be a device that people with disabilities can use in their daily lives, and it cannot be a miracle drug or an operation that will magically conjure away the disability.

First, each team had to choose a disability to research and were directed to medical websites to learn about their topic. We talked about the importance of credible web resources and how to find experts on any given research topic. At the time when I first conceived of this project years ago, the Common Core State Standards had not yet been introduced to schools. What inspired this idea was my long-standing belief that real-world applications should be at the core of all my lessons. Therefore, using informational texts like medical articles fit in perfectly with the adoption of a CCSS curriculum.

When doing their research, students brainstormed many different ways they could help someone with the disability. Then they created three final works: a prototype sketch of their invention, a product description for the purpose of "selling" their invention, and a user guide. To guide them, I shared examples of product descriptions from online vendors like Amazon, which they examined and emulated. I also shared examples of user manuals from real products we use in our lives. With these professional examples as their model, my students were practicing writing skills beyond those required in a traditional English language arts classroom.

The Culminating Expo
The culminating activity in this project was to debut students’ products at the Invention of the Year Expo. Over the years, I was able to convince the other language arts teachers who also taught this story to join me in this endeavor. My colleagues liked the idea of incorporating more informational texts and taking PBL approach to this curriculum unit. As a result of this collaboration, we decided to hold an expo where all our students would showcase their inventions in the multipurpose room and present their ideas to each other.

Anxious and yet excited, the entire eighth grade met during their language arts period throughout the day to show off their inventions or to learn new ideas from their peers. By the end of the school day, they saw some amazing inventions such as computerized glasses that speak and project holograms (this example is from many years ago, before anyone had even heard of Google Glass). Other creative projects include a GPS-equipped walking cane with self-defense mechanism for the blind and surgically implantable microchips that moderated electrical signals in the brain (which I later discovered is not too far from the impossible as a few companies are currently trying to develop this technology to measure electrical brain activity to predict epileptic seizures). In the end, our expo was a success, and students talked about it for days afterwards.

After completing this project, my students wrote blog posts about what they learned, and they published their projects and reflections on their own individual blogs. Because my students are connected with other classrooms around the country, they received many compliments on their work from peers outside our school. In the end, this project gave my students a greater appreciation for people with disabilities, and they were able to share their epiphanies with an authentic audience through their blogs.

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This post is also published on the Buck Institute for Education PBL Blog. 

8 Ways for Students to Reflect on Their Learning

“Students Collaborating” by Greg Anderson Photography / CC BY 2.0

How do we know our students are truly learning? Teachers often use tests and essays to gauge student achievement. And although these methods are useful ways to measure student performance, they place most of the responsibility of analysis on the teacher. What if students were also involved in actively analyzing their mastery?

In my classroom, student reflection is regularly woven into each unit of study throughout the year. Below are eight ways I’ve found to encourage and promote this very important cognitive skill.

1. Blogging

All my student have their own blog, and in addition to writing on topics of their choosing, I often also ask them to write about what they’ve learned from  a lesson I’ve taught. My prompt usually includes variations of the following questions: After studying this unit, what conclusions can you draw? What do you think of the ideas and skills we covered during our lesson? What do you think about what you learned? Did you find these lessons meaningful or valuable? Why or why not? To learn more about incorporating student blogs into your teaching, check out my post “How to Inspire a New Generation of Writers Through Blogging.”

2. Websites

All my students also have their own website, which is  a great way to showcase the projects they’ve worked on in my class. For each assignment they add to their site, I ask them to write a short paragraph of explanation and reflection. Because I teach in a G Suite for Education district, my students use Google Sites, but there are also many beautiful website builders like Wix and Weebly that students might find equally easy to use.

3. Padlet

I love Padlet, a virtual bulletin board where students can share ideas and crowdsource information. If building a website seems a bit daunting, then Padlet is a great alternative — it’s very easy to use. Students can post their projects on a Padlet and reflect on what they’ve learned.

4. Google Slides

Google Slides is not just a tool for creating presentations, it can also be used as a digital book. Think of each slide as a page in a book, and you get the idea. Students can upload or import each assignment into a separate slide, and write a short explanation for each one. With lots of fonts, colors and layouts to choose from, a reflective paragraph never looked so pretty.

5. Google Forms

What better way to keep things quick and simple than by collecting reflective responses in a Google Form? I love that Google Forms populates all responses into one spreadsheet. No need to click on 175 different files to read 175 paragraphs. You can also use the same form throughout the year to have students reflect on different assignments, since all responses are timestamped. Below is an example of a form I use in my class for this purpose.

6. Google Classroom

When I want my students to write a short paragraph, I often turn to Google Classroom. Using its “Create Question” feature, I can quickly ask my students a reflective question, and they can post their replies. I can also decide if I want their answers to be viewable by only me, or if I want them to read and respond to each other’s ideas. What better way to promote reflection than to have students interact and evaluate each other’s responses?

7. Screencasts

Not only is screencasting a fantastic tool for reflection, it promotes fluency skills as well. Students can open a digital assignment on their computer and record themselves talking about what they’ve learned from the lesson as they show the project on their screen. Some popular screencasting tools include Screencastify, QuickTime, Explain Everything and PowerPoint 2016. This list includes both free and paid software. Some are Web-based or specific to Mac, iOS or Windows platforms.

8. Student-Designed Assessments

Since last year, I have given my students the option of designing their own assessments. I first ask them to consider what skills and content they learned from a particular unit. For example, after reading Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and Dolores Huerta’s “Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day,” I asked them to reflect (in small groups) on their takeaways from the lesson. They replied: “We learned many rhetorical strategies and how they help make a speech powerful and convincing.” They also realized that “words are as powerful as actions,” and “problems can also be solved without violence.” After pinpointing the goals of the lesson, we craft a rubric together to identify the criteria that will be used to evaluate their assessment. Students have fun working on this project, and I love seeing their creativity.

A Reflective Classroom

As a teacher, I want my students to become independent learners and critical thinkers. I truly believe that in order to learn, one has to be reflective. If you have found ways to encourage reflection in your students, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Originally published on KQED's "In the Classroom" blog. Reproduced courtesy of KQED.

Maximize Learning with Digital Tools: Moving from Consumption to Creation

“Students as Creators” © 2016 Alice Chen | All Rights Reserved

We are starting to see them pop up more frequently in U.S. classrooms: the iPads, the Chromebooks, and the laptops. As more schools move toward using technology in the classroom, we are faced with the question of how to use these devices effectively in our instruction.

Undoubtedly, it's an exciting time to be an educator. We are no longer limited to just using textbooks or curriculum guides. The number of apps and websites available to us has exploded exponentially in the online educational space. Students are using math apps to brush up on much-needed skills. They can watch science videos that bring concepts to life. With social media, they are able to access the latest news within minutes of the occurrence of an event. However, is that all we wish our students to be able to do, to only become consumers of information?

I believe that students should be using technology to its fullest potential in the classroom. This means that not only should students be using it to access the wealth of information on the Internet but that they also should be using digital tools to create meaningful content from what they have consumed.

Cross-Curricular Integration

Though I teach English Language Arts, I believe in integrating other academic content whenever possible. I always try to provide a scientific or historical perspective when the lesson lends itself, and PBS LearningMedia is perfect for this purpose. This fantastic and free online platform has over 100,000 resources available that covers topics from all content areas and grade levels.

For example, my students just finished reading a wide selection of speeches for our rhetoric unit. We studied various speeches for their beauty of language, persuasive elements, and powerful message. One of my favorite speeches from this unit is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.” I want this speech to come to life for my students and for them to also appreciate the historical significance of this time period. Below is my approach to teaching this piece by leveraging digital media resources and Google Drawings.

Lesson Plan for “I Have a Dream”

1. Introduce the Civil Right Movement by showing students these media pieces: "The Legacy of the Gettysburg Address" and "Civil Rights and the 1950s | Crash Course US History #39".
2. Students read "I Have a Dream" in groups, stopping to discuss each paragraph and the rhetorical strategies Dr. King used.
3. Divide the speech into different sections and have each group create a Padlet to demonstrate their understanding of this piece. Each group must include the following components: a quoted passage, an explanation of the quote, two analysis of the rhetorical strategies used, and proper attribution for any media they included. Here is an example that my students created.
4. Students examine the following primary sources provided by PBS LearningMedia: the original pamphlet advertising the 1963 March on Washington, the manual for march participants, and the March on Washington official program.
5. Based on the information from the three historical documents above, students create a 21st century flyer advertising the event. Below is an example of one group’s work on this project.

“Digital Flyer” © 2016 Anisha & Jake | All Rights Reserved

Using Digital Tools for Authentic Assessment

Instead of giving my students a traditional test to assess their comprehension of the significance of the speech and the historical documents they examined, I prefer to have my students express their understanding by creating an authentic product. Because I’m constantly trying to cultivate my students’ creativity and critical thinking skills by emulating the “real world” as much as possible, I also emphasize the importance of artistic design when creating a project. I find that this last step is often overlooked in our instruction. However, in life, how an idea is presented is just as important as the idea itself, and I want my students to realize this.

Let’s Get Them Creating

My students used Padlet and Google Drawings for this particular lesson, but there are also a plethora of other digital tools that students can use to foster their creativity. Below is a list of digital creation tools that are great for the classroom. It is no means an exhaustive list, but many students find them fun and easy-to-use.

1. Thinglink makes images and videos interactive
2. Canva is easy to use design software with templates for infographics, posters, and more
3. Storybird is a beautiful app that inspires writing with art
4. Powtoon makes creating animated presentations full of awesome
5. Zoodle Comics a comic strip app for the iPad
6. Sock Puppets if you love sock puppets…
7. Video editing tools (i.e. YouTube Editor, WeVideo)
8. Screencasting tools (i.e. Snagit, Screencast-O-Matic, Screencastify, Movenote, Explain Everything)

Which digital tools do your students like to use to show what they know? Please share in the comments below.

Originally published on KQED's "In the Classroom" blog. Reproduced courtesy of KQED.

The 9 C's of Digital Literacy

Today, at my keynote for the California League of Schools Annual Conference North, I will be discussing what I perceive to be the 9 C's of Digital Literacy and how to integrate these skills in a Common Core classroom.

We all know that our digital natives are very at ease with technology. In fact, they’re in love with it, but does that automatically make them digital proficient?

When I originally pondered this question, I began to realize that the 5 C's often discussed in education today - communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and citizenship - needed to be expanded to include these other areas as well: curation, copyright, character and connectedness. I believe that these digital literacy skills are essential for success in today's modern world. It’s more important than ever for educators to teach students how to become digitally literate so that they will be successful in their lives and careers.

To share the "9 C's of Digital Literacy" on Twitter, click here. To download a PDF copy, click here.

Is Technology Just a Tool?

Recently, I had a conversation with someone about using technology in the classroom. Though it was acknowledged that students should learn with technology, the conclusion drawn was this. Technology is just a tool.

I think this could be true, depending on what type of teacher one is describing. Teaching with technology just to be cool, modern, or hip is not good pedagogy. However, to downgrade technology to being just a tool misses the point as well.

Could I perform my job without technology? I'm not the type of teacher who teaches straight out of a book. Whenever I come across something that I think I can use in the classroom, I'm always adapting it, revising it, and trying to improve it. It's hopeless. I can't stop tinkering.

I prefer to create my own teaching materials. Even now, after teaching for over 18 years, I still constantly revise my own teaching documents and presentation files -- sometimes from one class to the next because I want to give my students the best work I can produce. So could I effectively do this part of my job without technology?  No.

What about research and learning? Without the Internet, I couldn't look for new literature, author biography, current events, or digital media with which to supplement my lessons.  For example, one year, I decided to augment my "Flowers for Algernon" unit with medical articles about disabilities to help my students appreciate the challenges of living with a disability. Prior to the invention of the Internet, I would have never thought about doing this because I didn't have the resources.

So how do my students benefit from a technology-rich curriculum?

Having access to technology has enabled my students to write for a global audience. As a result of blogging, my students are far more prolific than those from my previous years, and they also have the added advantage of being able to connect with other students around the world through Quadblogging.  This has shown them that the world is bigger than they realized, giving them glimpses of other cultures to which they previously wouldn't have been exposed.

Having access to technology has enabled my students to participate in the Mystery State Project and to have had the opportunity to Skype with a State Senator. We're finally able to bring the world into our classroom.

Having access to technology has enabled my students to create more digital media projects like video animations, live action movies, still photography, comic strips, and podcasts to name a few. These projects taught them how to be creative and collaborative. They learned the importance of revising their work and the necessity of observing copyright laws when choosing their media. They were also more engaged during the learning process.

Could my students learn without technology? Yes. But did technology elevate my students' learning to new heights? Without a doubt.

Like it or not, technology is immersed in our lives - in our homes, at our jobs, and out in the world.

Would you run a company without technology? Then why would you run a school without it?

Using iBooks Author to Create a Digital Handbook

Before technology became available in my classroom, my students would create a paper handbook at the end of the year sharing what they learned with next year's students.  Now with iBooks Author, they can create a digital version.

Directions:

1. Students can work in groups of three or four.
2. The following pages are required: Cover, Message from the Authors, Table of Contents, Chapters, and About the Authors.
3. Chapters must include: "Classes," "Skills Learn," "Teachers," Front Office," "Extra-Currcular Activities," and something of their choice.
4. I tell students to keep the handbook positive.  Balancing honesty with tact and diplomacy is a good skill to learn.

Animation for Beginners

GoAnimate is an easy way to make video animation for your classroom.  Adding characters, dialogues, and a setting for your story takes only a matter of minutes.  They offer free personal accounts, but you can upgrade to two different accounts for more features.

Here are some ways I see how it can be used in the classroom:

1. Math - Explain concepts
2. Science - Present the Scientific Method on a particular question or problem
3. History - Provide a timeline of events that led to an important moment in history
4. English - Show character analysis or theme.  Illustrate the most pivotal moment in a novel or short story.
5. Health - Create a Public Service Announcement on a health tip.

Recently, my students created Public Service Announcements using GoAnimate to speak up against bullying.  My detailed post can be found on GoAnimate's Educator's blog.  Click here to read it.

What do you think?  What are some ways GoAnimate can be used in the classroom?

How iPads Transformed My Classroom in 20 Days

Last fall, my school deployed a cart of iPads to be shared amongst 51 teachers and approximately 1500 students.  I’ve always loved teaching with technology and have always dreamed of going 1:1 with my students.  So though I long to sign up for the cart every day, I usually wait until the last minute to give others a chance before claiming it for myself.  

Our iPads are not fully loaded with apps, and since our school hasn't set up an Apple Volume Purchase Program account yet, I make do with what few free apps we have.

So far, I've been able to clock 20 days of iPad use in my English Language Arts class.  How have I been using them?  These are the apps and activities I've used with my students.

1.  Students used a sticky note or mind mapping app for character analysis.  Students could choose from ABC Lite, PoppletLite, iBrainstorm, iCardSort Lite (there used to be a free version), Stickyboard, Idea Sketch, Mindjet, and SyncSpace.

2.  Students used GoSoapbox.com to ask questions and to vote for the most thought-provoking ones.  They can also answer each other’s questions.  Additionally, GoSoapbox.com was used to brainstorm different thesis statements for their upcoming essay.  GoSoapBox events were set up for each thesis, and students had to join an event to submit their supporting evidence.  Lastly, they critiqued each other’s contributions and had an opportunity to defend their choices if their quotes were deemed irrelevant.

3.  Students used Edmodo to join or start a literary discussion on our current text.  Soon, they were initiating discussions on their own at home without waiting for me to assign a topic.  (Update:  In the fall of 2012, I switched to Schoology and never looked back.  Read my blog on my experience with various learning management systems, and why I chose Schoology over all the rest.)

4.  My students used Kidblog to write app reviews, reflect on their readings, and explore intellectual topics.  A number of them ended up writing more than double the amount of blogs assigned.  These became my distinguished bloggers, and I had the class vote for the coveted title of “Blogger of the Month.”  I plan on awarding this title once a month.

5.  Students also used Nebulous Notes Lite to write responses to the literature we were reading.  The integration with Dropbox was an added plus since students could just upload their files to Dropbox.  Because I set up a shared folder on the iPad, everything they put in that folder would just instantly show up on my laptop or iPad.

6.  Students also used Dropbox on the iPad to follow my presentation slides, access handouts I created, and read speeches and poetry.  If my district’s network didn’t have such a rigid firewall, I could’ve also used Idea Flight or Join Me for this purpose, but alas, I couldn’t.  (Update, the Nearpod app is a great way for students to follow along a presentation. You can also add quizzes, polls, and drawings to elicit active participation.)

7.  I used GoogleForms to ask questions for anything I wanted to know, such as their daily technology use, their choice for “Blogger of the Month, how they felt about using iPads in the classroom, etc.  I called it the “Student Pulse.”  It’s a great way to know what they think about anything relevant to their learning.

8.  My students used Socrative to take quizzes, polls, or answer questions.  The “Exit Ticket” feature is great, and you can get a spreadsheet of their responses emailed to you.  Plus, you can randomize the questions on a quiz!

These are just a handful of activities I’ve had the opportunity to try with my students.  Like I said, without the AVPP account set up, our app collection is a bit sparse right now.  However, I feel that my students have accomplished a lot in just 20 days.

Imagine what they can do if we could use iPads every day.

Right now it’s just a dream of mine.  But I hope to make that into a reality soon.

Update:  As of the 2012-2013 school year, I began teaching in a 1:1 iPad classroom.  Dreams do come true in schools after all.