The great task that we chose, was an ELA assignment for grade 10. The topic, of English Language Arts was quite out of my comfort zone (as a secondary Science specialist) but actually turned out really well in the end. We chose a task which required students to pick a novel which has not yet been turned into a movie, and design a movie poster.
Self Assessment
1. In our great task, we chose to use gimp, which is an image manipulation software. I however must admit that the other group members did most of the exploring with this program. Where I felt I gained experience with technology was through the creation of a website credibility rubric. Through creation of this rubric, I gained some insight into guiding students through a process to find useful/reliable resources (technology literacy). I worked with the idea of a website rubric that was first introduced by Neil Stevenson in his talk to our class. I created a credibility rubric, which I then rated some of the websites we were looking at. It's amazing how confusing I found MY OWN rubric to me! I made a lot of changes, after my own attempts at using it, to make it more user friendly (and less confusing!).
2. I took a look at my first blog to see the specific goals I had set out, one goal I made was:
" ... [I] want to know how to incorporate new resources into the classroom which will in turn help students become active, critical thinkers who are involved in meaningful learning activities. (i.e. I want them to remember and use the stuff they learn!)"
I feel that the completion of this activity did require students to engage in meaningful work. It wasn't just simply playing around with the gimp software (although this was needed to familiarize yourself with the technology). They needed a plan first. They needed to first read a novel, where they would develop their own interpretations of the themes in the book, and begin to brainstorm images to represent these themes. This was not just simply an exercise to learn how to use a new software, but this assignment had ties to the curriculum and the discipline.
Use of the website credibility rubric required them to think critically about what they were reading. This assignment required the students to communicate learning that they constructed themselves, around a specific novel. This task was one which allowed students personal experiences with the novel and the characters to be expressed. This expression of personal interpretation, is what I think students will remember about this assignment (and remembering what they learned was one of my goals!).
3. In order to create a meaningful role for technology in learning, we first need to understand what it is we want students to learn! We need to define this understanding, and design the assignment to help them understand what really matters. The assignment needs to be meaningful and strongly tied to the discipline, no matter what technology we are using. The use of gimp software for example, is only meaningful after the students understand the important themes from their novel, and how to express them. Otherwise, it is simply a collage of meaningless graphics.
What I have learned about using technology for effective collaboration from this great task? This is a little hard for me to answer. I think this project is lacking around using technology for collaboration. The students could have shared files associated with the gimp software as they were constructing them, but other than this, most of the collaboration would have taken place in the planning stages. We could improve this task, by requiring students to collectively plan and discuss the important aspect of their groups chosen novel. We could also give them an online medium to do so-- such as google docs. In retrospect, we could have had them create thought webs in a program such as SMARTideas, and then post these files onto google docs.
4. This task, was again out of my comfort zone. This caused me some frustration, however, I really enjoyed the book we read, and enjoyed talking about it with my group members. I am also not at all proficient with using the gimp software, but thankfully, my other group members took the lead on that part. I was also frustrated when I was completing the website credibility rubric, for many reasons, one because it was confusing, and two, because the only person I had to blame for the confusion was myself (as I had created the rubric). Having the other group members use the rubric helped, and using it myself helped me make valuable adjustments.
5. To improve my contributions to my group, I could have been more involved in the actual construction of the poster using gimp. I didn't offer much help or collaboration to the use of the software, as other group members took the reigns and were doing a great job.
I think some strengths that I possessed were my efforts to collaborate with my group members in all other areas. Together we created what I feel to be an effective rubric, which took a few revisions and had input from all three of us.
Interpretive summary of data / feedback from peer review
Our peers had some great insight for us, and good suggestions that we will implement to improve the quality of our task. Some specific things that were mentioned included:
- Put supporting documents online, rather than having only hard copies. This would improve organization of our task.
- Questions were raised surrounding how we would evaluate "students understanding of technology" which was included in our rubric. This requires us to rethink the wording, and revise the rubric.
- It was also suggested that perhaps the students should be required to choose from a list of novels. These would be chosen from the teacher (i.e. the educator would have to be very familiar with each of the books, in order to mark the assignment).
- We were also encouraged to use a wider range of resources, as we utilized mainly getty images for our poster (however we used this website because only pictures which have been released by the owner/photographer are posted on here)
- The idea of showing the steps as we go along was also suggested, things like "thumbnail sketches, exploration in designs, class critique".
I really appreciated all of the feedback that we received. Some of the above things will truly help the assignment to be more directed and meaningful, and were things that I really didn't think about. I think this activity has also revealed how useful peer review is. As we have been told many times, authentic assessment requires feedback loops. This is one "loop"- our peers giving us suggestions, and the opportunity to change things before we officially hand in our great tasks. This idea of peer review is one that I will utilize in my classroom as I see (and have just experienced) so may benefits for learning.
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