Hitting the Digital Wall

     My struggles with helping my AP students create an adventure type game to review the seven soliloquies in Hamlet continue.  Since I am not he most tech savvy person, I am quick to ask for help. First, I ask the students.  I recognize that many of them are well versed in the 2.0 world, and they can often be counted on to have an answer.  When that fails I reach out to my colleagues.  At the end of the road are the "experts" in our technology department.  It is to these experts that I went to in my quest for the Hamlet game.  The result was disappointing to say the least.  My tech person had nothing for me. But more surprising than that was the fact that I got the distinct impression that he didn't want me to pursue it any further.  However, instead of feeling defeated I assigned him the task of asking his superiors what ideas they might have to make the game a reality.
     His concern is that, apart from not knowing how to create the game, he doesn't want to give my students a template. He feels that they should be able to create the game from scratch.  While I see the value in this, I also expressed my concerns.  If he, the expert, is having difficulty how will my students be able to complete the task?  Especially since I feel the hardest task, of extracting how ethos, pathos, and logos is used in each soliloquy, is a difficult job in and of itself.  Not only do the students need to recognize how this rhetorical language is used in each soliloquy, but also how it shows Hamlet's development throughout the play.  This task is one that they chose to work on, and I feel it is a meaningful higher learning activity.  The game, and the programming of it, is secondary. They obviously still need to know how to insert their knowledge into the game so that the user can learn from it, but is it really necessary that they learn all of the coding to make it possible? Is this ultimately beneficial to their learning?  Personally, I feel it is a stall tactic.  If it is, it's not going to work.
     The most frustrating part is that I have to depend on others to help me help my students.  On a positive note I am now working with Flippity.net, which turns a Google spreadsheet into flash cards. This is a tool my students can use to work on literary terms.  The best part of using tools on the Google platform is that it works well with their Chromebooks in school, which makes it easy to include on the school's website.  I may have not won the war yet, but I am determined to get there, one Google app at a time.
 

Being a Technology Immigrant

There is nothing that can frustrate you more than thinking you have a handle on a piece of technology just to find yourself hitting a wall.  Having grown up in the 1980s, I recognize I am a technology immigrant.  I did not grow up with a computer in my home, much less a smartphone, and at times I feel this to be a disadvantage in the classroom.  My AP students are working on their websites, and my job is to guide them through the process so that they can be successful.  For the most part, everything is going smoothly, but this week it has been a real challenge trying to create an adventure style game.  My students were ready to give up.  I, however, refuse to give up, especially since they have an amazing idea that I believe will help them immensely.

The idea they came up with is to have Hamlet go through his castle.  In each level he will be faced with one of his soliloquies.  We have discussed in class the importance of his seven soliloquies, both to the development of the play, as well as to the development of his character.  In each soliloquy Hamlet will be prompted to find examples of rhetorical language, specifically ethos, pathos, and logos.  If he finds them all he will get a prize and move on to the next level.  Identifying the language is no small feat, and I loved that they chose something challenging to work on.  This will be a great study guide for the class.  However, when we found a website that can create the game (scratch.mit.edu) we realized we'd met our match.

Like I said, I'm admittedly an immigrant to technology, but my students are not.  When they couldn't figure it out, I saw their enthusiasm wane.  This is the last thing any teacher wants to see.  I'm lucky that my district has wonderful people working to help students and teachers work with technology.  I called on one of them and his suggestion was to work with the exact website we were having difficulty in.  Not only is he going to figure out what the problem is, he has promised to come to my class this week and work with the students.  

It can be frustrating to navigate the 2.0 world as an immigrant, but as other immigrants in the past, we can't run from the challenges.  The best way to achieve success in this new world is to reach out to the natives or to those with more knowledge.  Only by collaborating will we reach success.  I am looking forward to being able to have my students achieve their goal.  And, let's face it, as an English teacher I really want to play this new Hamlet game.

Technology as a Partner

Like most English teachers I have used technology as a tool to deliver information to students, or house information for students.  I have used the Smart Board in the room to show snippets of films that are related to our reading.  I have also created websites for students to reference class notes and find assignments.  In the past I created Web quests for younger grades to help them do research.  However, how much of the technology in my room is a real partner for students in their quest for meaningful learning?

            Most of my reflection this week is focused on my 11AP Literature and Composition class.  One of the theories of meaningful learning states that teachers need to be able to articulate how students need to think in order for them to truly learn.  This is one of the biggest obstacles in teaching.  Teachers need to teach students to think to learn, and not for the purposes of giving the teacher the “right” answer, but to have students become more analytical thinkers. To this end, the first thing I teach them is how to annotate.  Only by being active readers can they effectively analyze text and be able to express themselves in their writing.  I emphasize that annotations are personal, with no right or wrong answer. That being said, I also emphasize that they need to be able to support their theories with examples found in the text. Since the majority of the works we use can be found online, through Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), students have the option of using the website Scrible.com, which allows them to add sticky notes to an online text.  Students like that they can color coordinate their notes for easier referencing.

            The AP classes are also working on a website of their own.  It will be their study guide and will be housed within our class website.  The students are using Weebly to construct the site and are working in groups.  I don’t tell them what needs to go on their study guide; instead we brainstorm ideas of what they might like to see there.  They then work in groups to create the materials while one group works on the creation of the site.  The work is done in my room with Chromebooks.  This is really handy since each group is able to work on the same document at the same time.  I am also able to see what they are working on and comment in real time as they work.  The one requirement I ask of them is that each segment of the study guide needs to be interactive. I don’t want pages of notes, but rather tools to help them check their understanding of the material.  So far the groups have created vocabulary quizzes, Jeopardy style games based on some of the novels read, and one group is working on a quest type of video game using Hamlet and the use of ethos, pathos, and logos in the play. The students are using a tool that requires no coding, and they are enjoying the process. The website is scratch.mit.edu.         

My twelfth graders recently had to write a research paper.  I broke up the assignment into various parts.  The first part was all about them.  I wanted this paper to mean something to them, so I asked them to think about a social issue that they cared about.  They needed to write down everything they knew about the subject and then write eight to ten questions they had on the topic.  These questions drove their research. My school district subscribes to various databases, and I chose SIRS by ProQuest to have my students begin their investigations.  Articles are arranged by subject and date on the database, making it easy for students to find the latest information on their topic.  However, they were allowed to use Google, and I spent time reviewing how to discern which websites were reliable. Using Google docs students were able to help each other through the various editing stages of their research and, later, of their paper. I believe that my having students choose their social issue, and create their own guiding questions makes the research a more authentic task.

            I also used Google classroom to have the students turn in their assignments.  Docupus and Goobric, both additions to Google Sheets, work with Google classroom to allow me to attach a rubric to the assignment, grade the work, and then share it with the student.  The students receive my comments, as well as the rubric, and a grade.  I haven’t experimented with allowing students to use Docupus as an editing tool yet, but it is something I will attempt soon.

            Overall, I believe that I am making strides in having technology be a partner in my students’ learning, however, there is still more that can be done.