Module 1: Writing the Body Electric

Bridging digital divides

Preface:

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Leaving the sage on the stage for the guide on the side

Collaborative environments are virtual workplaces where students and teachers can communicate, share information, and work together.

— 2009 Horizon Report: The K12 Edition

Good teaching is about learning, learning is about experimenting, experimenting leads to better teaching. So this cycle I'm revamping my lessons for this course, trying to make them more accessible to both digital natives and immigrants. What I've learned from teaching this course is that already, some students in this class will have instinctively, maybe even eagerly, clicked on the two hyperlinks already tagged in this posting. Those students are our digital natives, the "netgen" students. In their world, "everybody has MySpace." Of course today, MySpace is old school, everybody today is on Facebook. So Friend me! (lol ;-)

For every digital native in this class, there will likely be a digital immigrant, someone closer to my age who learned how to read in about the same way that classrooms were organized back then: chairs in a row, students placed alphabetically into them in a linear fashion. You had to read chapter one before you could read chapter two. These people experience brain freeze when they read "two hyperlinks" and "tagging" in the previous paragraph. And three more hyperlinks in the next two sentences!

Our digital immigrants have politely read the two paragraphs above, like all the books they have read in their lives, without feeling they had the right to put their hand on the mouse, and click on the words in different colors. They'd be interrupting the professor's words, hardly acceptable behavior for the disciplined student. And sitting right next to them, the digital native is reading a few sentences, clicking away to some other text, hiding an IM or two under the table, returning at his or her leisure to these words that I have spent the morning writing up. The digital native will call this multitasking, the digital immigrant will call it "CPA," or "continuous partial attention." Between these two sets of students is the "digital divide."

This buzz word has several connotations. The earliest, and still most common definition of the digital divide is shaped by class and access, that is, there is a technological divide between affluent communities who can afford to buy new computers every two years, and low-income communities who can't. But the distinction I'm trying to convey here is more one of culture and use of technologies. Young students are always going to be more tech-savvy than the adults getting paid to teach them. Someday the young ones in our class will gain the years we digital immigrants already have, and in the future they too will be outflanked by the new young turks, impatient with their teachers' insistence on using "mad boring" technologies like Wii, Sidekicks, and Second Life.

Here's the bottom line. Teachers today need to communicate with students in ways that are different from reading a book cover to cover. Reading and writing between teachers and students need to be more interactive, allowing students to choose variations on a path to mastering the day's lesson. The products of a class should be collaborative, a permeable boundary between teacher and student allowing focused, filtered, and framed questions to enhance the knowledge of both.

Module

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Using Social Software to Write Collaboratively

What we're moving into is the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom. Let's take a simple example to get our feet wet.

Everybody tweet me @boricua_edu_tek their definition of the "digital divide."

We have just used some social software in our classroom! Great! Now all we have to do is figure out what that means...

According to Wikipedia, social software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data. Here are some additional references to help flesh out its definition:

• social software
• collaborationware
  
• c-learning (pdf file)
  
• student-centered approachs to learning
• How public lawyers use it
  

Twittering is part of a subset of social software called microblogging. It simply means posting a short sentence or two online telling your friends what's going on with you at that time. Tweeting is ubiquitous to the American psyche. Our President uses it. Even dead Presidents can use it. We can follow Lady Liberty online.

Hundreds of Twitter feeds are available for educators. Here are some of the more popular ones.

• Education Week
• Education Times
• US Department of Education
• NYT Education
• Teachers College
• NYC DoE
• Job Postings
• Education Labor News

There are even lesson plans that use Twitter! Here's one on facilitating reading Jane Austen's Emma. Bank Street College developed a lesson plan as well.

For the rest of this class, we will be using Twitter to begin developing our own lesson plans.

Researching Lesson Plans

Let's start by getting into groups of 2-3 and choosing a content area for a lesson plan that your group will create. Send me a tweet (@boricua_edu_tek) that includes:

1. The names of everyone in your group
2. Your content area (Math, Science, ELA, Social Studies, Arts, Phys. Ed., Family & Consumer Science, Health, or Career Development and Occupational Studies)
   

The group that posts first gets that content area. No two groups will have the same content area.

Once I have tweeted an OK to your group and content area, think about a lesson you would like to teach in that subject area. Tweet me the Aim of your lesson.

At this point, your group is ready to start researching online educational resource to help your group write your lesson. The first place to start is to answer the following question:

My lesson plan is aligned to what City, State, and National standards?

Answering this question will take some time. Let's look at an example of a lesson plan I used to develop this week's science class. We are now going to look at two windows at the same time. When you click on this link, a second window will open, and you will see in the second window a lesson plan on life science/ecosystems. After you click on the link, you can come back to this page by clicking on the button that says "Blogger: ..."

The first thing you see in this lesson plan is a description of the National Science standards that are aligned to the lesson. Next are the New York State Living Environmental standards that have to do with this lesson. New York State standards have "Standards," which are broad summaries of the general topics that are explored over a semester, "Key Ideas," which are parts or phrases of a Standard that require more detailed explanation, and "Performance Indicators," which can be covered over a couple of classes. You will be providing the same sort of information in your lesson plan.

Here are the Standards resources your group will need to use to figure out what standards are aligned to your lesson's Aim.

While one or two in your group are grappling with that question, the rest of your group can be looking at this question:

What published articles can help me write my lesson plan?

By far, the best online educational database to answer this question is the Education Resources Information Center, otherwise known as ERIC. Here is the procedure to find articles on ERIC:

1. Check the 'Full-Text Availability' box on.
2. Type in keywords (important words in the Standards are good).
3. Click the 'Search' button.
4. If you find an article you are interested in, click the 'ERIC full text' link at the bottom of the summary of the article, and you will download the full article.

After you scan/read the article, and find it to be helpful, you will need to write down all of the pertinent information so that anyone else who would like to read the article can find it easily. Educators usually use the APA Citation Format to memorialize helpful educational articles. Here is what the citation should look like:

Author, A. A. (1996). Title of ERIC document (Report No. AB-12). City, ST: Sponsoring Entity. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 123 456)

Institutional Author. (1996). Title of ERIC document (Report No. AB-12). City, Country: Sponsoring Entity. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 123 456)

Many people can explain this citation technique better than me, so here's an explanation from Indiana Wesleyan University. If you're still confused how to write an APA citation, here is an additional resource.

I think that's enough for one day, so let's recap what each group need to accomplish from this class.

Evaluation

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Homework #1

Deliverable #1: Students will form groups of no less than two and no more than three students. Each group will decide which content area (math, science, social science, art, or language arts) they will research for their lesson plans, etc.

Deliverable #2: Each group will choose an Aim for a lesson plan appropriate to the chosen content area.

Deliverable #3: Each group will identify the National, New York State and New York City standards that align to the Aim, using the Educational Standards listed on the class wiki.

Deliverable #4: Each group will use the ERIC search engine to locate 2-3 articles that pertain instruction and delivery of that Aim.

If you have questions outside of class, tweet me!

Fall 2009