My Digital Classroom

Once again, we taught our inter-disciplinary unit on the Great Barrier Reef. Unlike last year, however, we added a few new things to make the unit more interesting, effective and authentic.

Lat term we were able to place a Skype call to marine biologist, former teacher and current charter boat captain, Matt McDonald. As it is really difficult to have new software installed on the computers on our school network, I ran a portable version of Skype from my USB. These USB apps are great and I’ve been able to get around a number of software issues by running programs straight from the usb. My favourites are the portable versions of Skype, Firefox, Audacity, Camstudio (screencasting), Virtual Dub (video editing) and VLC media player. These programs open up the possibilities in the classroom and enable you to do a number of activities which were previously prohibitive.

To minimise the potential for the Skype call to drop out, I made the call during recess. The students handled this remarkably well and I was surprised by how excited they got when the image of Matt appeared on the IWB. Tapping into the knowledge of an expert located on the reef was invaluable for the students and they got to ask a number of interesting questions and have them answered.

Proofreading and editing are essential parts of the writing process. One tool I have been using to help students with their writing is the online word processor, Google docs. One of the things I love about using Google docs is the ability to collaborate. Whenever students start writing their draft on Google docs, I get them to add me as a collaborator. I can then see the development of their work and give them instant feedback. I also get the students to invite three other students to be collaborators so that they can proofread the work. Students can all proofread the same document and are not constricted by time or the four walls of the classroom. I get each of the proofreaders to use a different colour when making corrections/suggestions to make it easier for the writer to identify who has made each change.

Pilot p-500 Uploaded on March 23,2005 by Mr. Wright Creative Commons Attrib., Non-Commercial, Share Alike Licence

Another way I’ve used web 2.0 tools to help with editing and proofreading is by utilising some of the free text-to-speech sites. Two I have used are Read The Words and Spoken Text. One important aspect of editing and proofreading is listening to how your work sounds. While those students with strong literacy skills can already do this successfully, getting somebody else to read the work really helps the weaker students. Using a text-to-speech application highlights to students some words which are commonly confused- the most obvious example I come across is were & where. Students immediately pick up those mistakes when they hear them and can make the necessary changes. While this does not pick up mistakes with homophones, I find it a useful part of the editing and proofreading process.

This year we have been making great use of our headsets at school. We have been able to enhance our teaching (and student engagement) of the novel, Master of the Grove by Victor Kelleher by providing audio files to our students. Each of the teachers at year 8 have graciously given up their time to record the files and the students have been just as eager to get their hands on them. The files have enabled weaker students to access, what would otherwise be, an inaccessible novel.

We have also scrapped one of our previous tasks, chapter summaries, in favour of a comic strip. Instead of having to complete a summary of every chapter, students were allocated one chapter in which they had to summarise the main information in four frames of a comic. We completed the first chapter as a class on the IWB and I showed them one I had prepared earlier using Toondoo. Students presented their comics to the class at the beginning of each new lesson to recap what happened in the previous chapter. These comics were then pinned up at the back of the room in chapter order so that students had a constant visual summary of the text. Students were able to draw their comics by hand or use one of the many web 2.0 comic creating tools on offer.

We have found that these strategies, as well as summarising the information prior to reading, has greatly assisted those students with lower literacy levels in successfully completing the novel.

Today we had all six classes of year 8 English (two classes working together each time) complete an activity based on de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats. We are studying A Bridge To Wiseman’s Cove (an excellent book by James Moloney) and to break things up a bit, we opened up the dividing wall between the two classes, divided the two classes into 10 smaller groups, with each group looking at a particular character. The groups then had to look at their character through the lens of the red hat (emotions), green hat (ideas – predictions), white hat (facts), Black hat (criticisms), Yellow hat (positives) and blue hat (summary of other hats). At the end of the session, each group had to present their findings to the wider group.

The activity seemed to work really well, with students finding evidence to support each of their points, and it was really interesting to see them having to look for the positives in undesirable characters.

The IWB file made it really easy to keep track of the time allocated for each hat, and gave the students a visual cue as to what they needed to be focused on during that time period.

I did receive the comment at the end of the day by another teacher who wasn’t 100% sure about what they gained from the lesson, as much of the information presented by her students had already been covered when they constructed individual mind maps for each of the characters earlier in the novel study. I’m sure this is true to a certain extent, however, I think that they were also picking up new things and were forced to think deeper than they had previously done about their character. In addition to this, it will also have reinforced and built upon the work that was done earlier in the novel.

I do think highly of this teacher and think that we have to look critically at our lessons, making sure that we review what student learning took place.