Whole Story
Why don’t you think about a time that you successfully integrated
technology into a specific instructional unit or lesson or theme and tell
me about that, if it was math, science, social studies, what the name of it
was, that sort of thing.
OK. Well, I have one lesson called “Around the World in 80 Days.” The
objective is for the students . . . What they think they’re doing is
they’re flying a hot air balloon from continent to continent. What they
have to do is buy the stuff they need to go in their basket, buy their
balloon and their basket. They have to find major cities that they’re going
to. The only exception is Antarctica. I
tell them they can land anywhere in Antarctica
that they choose. Of course, there’s no city or anything there. But they
have to choose a city and stuff. So they have to find the mileage from each
city to city. They have to log how much they spend on their food. Of
course, the gas takes so much for so many miles, and they have to find out
how much it costs them to travel. And they know how fast their balloon travels
and how long it will take to go around the world. Then they do a log for
each city that they go to and tell us about the city, and they take photos
and tell us what’s there.
OK, so I’m hearing a lot of things as far as the purpose and the goals
in this unit. You’re having the students doing information searching,
they’re organizing that information and accessing it through the Internet.
Even the distance is through the Internet because there are web sites
that if you give them a place to a place, it will give you the distance. So
even that goes with the Internet.
OK, and are they doing this individually or in teams or pairs?
It’s a team effort.
OK, so we have collaborative learning going on. The learning level of
the outcomes, as far as this goes, you’re seeing if they can comprehend
information when they search for it on the Internet and then read it and
start putting it together, so you’re looking for comprehension?
Right. What they have to do is to present it to this person and say,
“This is how much I may spend, and I’ve completed this in this amount of
time. So, to me, they’re really pulling more things and bringing it into
one unit. I feel like it’s more than comprehension. I want to say, since
they’re creating something, I’m thinkingsynthesis, but I know I
that’s not right. I can’t think what’s the word I’m looking for, and I’m
sorry.
OK, so they’re taking the information, they’re doing a presentation, so
they’re doing writing, of course.
Yes.
OK, good. And solving some problems?
Yes, because they want to have the shortest route than [what] anybody
else [has] because they have to get there first.
Oh, a little competition there?
Yes.
Is this related to standards, as far as local or state?
Yes, this lesson relates to state standards, which local go into the
state. But, yes, all of the web quests that I write, I use the standards in
what I have to teach and then work it into some type of web quest.
OK, so the activity directly addresses one or more standards?
It addresses more than one standard, yes. Several, because it does math
and it does social studies and, of course, communication arts. You can go
into an aspect of the science with the hot air balloon, but I have never
been able to go that far with it. But there is that aspect that I put in
there, but I’ve never used it yet.
OK. Well, tell me a little bit about the technologies that you used in
this unit.
You mean like the Internet, you want to be that general? We mostly use
PowerPoint, if they’re going to do a presentation-type thing. But I always
leave the students open to use any type of presentation they want. If they
want to put it on a poster board, they can, or if they want to make
something, or if they want to put on a play that would show the
information, they are allowed to.
So they have a lot of choices?
They can choose anything they want. Usually anything that we do, I
always say, “You can use this, but if you choose another avenue to show us,
you are welcome to it.” And I’ve had kids do little videos and stuff a
couple of times, not specifically for this one. I’ve not had anybody do it
for this one, but they could, I guess, if they figured out a way.
Do they do digital cameras or scanning images or anything?
Yes, not for this one, but they could. They download pictures a lot of
times for the places, the cities they’ve been to. And they have to say the
population, what country it’s in, the way the people live, describe the way
the people live and dress and stuff like that. That would involve downloading
off the Internet. We use a lot of the Internet, PowerPoint, Microsoft Word.
Now we’ve not done this with collaborative as far as outside of our school.
What have you seen, as far as using the technology with this unit? What
are the reasons that you have used it, or how have you seen this really
enhance the students’ learning of this material?
I don’t think we could do it without it, because we’d have to have
really current encyclopedias or other books. Now, we do go to the library,
and students can check out books on their cities if they choose to. And
some do, because they get so interested in that city, but to use only the
library or the encyclopedias, just really narrows it too much. A lot of
times I can’t see how we can do our stuff without the computer, like if
it’s down.
Do you run into difficulties with the technology like that?
Not a lot of difficulty, no. We did recently have a situation, but
other than that, no, it’s not a commonplace.
If it does happen, what do you do? What are your strategies, or what
assistance do you get?
I still have the lessons on my computer, because they’ve been uploaded
onto the Internet, so I can still put them up onto the SMARTBoard. So we
can still do some of the work, possibly, that doesn’t require the Internet.
We could still see it up on the SMARTBoard. We could read it, decide it,
and then decide how we can solve this without the Internet. Some things we
can’t do, but some things they still can, like the mapping of the distance.
"Well, we don’t have the Internet." "OK, you have to get a
map, and you have to use the ruler and figure it out." That can still
be done.
How do you see your role as the teacher during this instructional unit?
Boy, you know, I’ve always heard the word facilitator. You need to be
a facilitator, and you try to do that. But I’ll tell you, to me, this is
much more like a facilitator. Most of the time, I am just going from group
to group, talking to them, seeing what’s going on, where their problems
are, just maybe asking a little question to guide them and stuff. I tell
people, “It’s not a stand-up-there-and-teach thing.” You don’t stand up
there and say, “OK, the lesson today is this.”
You’re spending your time really circulating among the students, just
kind of coaching them?
Yes, and there’s no, "OK, we’re going into math. OK, we’re going
into social studies." And a lot of times, the kids have a hard time
recognizing that they’ve used math or that they’ve completed science,
because it’s so integrated. It’s such a natural part that they don’t
realize that it’s a subject. They don’t even know that.
"Oh, yeah. We did do math, didn’t we?" What do you see as the
role of the student during this unit?
To me, I would think of a detective. What I tell them is they’re a
detective. They need to find the facts, solve a problem, bring the facts
together like a whodunit. And that’s the way I look at them, as a detective
searching for the clues to solve what they need to solve.
How do you assess their learning?
They have to take a [blank world map without country names and] locate
where their city would be. They’ll have to draw or trace their route. So
I’m going to look that they know that that city is in that country and
close to the right location in that country. Like Washington, D.C.,
wouldn’t be on the West Coast. Something simple like that is assessed. The
mathematics [includes] the amount [of money] that they used. There’s a lot
of math that is assessed. Now I use an assessment. I know we don’t use
rubrics anymore, and I can’t ever think of the new word we use. What is it
called?
Oh, instead of a rubric, is it just a scoring guideline?
A scoring guide.
That’s the new word. OK, I forget that because I was taught rubric. No rubric; it’s an
assessment guide. The assessment guide is used more for their final work,
like the one thing that they’re doing, that they tell about the countries
and where they landed and the distance. The mathematics is graded
separately. The map is graded separately. But there is that general
assessment for the overall and like the spelling and stuff like that and
their grammar.
When you observe the students, when they’re doing their work in their
groups and all of this, what observations are you making about how they’re
working together or their motivation or their skills? What do you see?
Sometimes they look at [the assignment, such as] when they are looking
at the hot air balloon [assignment], they have to buy the stuff first, and
[the assignment] just sucks them right in. They get enthusiastic, and from
then on, they don’t get sucked out. They just stay in it, like even though
they’re going from country to country, or they have to figure out which way
they want to go. Well, they have to preplan to find the shortest general
route before they actually say, “OK, this is going to be our route."
They preplan. They realize they need to do that if they want to win the
race. And so, it holds their attention into doing what they’re supposed to
be doing. They do have a hard time, a lot of times, with the finding out
how long it took to go around. That is a hard challenge for them because
that’s the math in use, the multiplication and division all in use, and
it’s a little harder for them. A lot of times I find I have to stop the
class and say, “OK, let’s just go over a couple of things before we get
this far.” But basically, when that happens, it’s because a lot of them
have become frustrated because they’re not quite sure how to do it and they
don’t agree on it. But there is enthusiasm as they go through it, except
for a couple of places. Is that kind of what you’re looking for?
Exactly. Well, this is a great unit. It sounds fascinating, and boy,
there’s nothing like hot air balloons to really get kids excited.
Yeah, and going around the world. Most of my kids have never been
outside the county, so that really gives them something.
It really does. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time
on this and your talking with me. I will be mailing you a consent form,
just have you sign and return to me, probably in the next week or so.
OK.
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