Dr. Jocelyn Chadwick
Dr. Chadwick is a professor at the Harvard School of Education, a Mark Twain Scholar, taught for 10 years in middle school, I believe, and overall a brilliant woman. She has so many accolades under her belt ... it was truly a pleasure to listen to her speak. Look her up and read her bio.
This session discussed the importance of digital literacy, and how moving from print to digital media in the classroom helps keep content engaging and relevant for students.
Discovery Education is working with school districts across the country to align the State and Core Standards to each site’s specific curriculum, supplementing those lessons with digital assets. Each digital asset aligns with standards and curriculum, is easy for teachers to use, and is presented in one electronic document with hyperlinks – think of it as one stop shopping when it comes to offering engaging lesson plans that include digital media. A teacher can then use Discovery Education’s model of a unit and create their own lesson plans that align to the standards and include digital assets.
This was not a commercial session, but Dr. Chadwick’s discussion centered around her work with Discovery Education as examples of the topic.
- How do you take rigorous curriculum and infuse it with relevance?
- "If we can imagine it, we can create it...it is just a matter of having room to do it."
- In
Indianapolis - What happens if you align each standard with digital media assets
- We need to engage students of all learning modalities and situations, and make these strategies accessible to teachers
- Students are visual and tactile learners more than ever, due to the digital age
- So Discovery created documents that are friendly to teachers no matter what year they are in, and provide links to resources, so as not to overload the teachers
- Took the curriculum and followed similar mapping, but created "metadata" so that students are no longer just looking at a picture of Maya Angelou, but can read about her, watch a video, access resources, all with one click - easy access
- If the state changes the standards at grade levels, digital media makes it much easier to change the curriculum
- Modular units that move teachers easily from print o digital media
- Pre-assessments (tactile)
- Vocabulary - How to make it relevant
- Interactive Vocabulary Journal
- took vocabulary from the curriculum guides and made those the list for the year
- rather than writing out the definition, students need to create the definitions with images, sounds, etc.
- manipulate the definition
- now it is tactile and relevant, and the students can connect to and remember it
- activities - keep the vocabulary relevant
- project based
- student produced
- standards based
- Created Digital Strategies
- World History - be an archeologist: create an archeological report following the guidelines of a real archeologist
- now have a multi-dimensional approach
- blogs
- digital cultural quilt
- creates a timeline from then and now
- example - American Revolution
- digital pamphlet
- digital poster
- all designed to start with working in groups and scaffold out
- all designed for presentation to class or school
- Students begin to feel more in control of their learning
- we have very visual students
- Teachers have models to base their own classroom digital adventures
- Now Discovery takes curriculum guides and creates model curriculum
- everyone one the team that creates these models are teachers
- created cross curricular models as well
- Time frame for creating these alignments?
- It can be done in about a week/grade level
- create the template for document resources
- Video, Instructional Images, Instructional Games, Articles, Audio, Writing Prompts
- Doesn't take longer than a month for K-12, all four content areas, cross curricular
- No two alignments are the same because the standards are not the same.
- Common Core Standards
- The goal is critical thinking, to create good, responsible citizens, processors
- Goal: How do these standards combine to create a thinking member of society?
- The Core is taking off because
- recession
- Obama Administration has tied the money into adopting the core
- It is here to stay
- "ratchets up" the curriculum - raises rigor
- the five states that the rest of the country follows have adopted the core, so soon others will follow
California ,Texas ,New York ,Massachusetts ,Florida - Will there be a common assessment?
- Districts are now asking for both the district and common core standard alignments
- ELA - digital alignments supplement text, eliminating the need for purchasing new textbooks, considering that much does not change
- Model Lesson
- time frame
- description
- essential question
- focus questions
- Be the Historian
- activities
- create a digital notebook portfolio
- this answers the essential and focus questions on the back end of the lesson
- links to resources are provided right in the lesson
- nothing is below grade level - all either at or above grade level
- there are some repeats of topics and titles in resources so that you have different perspectives
- pre assessment
- classroom activities
- ex: digital research paper
- writing, videos, images, citations
- guidance for students and teachers
- prompts
- projects
- rubric
- standards
- They always check with teachers to see if it is working, and adjust as requested
- The question becomes: Did the students address the objective? Whether they have all of the technological tools or just the barest ones, did they think through the essential questions?
- enhance that with images and interviews and videos, etc.
- don't have to be in a lab to complete the projects - can do it at home, or complete part of it
- ATT - providing tools to help further this, keep kids off of the streets and help them graduate
- Funding
Indianapolis - just bought a class set of books, and then spent the rest of the money on the contract with Discovery
- others using Title I funds, etc.
- Create your own models and lessons
- All of the resources that are used to create these models for each district are available to us on http://www.discoveryeducation.com/
- customize your lessons with digital aspects and engage students and increase motivation and achievement
- You can also do your own research, using your favorite sites and resources
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