Wicked Project Part B-TPACK

   While my initial solution to my problem involved getting e-readers for everyone, wise comments from others have helped me to refine my vision. While it is cost effective to give e-readers to those students who are identified as having difficulties with reading, I feel that these students would have to deal with being “labeled” by their peers because they would be one of the few in their classes who would have one, and it would obviously bear some school identifier. A few other morsels of food-for-thought brought up through comments and more research on my part, are that expensive tools may have a tendency to disappear and that students taking them home may result in unwanted content on the readers.

   Given that, I have refined my scope to having a set of e-readers in my classroom. I see this as similar to math teachers who have a class set of more expensive calculators. If each student is working off a reader than no student is singled out, and those students who may have reading difficulties but have not been identified as such by the school, still have access to the aids. Having a set in my room means that I am better able to deal with “loss-prevention” issues, damage done to the readers, and I am also better able to deal with content issues. And besides, no one can claim that they couldn’t do their homework because their reader didn’t work.

TP: How does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?

                I believe that in order to understand History, each of us needs to build our own understanding of the subject matter, especially, how history narratives (i.e. textbooks) are created. Both of these forms of understanding come from examining source material, questioning, and drawing conclusions. In this way, students make their own mental webs of information that they can use to learn and to interpret new information as it is presented, and to understand ideas about the society that they live in. The foundation for building these understandings comes heavily from being able to read source materials.

The ideal of digital media is a relative blip on the historic timeline, meaning that until recently everything was done on paper in some manner. This meant that if students were to use these texts, teachers not only had to have access to these artifacts but then make copies of them (if possible) so that they were classroom ready. Many groups have been working to digitize these artifacts so that they are accessible and downloadable through the web. Using e-readers in my classroom means that students would have 1:1 access to the documents and texts for the various activities and lessons that I have planned with a device that aids and encourages them with their class reading. I try to make sure that students work together to build knowledge and answer questions based on the things they have read and looked at. If the student does not read the text, my teaching methods are useless. E-readers help to bridge that gap. Basically if a student can ‘read’ the material, then their chances of participating in the class and chances of doing well in the class greatly increase.

 The outside sources that I use in order to present information about the time period we are studying can now be collected in an organized manner that students can easily read-access and ‘flip’ between in order to make comparisons or highlight/clip portions to use in their writing. I can now, for instance, provide students with two opposing newspaper editorials, images from the event, artwork (possibly in color), poetry (And I can still be eco-friendly.), and I can have an activity go from these sources, rather than going with a paragraph summary of the event from the textbook. Also, e-readers which are able to access the web do not support the range of programs that laptops do, which means that my students will be better able to stay focused on the task at hand.

TC: How specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.

                E-readers allow the information in the texts being used in the classroom to become more accessible in many ways. Perhaps most notably, most e-readers have a text-to-speech function that allows students who are struggling readers or who are more aural learners a gateway in the material that will be used in class. E-readers include dictionaries and translators to help all students understand what they are reading without having to take the time to find such aids or interrupt the rest of the class, nor do they have to call attention to their specific difficulties. Some dictionary functions display “in-page” allowing students even greater ease. E-readers allow students to change the font size, and many devices use e-ink, reducing eye strain. These benefits combined with how lightweight an e-reader is allow the reader to focus and place their effort on the content rather than on the effort of reading itself.

 Beyond that, there is a “cool factor” that is involved with using an e-reader. When students are excited about the way they are learning, they become more excited about the learning itself. This excitement in turn leads to a greater willingness to engage in the reading material and approach it with an open mind, especially if they feel that there is a cool tool to help them formulate their ideas.    

 

                PC: How specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?) Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

As a history teacher I am a big believer of having students examine documents/artifacts from the unit we are studying as a means of helping them to construct their own understanding of the time/place/people/issue/etc., rather than relying solely on the textbook to feed them a single storyline.

 Often times the text (for a number of reasons both understandable and un-understandable) leaves out persons and stories of the time period that might connect with the people who are reading that text and the place and situation they are coming from. A textbook overview of people’s reactions is not enough. Incorporating art, music, speech (yes, e-readers support .mp3 files), and other mediums help students to connect to the content. Allowing students to bring and access their own information and history to the documents while they are examining and making connections means that the discussions that they will engage in will be that much more REAL. And that means that the knowledge and understanding that they build will be real and lasting as well.