In this week's Leader Module, we explored how to use technology to enhance leadership in our classrooms. I chose to evaluate the Tech Tool of making video projects found on the Edutopia Technology Integration Blog Page. In their Edutopia article, Corcoran and Ahrens state, "As teachers, we walked away realizing video is not a reward, it’s an entry point for today’s students to communicate their ideas and tell their stories." Their goal was for students to improve empathy skills, practice their storytelling skills and improve their technology abilities through the lens of creating a personal video. They named the project "Every Kid Has a Story to Tell," and culminated in a public film festival to showcase the videos. These teachers had a lot of success getting kids to engage actively in their own learning and create a project with an authentic audience, which are both extremely important aspects of effective technology education, especially for underserved students. As found by Gencer & Yavuz (2016), leadership style is not directly related to technology competency, so even students that differ in leadership skills can find a voice through digital media projects like video production. I am hoping for my students to participate in a video production project for our space science unit. I want to take my kids to the Farmington Planetarium to see a space documentary, and then have them create their own planetarium-worthy space films. In this particular case, creating videos seemed to be an especially useful tech tool for improving literacy and empathy skills, but the writers couldn't speak specifically for addressing scientific content. Therefore, if I were to recommend this tool to other teachers, I would emphasize its use would be most effective in the ELA classroom. I will update with my experiences implementing this in the middle school science classroom once I have given it a shot. One disadvantage to this tech tool is that in the context that Corcoran and Ahrens used it, the authentic audience that attended their film festival event was composed of parents/guardians. That is better than just a teacher audience of one, but this tool could be improved if the audience attending the event were more specific -- in my case, this could look like middle schoolers creating educational space videos for elementary students. Overall, creating videos as a project could be extremely beneficial for students in developing 21st century skills. It is a great tool for teaching effective communication, since students need to have organized communication skills in order for the video to make sense. It can also have global connections if teachers choose to upload the videos to the internet, which opens up the possibilities for reaching people all over the world. References Corcoran, B. & Ahrens, M. (July 30, 2018). Project: Every kid has a story to tell. Edutopia Technology Integration Blog. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/project-every-kid-has-story-tell. Zielezinksi, M.B. (May 19, 2016). What a decade of education research tells us about technology in the hands of underserved students. Gencer, M.S. & Yavuz, S. (August 19, 2016). Leadership styles and technology: Leadership competency level of educational leaders. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 229, 226-233.
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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