Comic strips are a fun and creative way to foster reading and reading comprehension as well as vocabulary and inference. I have incorporated comic strips into my reading lesson using the Strip Designer app through an IPad. The comic strip designers can use pictures, stickers, drawings, maps, text balloons and text boxes in their creation. Pictures can be taken through the IPad's camera then uploaded into the strip. The app offers its own stickers; however, stickers can also be created.
The lesson involves a 3rd grade classroom reading a book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. The book is a story about the give and take relationship between a boy and an apple tree. The kids are to independently read one-third of the book, then answer questions to assess their understanding of the main ideas. The next third of the book will be read as a class with students taking turns reading aloud. Afterwards, the students will be paired up to create a 6 to 9-cell comic strip summarizing their understanding of that section. One person will create the strip within the app, while the other person takes pictures. Together, they will determine how to portray their understanding of the story in the comic strip. These exercises will provide me with their comprehension level throughout the reading of the book, supporting the prior knowledge component of learning theory. The pairing allows for collaboration with the partner, facilitating understanding of the story. This leads to the higher level step, which is to predict the ending. Each pair will create a 9 to 12-cell comic strip that verbally and visually illustrates their prediction, drawing on experience, background, knowledge and imagination. This time the pair's roles will be reversed, giving each child an opportunity to take pictures with the camera and create the strip within the app.
When the comic strips are completed, the kids will present their comic strip prediction to the class and then I will read the actual ending. On a paper to be turned in, the kids will compare and contrast their predictions to the actual ending, and provide their assessment of the actual ending. I will post the various comic strips up on the wall afterwards so the students can enjoy reading and discussing the various predictions.
Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation all take place within this comic strip lesson structure. The students tell us what they know from the story by demonstrating it verbally and visually through the comic strip. To prepare the strip, they need to analyze the contents from the book and determine the key parts to illustrate. The creation of the strip itself allows the students to synthesize the information, understanding the actual book events and then using that information to form a prediction. The students will compare their predictions to the actual ending and evaluate the actual ending. This lesson met INTASC standards 5, 6 and 8, ISTE Standards 1 and 2, and met student ISTE Standards 1, 2, and 4. To note, the comic strip app does not make the learning more concrete than a hand-drawn comic strip.
There are implementation struggles. The students need reasonable access to an IPad to take the pictures and access the app. The school may or may not have enough IPads available, or available for sufficient amounts of time for the students to work on their project. The Strip Design app costs $2.99 to download to an iTunes account. The school would need to have an iTunes account and approve the cost of the app. It would be worth looking into whether the school could get a discount on the cost from the app maker. This may not be achievable though. The IPads could have battery or malfunction issues that prevent its use. The Strip Designer app could stop functioning properly or close unexpectedly.
There are limitations to the Strip Designer app. The app limits the number of cells to 12. It also limits the number of combined texts and photos used within a strip. This photo/text limitation "forces" the designer to use such things as balloons, stickers and warp text to preserve memory and/or resolution. Another limitation is that the cells have to be the same size to export as a PDF. There are trade-offs with this app versus a hand-drawn comic strip. The finger drawing is less detailed and precise, and errors may be harder to correct. I was unable to find an undo function to fix drawing issues, rather I just re-drew my design. Cell size also impacts drawing details as well as how much can reasonably be put into a cell before it gets too crowded (i.e. text plus pictures and stickers).
There is bias to using a comic strip, regardless of digital or hand-made form. Comic strips require a pictoral representation of the story with relatively minimal verbal dialogue and make students condense the story down to a limited number of cells. Students have to make decisions about what to include and exclude and encourages the designer to incorporate inference to tell the story given the limited verbal explanation.
The comic strip I made is not based on the book, rather just a silly story about our puppy. It incorporates pictures, stickers (including a self-made one), map, text boxes, balloons, etc. The app offers some nice pre-made things, like the stickers, maps and balloons. It also allows a personal touch through your own sticker creation and drawing pictures. You can find my strip on twitter. There are actually two out there. I didn't realize until after I sent one test one to twitter that when I updated the comic strip, it updated the one previously exported to twitter. The two are:
twitpic.com/6pf7lp
twitpic.com/6pf7td
I read the article Comic Strips as a Text Structure for Learning to Read by Claudia J. McVicker in conjunction with this project. The author argues that visual literacy is necessary for comprehension, particularly with today's technology generation using the Internet for information gathering. The article had few arguments to support why visual literacy is specficially needed or helpful for this tech generation. A reason cited for visual literacy with technology is that it's necessary to have such skills to access good information efficiently, solve problems and communicate. I would agree that this is necessary in your personal and working environment. One needs to discern good from not good information to arrive at well-support conclusions, and visual literacy helps with this. The author then furthered this argument by providing the benefits of visual learning and how comic strips help achieve this type of learning.
When the author discussed the importance of visual learning, she noted that early reading is done through picture books, where pictures and words help the reader to understand the story. She specifically mentions Bloom's taxonomy and the synthesizing that takes place with visual representation. The reader examines the pictures along with the text to see how they match. The visual also offers the reader help with spatial concepts. She went on to provide several arguments in support of using comic strips in visual learning and literacy. Her contention was that comic strips are beneficial for all reader levels (literate, illiterate and alliterate). She specifically mentions struggling readers and how comics help motivate them and "can bridge their literary interests to more conventional text structures." According to an earlier paper McVicker wrote (2005), comic strips are "a quick, concise way to teach, practice and apply reading skills". Inference is a challenging skill to teach and comics help with this. The reader can use the pictures and few texts in a comic strip to infer the meaning. Comics are easy to come by and free, and have been used to motivate young readers. The author believes that comic strips assist with comprehension and offer a useful teaching strategy for developing deductive reasoning, evaluative thinking, and other skills.
Overall, I agree with the author that visual learning contributes to reading comprehension and related skills such as inference, and that comic strips are a creative, motivating and effective visual learning tool.
The article can be found within Cowles Library at http://ehis.ebscohost.com.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7e2cb5bb-9221-4941-82b4-9c4fcdf3042d%40sessionmgr114&vid=3&hid=120. Her article is in The Reading Teacher 61(1), pp. 85-88.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Edmodo Tech Project
Edmodo can be a very interesting and useful social networking technology to understand the students prior knowledge, track and assess their progress and encourage collaboration. My Edmodo student site is designed to have 5th grade students use their math skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in a real life application. The students are to determine and calculate the cost factors of a Walt Disney World vacation, analyzing and determining affordability and potential adjustments to enhance affordability.
An important learning theory component is understanding students' existing knowledge and/or experience. In this Disney project, it is important to know the students' familiarity with income, expenses and the net remaining as they will be working with these concepts throughout the project. This is possible within Edmodo through the poll function. I used two poll questions. The first is concerning allowances, to have a sense for their understanding of income. The second is concerning the purchase of items when they have insufficient funds, to have a sense for their understanding of expense and net income (deficit).
Edmodo does not make the learning more concrete. However, it does support collaboration in learning theory. Through posts, questions are posed to students for their collective input. For example, they are asked to generate a list of cost factors that should be taken into consideration. Also, they are asked for input on non-cost items to consider when comparing meal plan options. This is to encourage the students to think about opportunity costs without directly stating it, therefore, taking the comparison and analysis beyond the math calculation. Edmodo facilitates collaboration by allowing the teacher to post questions or comments and have the students reply in an open forum viewed by the whole group. This gives them the opportunity to offer answers/solutions as well as provide comments and questions to items posted, which can facilitate learning.
This is followed by an assignment to calculate the better meal cost option by calculating the cost differential between buying a meal package and paying for meals individually. This type of computation allows the students to apply math skills to a real world price comparison exercise. Students will work in pairs. One person will seek and find the cost information while their partner will perform the calculations. They will then use this information in addition to other cost data to ultimately calculate the all-in cost of this trip. To assist the students in finding the cost data, they can go into the Library and find links and other information I've stored in there.
The earlier activities led them to the key final components of the project, which involves organizing and evaluating the data, drawing an initial affordability conclusion (evaluation) and then providing proposals to improve affordability (i.e.: bring food and eat out less, stay fewer days/nights, have all family members save money towards the trip, etc.). By proposing alternative solutions to enhance affordability, the students are synthesizing as part of the learning process. This project also has the ability to create by changing their perspective on what is meant by affordability and how they will look at future opportunities. Affordability may have only meant having the money to pay a stated or calculated price and now they can see that one may be able to impact various components and affect affordability.
There may be struggles with implementing this project. First, the students may not have access to a computer. They may not all have personal access to a computer outside of school. The school may have a limited number of computers available and for limited time periods for all students to be able to complete assignments within a reasonable time period. Second, the school district may not have approved the use of a social networking technology in the classroom. There may be concerns of privacy, questions and skepticism regarding the benefits, and fears of the issues associated with other social networking sites. Third, parents may object to or have similar concerns with their student using it. Fourth, the school's server may go down and impact student working time. Fifth, Edmodo may go down, which I personally experienced, which impacts student working time.
In addition to managing the implementation struggles, there are trade-offs with Edmodo. One of its great features is the ability for students to collaborate, which can facilitate learning. However, there are pros and cons with this form of collaboration. First, the intended message may be misinterpreted because it's harder to detect the tone of the message, or the word choices draw different understandings and non-verbal helper cues are absent from the communication process. Second, there is less control and more monitoring required to insure appropriate communication/language. For example, in a classroom if there's inappropriate or hurtful language used, the teacher can react right then. If it occurs within Edmodo, the posting may have occurred while the teacher was not within the site and thereby delaying the action taken to resolve the situation and prevent it from escalating. Teachers need to carefully monitor communication on the site and the more dialog that occurs, the more time spent on monitoring. Third, for some students who may be less apt to participate in class, this can create a more comfortable and engaging forum for them, though his may be at the cost of some students retreating. For example, some students may have the mindset that they are doing someone else's work and shouldn't have to "share" the grade, so they limit their contributions. Likewise, a student may feel like he can slack off because there are others who will do the work for him. There are also limitations to Edmodo. The communication is only at a group level. Students are unable to post just to certain parties, like their pair partner. Another limitation is that it doesn't provide face-to-face interaction for continued development of important social skills.
This project, utilizing the respective technology, meets teaching and student standards. It meets INTASC standard 5 for Application of Content, ISTE 2 for Communication and Collaboration and 4 for Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making. The collaborative format combined with thoughtful project questions and assignments promoted critical thinking (i.e.: opportunity cost exploration) on real issues (i.e.: option comparisons). The students had to make an initial affordability decision and then re-look at it to determine what other impacts could be made using critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also meets INTASC standard 6 for Assessment. The polls help the teacher gauge initial knowledge base and use that throughout the project to see and monitor the ongoing learning process. She reviews post responses and assignments to understand what her students are thinking. The project was set up in four groups so that a student pair could "open" a new level when they completed the tasks in a particular group, and the only way to get into the new group is for the teacher to provide the access. This control can help the teacher see where students are getting stuck and make modifications along the way.
For viewing my Edmodo site, go to www.Edmodo.com and click on the student sign-up link. Enter one of the following codes: lfzcb8, qkp12i, isr6w5 and 3a83d1. After you enter the one code and get access to that group, you can add yourself to the other groups using the additional codes. I created four groups as a means of the student progressing through each of the parks as they progress their way through the polls, posts and assignment until completing the tasks. The kids would only get access to the next group when I provided them access upon completion of each level. you are getting it all so you can see the various tools used to construct this project.
In conjunction with this Edmodo project, I read the MIT research paper entitled The Instructional Power of digital games social networking simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them (http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf). The paper primarily offered reasons for why teachers should use technologies in the classroom, specifically digital games, social networking and simulations, and provided examples of teachers who utilized these technologies with positive outcomes. The authors had a lot of good arguments and I would agree with the reasons they cited for employing such technologies, but I think they could have elaborated more about the importance of utilizing technologies where it is appropriate and beneficial. Not all projects and situations warrant the use of such technologies and teachers should be mindful of the that when they are developing their lessons. Getting teachers on board with using technologies is good but can be detrimental if they aren't using them to raise the level of learning. If learning is not enhanced and test scores and other assessment measures don't show that technology was beneficial, it can create greater reluctance to fund and support technology use going forward. Therefore, I believe teachers need to be careful in their application and am disappointed that this article promoting their usage did not articulate this aspect strongly.
There were some very interesting and informative reasons cited for using technology in the classroom. The current K-12 generation has been "completely normalized by digital technologies - it is a fully integrated part of their lives." (Green & Hannon, 2007) Although there are concerns about social networking such as security, it was their contention that one cannot dismiss it and that schools should give consideration to safe, valuable classroom tools that continue to be developed. This made me think of Edmodo. It is a good example of a social networking tool that worked to address issues like privacy and security. For instance, it requires minimal information to set up a profile, and teachers control who is allowed in the group. Statistics cited from the National School Board Association were that 96% of 9-17 year olds have used social networking with 60% of the surveyed students saying it was for educational topics and 50% was to talk about school work. I would like more details on what particularly was talked about and how it benefited them. That information was not provided. The authors recognize one can still have strong lessons and learning objectives without technologies but argue that there's a significant disconnect with "the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making and accomplishment." and declare it critical to mitigate the gap and leverage the power "for instructional gain." I believe one needs to be cognizant of the disconnect and help bridge the gap as educators are to help children develop the skills and have the knowledge needed for the outside world. However, not all new technologies are the best fit to facilitate learning. The right application matters. Technology can help students with Create, at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. According to the authors, many k-12 students are "using new media and technologies to create new things, learn new things, and communicate in new ways". For social networking, the paper places social cognition at the core, with collaboration and the learning from others building on such critical skills as literacy, research, technical skills and critical analysis.
An important learning theory component is understanding students' existing knowledge and/or experience. In this Disney project, it is important to know the students' familiarity with income, expenses and the net remaining as they will be working with these concepts throughout the project. This is possible within Edmodo through the poll function. I used two poll questions. The first is concerning allowances, to have a sense for their understanding of income. The second is concerning the purchase of items when they have insufficient funds, to have a sense for their understanding of expense and net income (deficit).
Edmodo does not make the learning more concrete. However, it does support collaboration in learning theory. Through posts, questions are posed to students for their collective input. For example, they are asked to generate a list of cost factors that should be taken into consideration. Also, they are asked for input on non-cost items to consider when comparing meal plan options. This is to encourage the students to think about opportunity costs without directly stating it, therefore, taking the comparison and analysis beyond the math calculation. Edmodo facilitates collaboration by allowing the teacher to post questions or comments and have the students reply in an open forum viewed by the whole group. This gives them the opportunity to offer answers/solutions as well as provide comments and questions to items posted, which can facilitate learning.
This is followed by an assignment to calculate the better meal cost option by calculating the cost differential between buying a meal package and paying for meals individually. This type of computation allows the students to apply math skills to a real world price comparison exercise. Students will work in pairs. One person will seek and find the cost information while their partner will perform the calculations. They will then use this information in addition to other cost data to ultimately calculate the all-in cost of this trip. To assist the students in finding the cost data, they can go into the Library and find links and other information I've stored in there.
The earlier activities led them to the key final components of the project, which involves organizing and evaluating the data, drawing an initial affordability conclusion (evaluation) and then providing proposals to improve affordability (i.e.: bring food and eat out less, stay fewer days/nights, have all family members save money towards the trip, etc.). By proposing alternative solutions to enhance affordability, the students are synthesizing as part of the learning process. This project also has the ability to create by changing their perspective on what is meant by affordability and how they will look at future opportunities. Affordability may have only meant having the money to pay a stated or calculated price and now they can see that one may be able to impact various components and affect affordability.
There may be struggles with implementing this project. First, the students may not have access to a computer. They may not all have personal access to a computer outside of school. The school may have a limited number of computers available and for limited time periods for all students to be able to complete assignments within a reasonable time period. Second, the school district may not have approved the use of a social networking technology in the classroom. There may be concerns of privacy, questions and skepticism regarding the benefits, and fears of the issues associated with other social networking sites. Third, parents may object to or have similar concerns with their student using it. Fourth, the school's server may go down and impact student working time. Fifth, Edmodo may go down, which I personally experienced, which impacts student working time.
In addition to managing the implementation struggles, there are trade-offs with Edmodo. One of its great features is the ability for students to collaborate, which can facilitate learning. However, there are pros and cons with this form of collaboration. First, the intended message may be misinterpreted because it's harder to detect the tone of the message, or the word choices draw different understandings and non-verbal helper cues are absent from the communication process. Second, there is less control and more monitoring required to insure appropriate communication/language. For example, in a classroom if there's inappropriate or hurtful language used, the teacher can react right then. If it occurs within Edmodo, the posting may have occurred while the teacher was not within the site and thereby delaying the action taken to resolve the situation and prevent it from escalating. Teachers need to carefully monitor communication on the site and the more dialog that occurs, the more time spent on monitoring. Third, for some students who may be less apt to participate in class, this can create a more comfortable and engaging forum for them, though his may be at the cost of some students retreating. For example, some students may have the mindset that they are doing someone else's work and shouldn't have to "share" the grade, so they limit their contributions. Likewise, a student may feel like he can slack off because there are others who will do the work for him. There are also limitations to Edmodo. The communication is only at a group level. Students are unable to post just to certain parties, like their pair partner. Another limitation is that it doesn't provide face-to-face interaction for continued development of important social skills.
This project, utilizing the respective technology, meets teaching and student standards. It meets INTASC standard 5 for Application of Content, ISTE 2 for Communication and Collaboration and 4 for Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making. The collaborative format combined with thoughtful project questions and assignments promoted critical thinking (i.e.: opportunity cost exploration) on real issues (i.e.: option comparisons). The students had to make an initial affordability decision and then re-look at it to determine what other impacts could be made using critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also meets INTASC standard 6 for Assessment. The polls help the teacher gauge initial knowledge base and use that throughout the project to see and monitor the ongoing learning process. She reviews post responses and assignments to understand what her students are thinking. The project was set up in four groups so that a student pair could "open" a new level when they completed the tasks in a particular group, and the only way to get into the new group is for the teacher to provide the access. This control can help the teacher see where students are getting stuck and make modifications along the way.
For viewing my Edmodo site, go to www.Edmodo.com and click on the student sign-up link. Enter one of the following codes: lfzcb8, qkp12i, isr6w5 and 3a83d1. After you enter the one code and get access to that group, you can add yourself to the other groups using the additional codes. I created four groups as a means of the student progressing through each of the parks as they progress their way through the polls, posts and assignment until completing the tasks. The kids would only get access to the next group when I provided them access upon completion of each level. you are getting it all so you can see the various tools used to construct this project.
In conjunction with this Edmodo project, I read the MIT research paper entitled The Instructional Power of digital games social networking simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them (http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf). The paper primarily offered reasons for why teachers should use technologies in the classroom, specifically digital games, social networking and simulations, and provided examples of teachers who utilized these technologies with positive outcomes. The authors had a lot of good arguments and I would agree with the reasons they cited for employing such technologies, but I think they could have elaborated more about the importance of utilizing technologies where it is appropriate and beneficial. Not all projects and situations warrant the use of such technologies and teachers should be mindful of the that when they are developing their lessons. Getting teachers on board with using technologies is good but can be detrimental if they aren't using them to raise the level of learning. If learning is not enhanced and test scores and other assessment measures don't show that technology was beneficial, it can create greater reluctance to fund and support technology use going forward. Therefore, I believe teachers need to be careful in their application and am disappointed that this article promoting their usage did not articulate this aspect strongly.
There were some very interesting and informative reasons cited for using technology in the classroom. The current K-12 generation has been "completely normalized by digital technologies - it is a fully integrated part of their lives." (Green & Hannon, 2007) Although there are concerns about social networking such as security, it was their contention that one cannot dismiss it and that schools should give consideration to safe, valuable classroom tools that continue to be developed. This made me think of Edmodo. It is a good example of a social networking tool that worked to address issues like privacy and security. For instance, it requires minimal information to set up a profile, and teachers control who is allowed in the group. Statistics cited from the National School Board Association were that 96% of 9-17 year olds have used social networking with 60% of the surveyed students saying it was for educational topics and 50% was to talk about school work. I would like more details on what particularly was talked about and how it benefited them. That information was not provided. The authors recognize one can still have strong lessons and learning objectives without technologies but argue that there's a significant disconnect with "the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making and accomplishment." and declare it critical to mitigate the gap and leverage the power "for instructional gain." I believe one needs to be cognizant of the disconnect and help bridge the gap as educators are to help children develop the skills and have the knowledge needed for the outside world. However, not all new technologies are the best fit to facilitate learning. The right application matters. Technology can help students with Create, at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. According to the authors, many k-12 students are "using new media and technologies to create new things, learn new things, and communicate in new ways". For social networking, the paper places social cognition at the core, with collaboration and the learning from others building on such critical skills as literacy, research, technical skills and critical analysis.
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