~150 students just in my Pre-AP and Academic World Geography classes
Summary:
This year has been a wonderful learning experience for my students and me. I have used several new techniques including technology like the mini-laptops, rubrics, and differentiation strategies to help students learn the concepts laid out by the World Geography TEKS on a higher Bloom's Taxonomy level. Although this has been a pilot year and extremely challenging, my classroom has been transformed! I have been able to engage my students by combining classical teaching techniques with technology. Overall, it has been an incredibly exciting and productive experience. I challenged my students to become plugged-in-21st-century-learners by teaching them to use technology to problem solve. Through this process of learning technological skills, my students have become more confident, comfortable, resourceful, and excited about using technology to be life-long learners. By keeping this blog with three other coworkers (Shelby Acevedo, Sara Russo, Kirk Eckstein) of lessons using the technology and meeting on a regular basis, we were able to collaborate to create even better differentiated lessons.
Successful Lessons:
1.Project Menu for Discovering Europe
Objective: The student will create a Europe Challenge Computer game using facebook (IQ Traveler Challenge), a Europe Trip Brochure using Open Office (Impress), or a Europe Tour Video using Google Earth in order to highlight significant physical, political, and cultural aspects of Europe.
This project was a huge hit because it involved student choice and higher level thinking skills. My students loved being able to choose how they demonstrated what they knew about Europe. I grouped students based on the project they picked so they could collaborate and help each other navigate the new computer programs.
2. Africa Online Glogster or Poster Project
Objective: The student will analyze a region of Africa by researching then creating an online glogster or poster of the most important culturual and physical features of that region.
Introducing the option for students to be able to create an online poster versus a paper poster was exciting to most students. Of course some students like to cut and paste by hand, but many students loved being able to be creative quickly by the click of a button. They were able to invest more thinking time into the information on the poster instead of all their time putting it together.
3. South Asia Stations
Objective: The student will learn about South Asia by completing 5 Stations: (1) The student will Compare/Contrast MLK Jr. to Gandhi using Brainpop, (2)The student will Label an online interactive South Asia map game with 90% accuracy, (3)The student will work in a small group to evaluate a series of South Asia maps including economic activity, population density, vegetation, climate, physical, and political in order to answer Geography Alive! questions in complete sentences. (4)The student will watch an India Globe Trekker (10 minute clip) and write complete sentences about information that was interesting to them. (5)The student will diagram different aspects of Mt. Everest by using a graphic organizer and brainpop.
The students seem to really enjoy having 20 minutes to focus on each activity then switching to something new. Stations allow students to literally get up and move every 20 minutes and they maximize classtime. Once you have trained your students to transition quickly, they learn about three times as much in one block period than they would normally because you teach them to focus on and learn five different concepts in one day!
Plan for Next Year:
I plan on continuing to work with my team to collaborate and create even more lessons using mini-laptops in addition to the wiis. I also plan on being more organized in teaching my students to problem-solve using this technology as this past year was a trial period for all of us! I feel confident that integrating technological skills into my World Geography curriculum creates students who come away with tangible computer skills in addition to worldly knowledge. I have seen my students put their creativity into practice, and I definitely plan on encouraging this further.
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