Thinking about Expanding Technology

So I am well into the second quarter of a new school year. I've thought a lot about blogging--even venturing to create a new blog--but I haven't been able to find the same commitment to the process as I had last year. In a genuine effort to pick back up with my blogging reflection, I am returning back to this blog. I figure that I can be inspired by previous posts.

This year I have been teaching some new text and some texts that I am have taught previously. Even with these texts that I have previously taught, I am really pushing myself to create more effective lessons. In some cases, technology has been really helpful. I realize that last year I used a lot of technology for the sake of using technology. For example, for Huck Finn, I had students create a video representation of one scene. The idea is that students would explore a thematic element of the scene by recreating the scene in a more modern interpretation. This didn't really work because students had a hard time re-envisioning the scenes. I also noted that students picked scene that were common to our class discussion. This assignment seemed like filler rather than a meaningful activity that taught critical thinking. Given that I only I have one prep, I feel that it is important that I really step up my game.

This year I decided that we would focus on using technology in a way that enhanced critical skills. In order for me to do this, I need to break down what I want students to do by the end of the unit while also figuring out how that skill can be divided into smaller skills. For example, I want students to build rhetorical analysis skills. Given that we're reading a fiction piece, this skill has to be done through the lens of a literary analysis. I realize that I ask students to do incredibly complicated things but sometimes they just don't know how. Students have a literary analysis paper to write, but as I was getting submissions for topic proposals I noticed that many were summaries of the book or (worse) they were sociological papers with a very lose connection to Huck Finn. To take a step back, I figured we needed to look at what "close reading" for analysis looks like. I also needed to model this myself.

I wanted to lay out visually what an analysis is and how it is a process...not just an answer. To get what I wanted I needed to show them what it should look like. I went to my bag of technology resources and brainstormed what tool could help students see analysis. I decided to use Smore. Using this tool, I made my own analysis of a famous example of satire seen in Huck Finn--the Duke's Hamlet soliloquy. Going through this process myself, I realized what students needed to do to understand a text: 1. summarize; 2. hypothesize a purpose for the specific part of the text; 3. Find devices; 4. Explain how those devices lead to an appeal; 5. Tie the appeal to a purpose. After all of this they needed to understand how their passage worked in the entire context of the novel. I figured I could visualize this step-by-step process and perhaps students will begin to internalize these skills (and understand that they all work together).



Above is my sample Smore. In addition to the 5 skills I outlined above, I also wanted students to understand how their own literary analysis should be framed. They will need a conclusion. I want the conclusion to be more than just a repeat of their introduction. The idea I have is that an introduction should give the reader food for thought. So to get students thinking about a so what, I wanted them to create discussion questions...this in itself is a hard skill, so I'm not sure what the product will be.

Finally, to model good digital citizenship, I cited all of my images. This was a pain, but I am happy I did this. I told my students how I thought it was difficult and that it had taken me a lot of time (it really did!), but that it was worth it. I noticed on this assignment, there was a lot less complaining about citations and finding the source material. I think this is because of the model. I think if I show a clear investment in the product (other than I just want it done) I will get better work. I will keep working on this as I move forward.