10- Reflections

I really enjoyed being a guide/facilitator in my students' journey in creating content for their final project. LucidPress was easy for them (and me) to learn. I was really impressed with how creative my students were in answering the guiding question for the document they were creating: How can I improve on myself by being more inclusive of others?
This question (and the documents they created) is directly related to the themes we explored this year regarding stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination and racism. My students were able to draw from all our literary units and allow that to inspire their content for their LucidPress document. I would love to explore more student-friendly technology for my students to create content, next year. The process and end results really built a lot of academic empowerment within my students, especially those who struggle with reading and writing. 

I had a lot of fun with this project and enjoyed the overall experience.  I loved being able to set and create my own goals and timeline. The check-ins were there to keep me accountable, which is exactly what I needed. The students were really excited and loved being able to choose their own format to do the work. Some kids crave more computer time and others like to use their hands to build and create, so I gave them the choice for how to create their work.  Being able to upload pictures of all the work (even if hands-on), and then use tech later for the whole class to view the work, allowed for lots of flexibility. The padlet seemed to work well. 

I will definitely keep this course material and thoughts about the work in my mind for future work.  Getting the students involved in different ways is so motivating and allows teachers to let students test out different ways of creating material. It's easy to get stuck doing the same things again and again. This pushes us to broaden our ideas.

Something I would recommend to others next time: look over the whole list of requirements and badges before beginning so you start to envision the final product.  I had one vision and then that changed after I viewed some of the requirements.  Nothing major, just good to plan ahead. I would also recommend having an area to write down questions or notes along the way.  There were several times that I wanted to ask Travis a quick question but figured I'd wait until I had something more substantial to chat about, then of course forgot.  

Thanks for all the support and putting this together. It was great!

I will definitely be using Book Creator again! I really enjoyed the experience and I know my students did too. They were more engaged than ever using this for writing.  I think it was great for them to be able to create something authentic and show what they learned in a completely new and different way.  

I think this experience also made me want to explore all of the different ways that students can be content creators, not just with Book Creator. There were so many other tools and ideas that I came across during my reading, especially the blog post, that could be great to implement in a number of different ways.  I think coming into this I was hesitant as a 2nd-grade teacher, thinking that not all of the tools or ideas would be able to be used by students this young, but I was pleasantly surprised at how many ideas seemed appropriate for my class.  My class also blew me away with how quickly and how well they learned and worked on Book Creator. Some of the books they came up with were so great!

One thing I wish had been different was just the timing of things being so late in the year. As I was exploring the tech tools, I had so many ideas for how they could be used for units that we had already done this year. This isn't really the worst thing, though, as I can now incorporate these ideas into next year. I think it really just goes to show how versatile these tools can be and how many different ways we can allow students to be content creators to show what they know/ have learned.  

Overall, I thought this was a great experience and I am very glad that I was a part of it! 

Laurence / Considerations / Reflections :
-I will definitely do this again. I think students enjoyed creating a slide presentation rather than writing a traditional style essay. The style of research is the same, but because the product is in a digital format and varied in style with the inclusion of graphics, photos and videos, the students were more engaged. I think I will add another element next time and give each student an opportunity to earn points for being audience members while others present. 
-I will also likely assign more points to the verbal presentation aspect of the project. In ELA, speaking is an important component of the curriculum that often gets overlooked. Not all students choose to take public speaking, but it is something that all students benefit from. 
-I hope to videotape student presentations next time. None of my students this year consented to be photographed or videotaped, but I completed this project in my Alt Ed class, and many of my students this year are shy or self conscious. I think if they could view themselves as presenters, many of them would surprise themselves with how effective they were. 
-This project also made me want to explore more tech tools so I can implement more projects into future units for both assessment and teaching. Since Covid took us all into a more tech-savvy universe, I see the need now more than ever to try to catch up to my students in regards to technology.