Integrating Technology

Monday the middle school students took a test over their first unit, Tuck Everlasting. Tuesday and Wednesday they were supposed to watch the movie version of Tuck and Thursday I was to introduce the second lesson but because of last minute scheduling changes from the administration we had to push back the unit introduction to Friday which worked out okay.

Before we began reading, I wanted the students to gather some background information on the setting for our novel, Esperanza Rising,a historical fiction novel set during the 1930's in Mexico and California. I also wanted to integrate a new way for the students to access background information other than direct instruction and their textbook. I also wanted to start integrate more technology into the units, so I made a mini Web Quest that included a pre-assessment, introduction to the novel, and historical background information on the Great Depression and Mexican Revolution. You can find the pre-assessment and Web Quest at: (You will not be able to access the pre-assessment at this time because I've closed it so that users outside of my classroom students will not skew the results.)

https://sites.google.com/site/esperanzarisingunit2/

While they were gathering background knowledge over the setting, I asked them to fill out a study guide that I gave them before we entered the computer lab. The study guide was designed to help them pick out main points in the readings as well as highlight certain events in history that play an important role in our novel. Familiarizing students with this information should help give context to our reading and help students understand some of the motives of some of the characters.

On the other side of the study guide I also created a tutorial to help students find their way to homework site on Twitter that my teacher created. I love this idea of having a web-based homework site so that if students are gone for any reason or forgot to write down their homework, they should be able to find their assignments if they have Internet access. This is one of the brilliant ideas I will steal from my coop and use in my future classrooms. (You can find the study guide and tutorial as an attachment on the "Resources" page.)

My goal for each class is to expose students to at least one new way of working with technology during each unit. I think it is important to continuously expose and familiarize students with new forms of technology no matter what level of comfort they may have using technology. For many of my students, both testing and gathering information from the computer were new to them. Some complained about it but most caught on. If they were confused or didn't know how to navigate through the Web Quest it was because they weren't reading the information on the site. Simply reading the computer screen and following directions was a new skill they were developing.