SAMR 2 - Website Boogaloo

Last week, I explained the SAMR model.  It is a method of approaching use of technology in the classroom.  If you are just substituting tech for something you already do and it doesn't significantly change what the student is doing, you aren't getting the most of your technology.

My tech goal for the year is to get to the R at least one time per class this year.  One time in a year doesn't seem like a big goal, but R means Redefinition.  It means fundamentally changing the instruction to something that could not have been done before the technology existed.

In physics, we will be doing this in the form of a challenged based learning activity on electricity.  They will have to figure out how to provide consistent electricity if they lived in Haiti or somewhere else where municipal electricity is not reliably consistent.  Sean, our technology specialist lived in Haiti, so he will come and speak to them to present "the problem."  Students will then have to research available resources and figure out on their own how to solve the problem.  They can contact experts to answer questions using social media or skype.  Some elements of this could not have been done by students in a classroom before technology existed.

In 8th grade, we already started this year's project.  My students are making their own website about the periodic table elements.  Some of them are designers.  Others are proof readers.  Some are seeking media to show chemical reactions for the elements.  One group of students is even managing the work flow of the others by setting goals.  While this project is not even close to being finished, I have already been happily surprised by some of the results.

1.  Using Weebly, the students were able to do some great designing really easily.  Recently, a student opened it and said, "It doesn't look like a bunch of 8th graders did it."
2.  When students tell you what job they would be interested in doing, they take more ownership of it and do a much better job.
3.  You might be surprised at the job they want.  I have a student who speaks very little in class.  She isn't exactly shy, just not overly extroverted.  I was surprised when she told me she would want to be on the team that manages work flow.  It turns out that she is great at it.  She has set goals for when things would be due, sent e-mails to other members of the team, and then communicated those goals to the teams to which they apply.
4.  Knowing something will be public makes them do a much better job.  We've been talking about this since the beginning of our program - that real work for real audiences will make them care more than assigned work for only their teacher.  Knowing it and experiencing it are two very different things.  They are much more likely to fix an error because they know this will be public.
5.  When the teacher doesn't know the answer to something, kids do better problem solving.  Kids always want me to lead them to the "right answer" on a lot of things.  Some of that is laziness, and some of it is the belief that the teacher knows everything.  I've never made a website before, so it was easy to say "I don't know" to a lot of their questions.  When is the design due?  I don't know how long it takes to design.  When will we finish the site?  I don't know how long it takes to make a site.  The design kids, in particular, worked quite diligently because they knew that no one else could add to the site until they were finished.  If I had given them a month, they would have taken it.  My not knowing how long it should take made them do it as quickly as they could.

This website will not be finished at the end of this school year.  I had only 44 8th grade students at the time we started, so there will only be 44 elements on the site.  Next year's 8th grade will have different elements assigned to them.  Since there are currently 114 known elements, we may not actually finish with this website for three years.  The 8th graders who started this will be sophomores in chemistry at that time.  They will be able to use their own site to help them in their high school class.  There will be some connection between three years of my students.  This is all pretty cool to me whether or not it ends up meaning anything to them.