Filed under: Change Agent, Instructional Leader | Tags: Assessment, Curriculum21, digitalstorytelling, project based learning
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Heidi Hayes-Jacobs suggests that the first step that teachers take it to adopt a 21st century assessment. She suggests that you begin by changing one per semester. Let’s consider digital story telling as a 21st century assessment.
So, what would it take for you, as a teacher to change one of your current summative assessments into a digital storytelling project?
Identifying Related Standards and Benchmarks
When looking at your curriculum, can you find defined skills and knowledge that students can be assessed on using digital storytelling? I bet that you can find standards and benchmarks in your subject matter, and your information technology and library curricula. By using all three you’re providing students with exposure to a variety of 21st century skills and knowledge.
Take a look at the enGauge 21st Century Skills that were identified by the Digital Directors Guild.
enGauge® 21st Century Skills: Literacy in the Digital Age
Digital-Age Literacy
- Basic, scientific, economic, and technological literacies
- Visual and information literacies
- Multicultural literacy and global awareness
- Inventive Thinking
- Adaptability and managing complexity
Self-direction
- Curiosity, creativity, and risk taking
- Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning
- Effective Communication
Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills
- Personal, social, and civic responsibility
- Interactive communication
- High Productivity
Prioritizing, planning, and managing for results
- Effective use of real-world tools
- Ability to produce relevant, high-quality products
Digital Storytelling is not just for English and Social Studies
The Digital Directors Guild has suggestions for all subject matters.
Science – How about time lapsed photography to tell the story of an experiment? Maybe an infomercial or documentary?
Math – A visual representation of a complex problem or the story of how a student mastered their learning? Maybe a documentary on a math related topic?
Art – The use of photos to tell and artistic story or a documentary describing a historical art topic.
The possibilities are endless.
Determining the Appropriate Tool
Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has written Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators and in it she identifies 7 free tools that can be used for storytelling. As part of the process, students need to determine if they will tell the story with video, images, text or audio. Once that is determined, the appropriate tool can be chosen. This is something that our academic technology person can help you and your students with selecting the right tool and learning it. Richard Byrne in Free Technology for Teachers provides lots of links to related sites. Alan Levine at CogDog blog has identified 50+ ways to tell a digital story.
Researching Examples
You can find examples at Tech Teachers.
What else will you need to help students create digital stories?
Filed under: Instructional Leader | Tags: 21st Century Schools, Assessment, Curriculum, Learning
In the book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World by Heidi Hayes-Jacobs she suggests that the first step that educators should take in integrating technology in teaching and learning is to change the assessment so that it includes the use of technology. Not only that it incorporates technology, but that it’s relevant for today’s world.
Start with changing the assessments – Her suggestion is to consider what “21st century social scientists, scientists, mathematicians, artists, writers, language specialists, musicians, and business men and women might produce…” To put this in place she suggests the following steps.
Step 1 – “Develop a pool of assessment”
Step 2 – “Teachers working with IT members, identify the existing types of software, hardware, and Internet-based capabilities in their school…” Suggestion for teachers to become comfortable with at least one new tool per semester.
Step 3 - ”Replace a dated assessment with a modern one.”
Set aside a book report and replace it with a podcast, virtual literary tour, video or magazine book review.
Step 4 – “Share the assessment upgrades formally with colleagues and students.”
Step 5 – “Insert ongoing sessions for skill and assessment upgrades into the school calendar.”
There are some exciting options for assessment with the use of Infographics. This type of assessment can be used in any and all subject matters and the skills and knowledge that students learn are certainly 21st century. The possibilities are endless, but here are a few examples.
- Nancy Duarte, created an info graphic of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. The visual may not make sense, so you have to watch her video which explains her analysis of the speech. Imagine our students doing something similar withspeeches, poems, novels, etc.
- The members of our music department will enjoy this visual representation of the sonata form of Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
- The one entitled, Are you Vitamin D Deficient?is a great example for science. Notice that the creator looks at visually representing several different pieces of information in a variety of ways.
- Want to get away from the traditional timeline? Check out the The (Visual) Evolution of the Batmobile.
- Want to know how much CO2 is generated by different…?
To find more examples you can check out this Cool Cool Infograhics blog, Information is Beautiful or the 50 MOST STUNNING EXAMPLES OF DATA VISUALIZATION AND INFOGRAPHICS.
What do you think? Can you find places in your curriculum where this would be effective? What type of professional development will be needed to make this shift?
Filed under: Change Agent, Instructional Leader, Leadership | Tags: 1:1 Laptop Programs, 21st Century Schools, Assessment, change, Curriculum, Leadership, Vision
Crossed Posted on 1to1 Schools
This is part 1 of 2.
I slowly worked my way through Heidi Hayes-Jacobs book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World for the past couple of months. It’s been slow only because I haven’t had much time for serious reading lately. Once I got my new iPad I was able to breeze through it. While I was skeptical about the content at first, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with what I learned from the book. Hayes-Jacobs with help from Stephen Wilmarth, Vivien Stewart, Tim Tyson, Frank W. Baker, David Niguidula, Jamie P. Cloud, Alan November, Bill Sheskey, Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick present an argument, along with practical steps for “upgrading the curriculum”. This first post will focus on two key points from the first four chapters by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.
What year are you preparing your students for? 1973? 1995? Can you honestly say that your school’s curriculum and the program that you use are preparing your students for 2015 or 2020? Are you even preparing them for today?
Start with changing the assessments – As I visit classrooms I’m constantly asking myself how will the lesson change when everyone has ubiquitous access to the right technological tools (we’re preparing to go 1:1 in 2012). As we talk about this transformation I agree with her in saying that the first practical step to take is to change the assessments to. Her suggestion is to consider what “21st century social scientists, scientists, mathematicians, artists, writers, language specialists, musicians, and business men and women might produce…” To put this in place she suggests the following steps.
Step 1 – “Develop a pool of assessment”
Step 2 – “Teachers working with IT members, identify the existing types of software, hardware, and Internet-based capabilities in their school…” Suggestion for teachers to become comfortable with at least one new tool per semester.
Step 3 – “Replace a dated assessment with a modern one.”
Set aside a book report and replace it with a podcast, virtual literary tour, video or magazine book review.
Step 4 – “Share the assessment upgrades formally with colleagues and students.”
Step 5 – “Insert ongoing sessions for skill and assessment upgrades into the school calendar.”
Upgrade the Content -While changing the assessment is a good first step, upgrading the content through changes to the curriculum get to the heart of the matter. We, in international schools have the luxury of being able to develop our own curriculum. The suggestions that Heidi Hayes-Jacobs offers are refreshing and exciting. How would students feel about the following units?
- How does cultural anthropology shedding light on the economy of resource-rich Brazil?
- Science units focused on ideas that changed the world. Also thinking ahead to future ideas that have the potential to change the world.
- Physical education students organizing a 5k run for the community to promote healthy lifestyles.
- A unit on book to film where students study the process and results of making a movie from a book.
- Using an integrated approach to teaching math/economics where students look at the economics of real life problems. The students create their own Freakonomics scenarios.
- Students organizing a virtual orchestra concert with musicians from around the world.
I believe that these steps can help us make a transition into a school that is preparing students for 2011. Has anyone tested the ideas out?
If you’re interested in joining the Curriculum 21 Learning Commons you can join the Ning.
Part 2 will be devoted to key learnings from the other authors.
