The Week in Review

My class project.

I chose to do a Six Word Memoir using the web application Animoto because the Six Word Memoir is a lesson I have taught for a number of years and I have wanted to try Animoto.  The Six Word Memoir is a very short, but powerful, writing piece.  This type of memoir is fun to do at the beginning of the year as a way for my students and me to get to know each other.  The idea to use Animoto came from a student’s senior project presentation this year.  She used Animoto for both her introduction and her conclusion and the judges in her room were very impressed with it.  I also participated in a National WritingProject Webinar where a teacher in the Midwest talked about how much fun she had taking her Six Word Memoir lesson to the next level while presenting it using Animoto.  Right there, I was sold on the idea of using Animoto in my classroom this coming school year.

Animoto will enhance the Six Word Memoir because it allows the student to present the memoir creatively and in a more personal way.  A few years ago students took their memoirs and added a visual component to it, which basically meant they drew a picture.  A couple of students asked to use photos, either personal or Google images, and since I thought that was using technology I said yes right away.  The world has changed drastically and now there are so many ways kids can be creative in the classroom using technology.  As students use Animoto, they add images, as well as connect music, videos and background styles to their memoir.

In addition to connecting Animoto to the classroom curriculum, it is a tool that I think many scholars we discussed in this class would like.  As I began this class, I was intimidated by the technology component.  I am considerably older than many of the teachers so I certainly identified as a digital immigrant as coined by Prensky in his article, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”.  Prensky describes me perfectly when he writes, “Those of us that were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are … Digital Immigrants.” I am fascinated by technology but even though it intimidates me, I am not too afraid to take it on.  I was pleasantly surprised that most of the young teachers in our course identified as being an immigrant as well. 

Another scholar we discussed in class, Michael Wesch, would like Animoto because he proved through extensive research how important curiosity and imagination are to student learning in a digital world.  I can have students write Six Word Memoirs with a pen and paper, but to have them produce a video that goes along with the theme of the memoir giving them lots of digital choice in the outcome is a powerful assignment Wesch would like.  The technology is not replacing the content since it is still a Six Word Memoir; however, the technology enhances the lesson and the final assessment.  The kids will have fun using the tool allowing for a more enjoyable learning experience and I will have fun assessing the memoir making my teaching more enjoyable.  In John Waters article “MichaelWesch:  It’s a Pull, Pull World”, he quotes Wesch saying, “The new media landscape is a ‘pull’ environment.  Nothing is pushed to you from the Web, which makes it essential that we inspire students to seek out the knowledge that’s out there. The content isn’t fundamentally different, but the environment just demands more curiosity and imagination.”  I think  all the technology we studied in this class connects to Wesch  because we all need to use technology appropriately and students need to be taught how to do that.  Many times during this course I heard teachers say that they didn’t really know a particular web application well, but once they showed their students the basics, it was amazing what they produced.  I cannot tell you how exciting that type of teaching and learning is for me.  I love to watch my students grow while learning something new they discovered without me.  By using more technology in my classroom, maybe students will see the relevance of school and the skills we are trying to teach them.

But I do have some concerns about this new digital world with regard to my disadvantaged students.  The critical side of me questions the logistics of how technology will work in my particular classroom and in my particular school.  How do I require students to use technology outside school when a number of my students don’t know where they are sleeping on a given night?  In this course many teachers talked about how handouts and assignments on paper get lost in kids’ backpacks and there are some tools available online to help end the backpack-black-hole.  But if we require students to go home and post an entry on a blog and they do not have access to the Internet, how is that different from the backpack problem?  The disadvantaged kid is still disadvantaged.  I know some people will argue that most kids today have access in some way to technology, but that is not the case with many kids in my school.  In his article,  "Bridging the New Digital Divide" , Finkel raises many points about how superintendents and administrators are trying to grapple with technology while at the same time getting kids college and career ready in a new digital world.  Most of the article focused on teachers integrating technology into their classroom, but part of the article was about the student as well.  I think we all agree when Finkle quotes a superintendent saying, “[Technology] is an equalizer.  We’ve got to use the technology as a leverage or a force in the classroom to help focus on what people call these 21st-century skills, or soft skills: the ability to communicate with others, to think analytically.”  I guess I’m just looking for someone to really think about the kids and how the new digital world could leave kids behind now more than ever before.  The Sugata Mitra TED talk we saw during the course proves my point perfectly.  Once Mitra put a computer in a kid’s hands, anywhere in the world, he or she excelled. In my opinion, putting some form of digital device in kids’ hands is a high priority in America, not just for superintendents and administrators but politicians as well.  If America wants to educate all kids AND be on top intellectually, academically, and economically, then we must level the playing field for all kids by giving them full access to the digital world both in and out of school.