Keeping Students Engaged

Kudos to Anne Brusca for thinking of such an innovative way to intertwine technology with the the story that the fifth-grade class was reading. I can only imagine what it would have been like to be one of those students and how exciting an assignment like that would have been. I think it's safe to say that it was Brusca's use of the technology, not just the technology itself, that made this unit of study so engaging. Using Google Lit could be beneficial to so many different types of projects, whether it's literary, history, science, etc. I haven't had the opportunity to explore it yet, but am excited to find out more about it.

The main reason I liked Brusca's lesson so much was that it involved the learners in what they were learning in such an intimate way. My educational history included reading books, sometimes doing additional research on the content of the book through reading other books, and bringing the two together by writing papers. I learned a lot, but it was dry no matter how interesting the topics were. Brusca's lesson about the Orphan Train really brought the students in and made them want to learn more. I loved the idea of them writing newspapers about it, too. What a cool way to assess what they've learned and what a fun way to for them to express what they've learned!

As far as students using cellphones, I have mixed feelings. Actually, I'm learning more towards the idea than against it, but it's still hard to shake the idea that cell phones are a no-no in school. I started toying with the idea of using cell phones when I was teaching English to Italian teenagers at an international program two summers ago. Many of them were glued to their phones and I realized that if I was going to get them to pay attention to what was happening in the classroom, I should try and figure out a way to incorporate their phones. We wound up doing an English lesson translating "text talk" to the way Americans actually speak to one another. They had fun learning the abbreviations that many use when texting, and I was satisfied by how well they were able to convert them to the way we really spoke (using proper grammar!), and that I was actually completing the objectives of my lessons (teaching different tenses, expressions, emotions, vocabulary, etc.). This lesson is a lot different than the ones presented in the radio show, but it still revolves around the idea of keeping students engaged through a medium that they are comfortable with. While having students explore their cell phones in class was a bit unorthodox, they all stayed on task and I couldn't have been happier with the results.

I liked the lessons that were presented in the radio show and thought that the teachers were very clever in finding ways to get their students to stay on top of their assignments by allowing them to have fun with it! Just as I felt with the Google Lit lesson, these lessons allowed the students to really explore what they were learning on a more personal level. I think that as long as a teacher can be certain that the students are using the phones productively and appropriately, and can justify why the usage of cell phones will add to the lesson, then it should be OK. And while I strongly feel that writing should be heavily emphasized in school (whether it's by hand or typing it out), I've come to realize that learning to being able to speak clearly and to the point can sometimes go by the wayside. When Katie mentioned that some of her students were embarrassed by their cell phone messages re: Romeo and Juliet, because as hard as it is to write, it's sometimes even harder to speak and record, I couldn't help but compare that to the fact that I have yet to leave a video response!