NOW Classrooms, Grades 6-8. Meg Ormiston

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СКАЧАТЬ engage in online discussions to enhance their learning and then share what they learn with an authentic audience. In this chapter, you will learn why publishing their work online helps prepare students for a world of online collaboration that will stay part of their future in college and beyond.

      Chapter 3, “Conducting Research and Curating Information,” helps you teach your students to identify information and validate its reliability. Students will build on their media-literacy skills to find credible, unbiased solutions to real-world problems.

      Chapter 4, “Thinking Critically to Solve Problems,” covers how to help students effectively identify the tools they need to communicate with peers and complete a task. It also covers helping students to find better resources and keep them organized. Finally, this chapter helps you introduce students to the world of data analytics by offering lessons that engage students in creating surveys connected to learning objectives, consolidating statistical information into infographics, and publishing their research to wider audiences than just classroom peers.

      Chapter 5, “Being Responsible Digital Citizens,” helps you teach your students to understand their digital footprint and work on creating a positive online identity that reflects their real selves. Cyberbullying and online deception are critical aspects of digital citizenship that challenge students and educators alike. We include lessons that offer strategies, tips, and tricks to protect both persons and data; to engage in legal and ethical behavior that respects the value of ownership; and to ensure that each student’s digital footprint enhances his or her character, rather than diminishes it.

      Chapter 6, “Expanding Technology and Coding Concepts,” explains how to help students manage their digital lives by using basic troubleshooting techniques to overcome technology problems and by using online resources like cloud-based storage and digital portfolios to better organize and present their work. We conclude the chapter with lessons designed specifically to engage grades 6–8 students in developing vital coding skills that will serve them well no matter their future career trajectory.

      In the appendix, we include an alphabetical list of technology terms and resources. This includes a comprehensive list of every app, website, and technology tool referenced in this book along with a description of each resource.

Building Background: Know Before You Go

      Readers should be aware of a few additional concepts regarding this content before they begin engaging with the lessons and chapters that follow. We want to briefly mention suggestions for the sequence in which readers use the lessons in the book, discuss the concepts of learning management systems and common education suites like G Suite for Education that are a critical part of this book’s lessons, emphasize the importance of following policies regarding student privacy and Internet use, and discuss how assessment connects with this content.

       Sequence of Use

      Although we organized this book in an optimal way, we invite you to move among the lessons in whatever sequence you like. Lessons range in difficulty so that you may meet your students at their level. Some eighth graders will need novice lessons and some sixth graders will be ready for the operational or wow lessons. You know your students best, so use our NOW lesson format to fit their needs.

      Each of these lessons requires some form of app or technology platform to accomplish a learning goal. We offer a variety of suggestions you can deploy with each lesson, but do not limit yourself or your students to our examples. Apps change. They disappear entirely. The best app for a job when we wrote this book may not remain the best one for the job when you read this book. As you read this book, we hope you find apps and websites that are new to you and you come up with your own creative ideas for applying technology to your teaching and learning goals. Also, many grades 6–8 students will enter your classroom already with expertise in certain apps and platforms and can offer you their own suggestions for ways to connect the tools with learning goals—take advantage of their knowledge, and allow students sandbox time to freely explore new and different ways to use apps! You don’t need to arrive as a technology expert. Invite student groups to learn new apps right along with you, and then use the group’s knowledge to teach the rest of the class. We designed each lesson in this book to have adaptability so you can use it with whatever tool best suits your classroom. We don’t teach the app; we teach the classroom process.

       Learning Management Systems and Education Suites

      Just because learning sometimes looks messy, it doesn’t mean it lacks structure. Imagine a whole new world without a stack of papers to grade in which the assignments students submit are all organized and recorded in digital folders. Access to technology allows teachers to eliminate the stack of papers and create digital learning experiences that are meaningful and even more powerful to both students and teachers than paper. Schools in the 21st century use many different software programs and web-based applications, or learning management systems (LMSs), to stay organized. Most learning management systems have some free features and premium (paid) school or district solutions. In most schools, everyone uses the same system so students and parents don’t need to learn a different LMS for every class. Most learning management systems allow the teacher to message students, assign and collect documents, report student progress, and deliver e-learning content. Throughout the book, you will notice we provide steps for how you can give digital files to students and then how students return the digital files to you through the classroom LMS.

      Common learning management systems include the following, but you can find hundreds of others on the market.

      • Schoology (www.schoology.com)

      • Showbie (www.showbie.com)

      • Seesaw (https://web.seesaw.me)

      • Canvas (www.canvaslms.com/k-12)

      • Edmodo (www.edmodo.com)

      • Otus (https://otus.com)

      • PowerSchool Learning (www.powerschool.com/solutions/lms)

      • Blackboard (www.blackboard.com)

      • Moodle (https://moodle.org)

      • D2L (www.d2l.com)

      These options include both free and paid LMS platforms. One free option that needs a little more explanation is Google Classroom (https://classroom.google.com). Google Classroom is a cross between a document management system and a learning management system. It does not contain all the features of an LMS, but it is a great way to get started with managing a digital classroom.

      In addition to an LMS, many school districts use an education productivity suite like Google’s G Suite for Education (https://edu.google.com/products/productivity-tools) СКАЧАТЬ