Tom Lubbers:
@TALubbers
Gretchen Fitzharris:
@gmfeldma
Ellen K. Lawrence:
@LawrenceEllen
Katie N. Aquino:
@edu_katied
Your PLN is where you gather, collect, communicate, create and also share knowledge and experience with a group of connected people, anywhere at any time. It is developed largely through social media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and blogs, helping us form connections, grow our knowledge base and develop ourselves professionally through continual learning.
During the writing process, we used our PLN to help each other stay focused on teaching and learning first and then match the right technology to the learning goals we set. Because we have seen rollouts done with little professional development, where teachers are left to figure out on their own how to transform their lessons using newly introduced devices, we want to put in your hands great ways to use technology as an accelerator in every subject area, and we want to support you in those efforts even after you finish reading this book. You can follow our PLN on Twitter @NOWClassrooms or with the #NOWClassrooms hashtag. You can also follow us individually on Twitter by following the accounts listed on this page. Finally, you can keep up with our work on our blog (http://nowclassrooms.com). We know that technology tools will change after this book goes to press, so we want to share and continue to learn with you on our blog and through social media. Think of our team as your personal professional development network.
Our team enjoyed our time researching and writing as we discussed our exciting visions of classrooms of the future. We tested our ideas in our classrooms, trying them over and over again while adding different wrinkles and concepts, and then collaborated over our failures and successes. The lessons in this book are the exciting results of that collaboration, and we want you to tap our experience and adapt our lesson ideas so you have your own classroom successes. We look forward to having you share with us on Twitter and at our blog the projects your students create because your success is our success. Have fun on your journey!
CHAPTER
1
Embracing Creativity
When students actively engage in learning, it makes creativity and innovation possible in every subject area, with or without the use of digital tools. Introducing purposeful uses for digital tools to your classroom simply gives you a means of broadening students’ technological skill set in ways that will let them produce quality products for the 21st century. Creating empowered learners is one of the ISTE 2016 Standards for Students that aligns with this chapter’s creative focus. By the time many students reach high school, they are programmed to create work based on a specific rubric. Often, the rubric defines the final project as a poster, a diagram, or a paper. As you read this chapter, think about ways you can empower learners with student voice and choice about what they want to create to demonstrate what they learned about the topic.
Using multimedia tools, like those we highlight in this chapter, gives students creative ways to demonstrate what they learn in any subject area. Think beyond the research paper and other text-heavy projects, and imagine student-created multimedia projects that creatively and viscerally illustrate what they have learned while also offering students more variety in how they work. For example, a group of students could plan and film a video in front of a green screen and add video to the background during the editing process. In the same class, another group might write a rap song to help them remember what they learned on the topic. Letting student groups define their final product is an important skill for college and careers, and it allows students to creatively show what they have learned. Sir Ken Robinson (2009), in his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, addresses the importance of variety in the classroom:
Academic ability is very important, but so are other ways of thinking. People who think visually might love a particular topic or subject, but won’t realize it if their teachers only present it in one, nonvisual way…. These approaches to education are also stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the twenty-first century—the powers of creative thinking. (p. 14)
As students learn to become content creators and not just passive consumers, it is critical that you focus your instruction on your learning goals tied to your curriculum. Every project should start with a clear learning objective before the groups start producing their projects. Every student should be able to communicate the lesson objective to anyone that stops them to ask what they are producing. It is important to do this before the lights, camera, and action begin. To that end, this chapter’s lessons show how to use photo, video, and audio tools with learning goals across all content areas to allow students to go beyond text to creatively demonstrate what they know and can do.
Using Digital Images in Projects
Although readers may sufficiently understand some stories and data lists by just reading them, writers can often help their audiences better and more quickly understand a story or concept if they include photos or images. Working with images is also a nonlinguistic representation that often leads to deeper understanding of a topic. These representations include using whole-body movement, building, drawing, singing, woodworking, coding, and more. So much of the work we do in schools is focused on developing language skills, but it is important that high school students also learn how to craft a clear message using a combination of images. The Toledo Museum of Art (n.d.) highlights the importance of studying visual language:
In an increasingly digital world we’re communicating more with images and less with words. Images are superseding words as our primary form of communication. On Instagram alone, 20 billion photos have been uploaded since 2010. Many of us employ visual language, often without realizing it. Being fluent in the language of images gives us an advantage at school, at work, and at home.
Leading researchers, educators, museum professionals, filmmakers, and artists believe that being fluent in visual language can improve one’s creativity, critical thinking, educational achievement, empathy towards others and the ability to decipher technology.
Grades 9–12 students have experience snapping and sending images to friends outside of school, but to be fluent using visual language, they need to use those skills to create a clear message that demonstrates what they know and can do in the classroom. For that reason, we have included this NOW lesson set so you can help your students better find images, create their own images, and enhance images for their projects in ways that display their understanding of a topic.
Novice: Explaining Ideas With Images
Learning goal:
I can use a combination of images to enhance others’ learning and understanding.
By the time students enter high school, they have consumed media in many multimedia formats including video games, television, and online streaming video. For this lesson, students will use that background knowledge to create sophisticated projects telling their own message through imagery. This lesson has students search for digital images and use them in projects to more clearly explain ideas so that readers better understand them. For example, when writing a report about an
