GRAVA: UNIT REDESIGN: REFLECTION 1

Unit Redesign: Reflection

Alison C. Grava

Introduction to Educational Technology

Loyola University: Montgomery County Cohort

Dr. Kelly Keane, Instructor

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The redesign that I completed on Things Fall Apart Pre-Reading broadened my

perspective as to the integration of technology. In previous years, my team and I have

had the traditional research conducted by the students by dividing the information among

6-8 groups and having them present the information using Ignite PowerPoint

presentations. While this was an effective way of sharing the information load, it took up

5-6 days of class time with additional time for the presentations. This was a way of

integrating technology; it was mostly substitution according to SAMR (Schrock, 2015).

Throughout the lessons that I created, I used many pieces of technology: Smart

Notebook, Senteo, Plickers, Padlet, Blendspace, Edmodo, and Piktochart. I feel I was

able to run the gamut of the SAMR Technology Integration Model.

I used the Smart Notebook program for three of the four lessons that I created.

For the first two lessons, I used the Smart Board aspect of the program in order to have

the students manipulate the grammar in order to help those with kinesthetic learning

strengths. This program allows the students to move the words and phrases around on the

board. While this can be done with sentence strips, it really is only a substitution

according to SAMR (Schrock, 2015), but when the pens, highlighters, and other tools are

implemented, it moves it into the augmentation level (Schrock, 2015) as it slightly move

it into a redesigned activity. The other piece of Smart Notebook is the Smart Response or

Senteo clickers. With the Senteos, questions can be loaded into the program and the

students fill in their responses in the clickers after signing in with their student

identification number. They receive immediate feedback as to their score, but the teacher

can share the results in the form of a pie chart for each question and conduct an
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intervention right away on weak responses. Under the SAMR model, this would be

augmentation (Schrock, 2015) since the clickers replace the standard Scantron sheets, but

takes it beyond that substitution level because on the immediate feedback. In the same

fashion, Plicker, as a low-tech alternative, provides the same process as the Senteos and

is augmentation (Schrock, 2015). This opportunity for immediate results and immediate

remediation can only mean students will benefit from this aspect of technological

integration.

The ability to discuss information helps students to expand their understanding of

a particular concept, but it is usually a hogs and logs situation, or those who take over

the discussion and those who coast by without contributing. Through the Padlet site, it

encourages the students who are timid to speak up can contribute without being cut off or

that judgement feeling that can be off-putting for those who may be shy. With Padlet, it

is augmentation (Schrock, 2015) with the possibility of modification as it does lead to

those who have not always felt that their voice could get past the louder member of a

class. Moreover, Blendspace is also an opportunity for students to lend their voice to the

discussion while completing the tiles within the assignment. The Blendspace I created

for these lessons provides substitution (Schrock, 2015) with the first assignment of a

written piece that asks for a prediction, but the way that the information is disseminated

for lessons two through four lends itself to augmentation (Schrock, 2015). The

assignment that goes with lesson three moves the SAMR level to modification (Schrock,

2015) as it shifts the product to a significant resign because of the PowerPoint or Google

Slides making the focus of the assignments on the information conveyed rather than the
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writing of a report. What I am most impressed with is the final assignment on

Blendspace, which implemented Piktocharts. The Piktocharts fit the redefinition level of

SAMR (Schrock, 2015) since it is a completely new product that would have never been

possible without the technology being implemented in the lesson. In order to have all of

these assignments turned in, I used Edmodo as a place to turn in assignments. For most

of its use, it is substitution (Schrock, 2015) according to SAMR, except when I used it as

a timed write. Although a timed-write can be done with paper, pencil, and a teacher

calling time, the timed write on Edmodo forces the students to practice typing for the new

assessment formats for PARCC as well as the shut off when the time runs out. This takes

it to the augmentation level of SAMR (Schrock, 2015). Whatever the technology used,

the students are benefitting from the experience and it has opened many avenues for my

teacher and their learning.

While I have always tried to integrate technology in the classroom, this redesign

allowed me to see how much technology engages the students with the information that is

necessary for them to grasp the novel concepts. I have found that when you give the

students a wider range of opportunities to express their learning, what they produce far

exceeds what I could have anticipated. They seem not only to be engaged throughout a

lesson, but are asking more thoughtful questions and are pushing their classmates to delve

deeper into the learning process.

When reviewing the lessons that I submitted for the redesign, I feel that the most

successful was the fourth lesson that required the students to view the TED Talk The

Danger of a Single Story for several reasons. Having the opportunity to collaborate with
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another student allowed the students to sift through the information presented over the

course of the 19-minute talk. When there is more than one person receiving the

information and having another person to flesh out the meaning of that information

allows for deeper insight into that information. Likewise, being able to work together to

create a completely new product with technology and a new format leads to a wider

variety of style and excitement. Especially when working with new program, it helps to

have another person to work through all of the new tools the program provides the

creator.

Considering the learning process of my students, it was important to allow them

to budget their own time. When I created the Blendspace, I wanted the students to take

ownership of the information that they were going through. I gave them guidelines for

what they needed to find in the information, but I allowed them to determine what they

felt was most important to them. In lesson two, the students married the information

from a video, article, and encyclopedia into their own predictions about the novel. This

placed the learning in their own hands. Through lesson four, the students were able to

collaborate about the TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story and work together to

create the Piktochart, which was a resource, the students had never worked with before

this lesson. This allowed the students to think critically about the argument that Adichie

makes and creatively share the connection between the information she represented

and their own world.

I believe the next step for me will be to take the resources that I have already

implemented on a rather surface level and delve deeper into the resources and tap into the

full potential of those resources. I think that it is important to vary the technologies that I
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use so that the students do not become bored with the resources. Equally, I would like to

help my colleagues to integrate more technology in order to expand the resources that I

can use in the classroom through others interpretations of the resources out there. I

believe that the Graphite site will really help me to tap into the deeper understanding of

the resources that I work with currently.

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Resources

Schrock, K. (2015, September 25). SAMR. Retrieved October 8, 2015, from

http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html