LU-5: Collaborative Meaningful Learning with Web-Based Technologies Individual Work

Heather Hinze
Fall 2017

Project URL: https://animalfakebook.weebly.com/

Intended users: gifted second grade students in the Orchard Farm gifted program, identified as high-ability
learners with IQs of 125+ and top 5%tile academics. These students are just beginning to learn how to use
google tools and how to conduct research.

Purpose: To develop research skills and technology skills in a way that makes research enjoyable,
collaborative, and motivating. This activity introduces the concepts of a web-search and photo collection, and
marks the first research project for most of the students, so the enjoyable purpose is significant, as it sets the
tone for future research endeavors.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this activity, students will be able to:
1. Find factual information and images using web searches
2. Download, save, and upload photos
3. Work collaboratively with peers to design and create piece of writing
4. Apply the literary device of anthropomorphism to a piece of writing

Assessment: Students will be assessed via an individual scoring rubrics that align to learning outcomes.

Great Job (4)* Needs Improvement (2) Unacceptable (0)

About Me Present and includes Present but missing Is missing

animal class animal class

Photos Photos of your animal, At least three photos, but Only one or two photos are
and all teammates not all photos are present present on the page
animals

Posts At least five posts At least three posts Two or fewer posts

Conversation Is present Is missing

Facts Posts teach about a total Posts teach some facts No facts are taught in the
of five or more facts posts

Anthropomorphism All posts sound like Some posts sound like Rarely does a post sound
humans talking to one humans like a human
another
*The number value assigned to this rubric is for the purpose of this assignment only; gifted class is not graded, but rather, offers constructive, qualitative feedback for
student growth, so these numbers were not utilized in actual implementation.

Collaborative Meaningful Learning

The learning is meaningful because it requires students to search for information, disseminate which
information is relevant for their purposes, create imaginary animal scenerios, and synthesize factual information
with fantastical situations to create an informative yet entertaining Fakebook page. This project is active in that
students direct their own learning through exploration of websites, and determine which information they most
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want to share with the world, it is intentional and goal-directed, as students are given learning objectives prior
to beginning the project, and all activities within the project speak directly to those objectives. The students
creations are authentic and allow for creative expression and individual interpretation, while also holding
students responsible for factual content, and the project is reflective when students have an opportunity to peer
review and receive feedback, then make modifications to their work.

The collaborative aspects include both digital collaboration and face to face collaboration. The piece of this
assignment comes from each teams shared document, in which they outline the interactions their animals will
have with one another. One teams planning page can be viewed here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V16-U_HYBVZHs3k03CHPkBx1KZPo6reTK1gRYCYWRvE/edit
Students are discussing each question, agreeing on elements to include, and typing a shared idea into the team
space. Students also collaborate while actually creating their Fakebook pages, by asking teammates to
comment on their animals initial post. In actual classroom practice, students will be able to trade devices to
add to one anothers Fakebook pages, or dictate responses. Students will also collaborate as they peer review
one anothers Fakebook pages and offer suggestions for improvement. It is also important to me that not all
aspects of the project are collaborative. The students research of animal facts is intentionally designed to be
individual work that they will later bring to the group collaborative piece.

Project Creation:

For this assignment we were challenged to do something completely new, and not something that we already
used in our classroom. I decided to use this project as an opportunity to make my animal research project
(typically done individually, as a typed document) a bit more motivating for students. Because this is the first
research project most of these students have done, I want it to be enjoyable, so they have an overall positive
impression of research. For this reason, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to incorporate Digital Didactical
Design Model to create collaborative meaningful learning.

I first examined my teaching goals, and I determined that my intended learning outcomes would remain
constant, although I added the anthropomorphic learner outcome as it was well suited to a pretend animal
social media page. The outcomes are outlined above. I designed the scoring rubric by reviewing my ILOs and
and creating a rubric to note what mastery of those ILOs would look like. I then designed my sample
Fakebook page, which demonstrated for students what an ideal page would look like once completed.

Next, I considered the web based technologies I could use to enhance this project. I decided to revisit a
website that I learned about suring a workshop this past summer: classtools.net. After browsing through
classtools.net, I immediately recognized how motivational a Fakebook page would be. Most young students do
not have Facebook accounts, but they are exceedingly familiar with Facebook. They see older siblings and
parents on Facebook all the time, and students are also posing for pictures and reading posts about themselves
on Facebook daily. My young students always ask me to post things that they are doing. Therefore, I
believed that creating a Fakebook page would be motivating for these young students, while also allowing them
to practice some much needed technology skills, namely acquiring photos, and conducting web search research.

Nest, the learning activities for this research project would be adjusted to incorporate technology and
collaboration. This assignment seemed like the perfect opportunity to blend an idea I had from months ago with
a lesson that was stale. I thought specifically of the social roles component of DDD, in that students are taking
charge of their own Fakebook page design, and allowed the creativity to shape their animals personalities as
they choose and flexibility in their own roles within their groups. By creating a website and docs that all linked
together, the entire project was very process-based.

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From there, I was ready to think about collaboration (interaction, social roles, and communication). Although
I wanted each student to be responsible for his or her own research, I wanted to allow students to collaborate
with one another to improve the overall quality of everyones work. I decided to put them in teams, then
realized that they could use the friend and enemy categories on the Fakebook page to create a fictional
dialogue between characters. I then decided to create a shared google doc that first required students to work
individually to gather data on their individual animals, then required students to work with teams to answer
some thought-provoking prompts, intended for students to collaborate with one another to create scenerios and
conversations between their animals. By creating make-believe animal interactions, they would be engaging in
real interactions with one another.

I was extremely excited to launch this newly improved project, but I had concerns about the amount of time
such a project would require. I was concerned that the additional collaboration piece would significantly
increase the amount of class time devoted to this project, without significantly increasing student mastery of
ILOs. I wanted to ensure the tradeoff was worth it, since I only see my students for 300 minutes per week,
and those minutes are very carefully optimized when I plan.

Implementation:

Student work (in progress) can be found at: https://animalfakebook.weebly.com/student-work.html

Because I only meet with my students once per week, I had a single session to conduct this activity, and
therefore knew we could not hope to finish the entire project. However, the students were extremely engaged in
the activities, and spent over four hours working on it. In truth, when given other opportunities within the class,
all twelve students asked to continue working on their Fakebook pages instead. Based on this information, I
would estimate that the project would take roughly 6 hours to complete for most gifted students. I also learned,
as evidenced by student choices, that this activity was highly motivating for students, and enjoyable. This was a
marked improvement from the old animal research project I did in years past.

In my first implementation of this project, I found that all of my ILOs were met. I feel very confident that
students are now proficient in conducting web searches for information and obtaining pictures. They all also
very easily grasped the concept of anthropomorphism. Only one student missed the mark on facts incorporation,
as his page contained none of the facts hed researched. I quick intervention by me allowed him to understand
his error, but he did not have time to make corrections. For quite a few students, the collaborative piece was
difficult, as I suspected it would be. While most worked with partners within the group, switching partners as
needed, three students continued to work independently during the collaborative piece, which frustrated their
teammates. For these students, I had to give a lot of prompting, Wait, I see you typing- but you didnt discuss
that with your team. Before you add to the team sheet, you need to share your idea and make sure they agree.
After about ten minutes, they started consulting their peers. The classroom became very noisy!

There were some unanticipated situations that were both favorable and unfavorable. Many students struggled to
save their Fakebook pages because they lacked the skills they needed to do so. In the future, I will ensure
students know their email addresses and passwords prior to beginning this activity. Yet there was also a
significant amount of unanticipated learning that I enjoyed watching, such as the creativity- and hilarity- of
students projects, their strong desire to view one anothers pages (allowing for additional peer editing), and the
rather in-depth conversation we had about what a conversation was.

Overall, Im pleased with the results of the project, and though it took a very long time to complete, I think the
time was worth the gains. Students are now well versed in several computer and research skills that they did
not previously have. Students worked very hard all day, and didnt want to quit working- so that feels very
successful to me.
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Peer Review Feedback:

I received some feedback from Rachel Thrun, and she had a lot of suggestions for improvement.

Rachels first and second comments:

1. Objectives. Students should know what the objectives/goals for this assignment are. I would add that to
the home page of your website. This will help them understand what they should be able to accomplish once this
task is completed. and 2. Who is the learning group? What grade? Subject?

My responsive action: In this case, no action to my work was needed, because I had included my objectives and
learner information on this document, and realized I had met these requirements. I did add this document to my
website, however, for further clarification.

Rachels third comment:

3. The collaboration in part three is a little unclear. Are they creating a Fakebook page together? Or an
individual page for each of their animals? The task asks them to collaborate, but I'm not sure how much
collaboration will take place if they are each making their own Fakebook page.
My responsive action: I was concerned to hear that the collaborative piece was unclear, because I felt that it
was obvious. This gave me excellent feedback that my collaborative piece was not nearly as transparent as Id
thought, so I added some additional wording to the Collaborative Meaningful Learning portion of this paper,
in an attempt to better explain the collaborative elements. I also clarified which elements were not intended to
be collaborative, as not all aspects are meant to be.
Rachels final comment:
4. I like the peer review part in part four. Make sure your rubric matches the criteria listed in part three. For
example, in part three you list that on the Fakebook page it needs to include an About section, but that's not
listed in the rubric. I would also be more specific in the rubric and criteria listed in part three about what the
conversations should be about and how long the posts to each other should be. I know you gave a same
Fakebook, but I would add in talking points for them to have as a model for when they are conversing with each
other. Maybe that can relate back to the template they filled out together prior to this part.

My responsive action: This was an excellent catch with the rubric inconsistency- I had completely missed this!
I made a correction to the rubric to include the missing about me portion. Regarding Rachels suggestions
that I define the length and topics of the conversations, I chose not to make changes to my project. A big part of
gifted education is allowing for creative expression, and by providing further modeling, I believe I would end
up with cookie cutter projects. It is a rule of thumb in gifted education that less is more with providing
examples, as gifted learners typically need very few examples and become bored or annoyed when activities are
over-explained to them. This is one way that gifted education differs significantly from regular classroom
education.

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