Learning Disease Epidemic: Textbook Dependency

Many students suffer from the academic disease of textbook dependency.  You can help cure your students of this affliction.

Symptoms:
Students
Are always looking in the textbook for answers
Never thinking for themselves
Cannot make connections between two concepts found in different chapters
When told to close the textbook and do an activity on their own,  they  show a wide range of emotions from a dazed look to high anxiety plus physical signs of mild to severe panic.

Sample cases:
1) A Modern Language  teacher asks his students to  find an Internet picture of a street scene in a country such as Ecuador  either on their Smartphone / tablet or print out the picture and bring to class.  When the teacher asks the students to talk about that street picture which is not in their textbook but based on the vocabulary in the chapter which they have reviewed many times, students show visible signs of agitation. Eyes are wide open as their mouths may be.  Visible nervousness. Inability to speak.  Students feel pressured. Pulse becomes higher.

2) When a Social Studies  teacher asks his/her  students to compare the Occupy movement to the American Revolution, students quickly look in the textbook’s  index and are shocked not to find Occupy listed. They  nervously flip through  the textbook pages.  Mild panic sets in. They cry out in emotional trauma, “It’s not in the book. What do we do?” Faces become red or pale, sweat may appear.

One cure:
Have the  students  do at least one activity beyond the textbook on a weekly or even better, on a daily  basis.  Scaffold their transition from the textbook to applying  the critical  information/concept.

The teacher can relate the learning goal to the real world.  He/She can  start small.

Example 1: In Modern Languages, before students talk about a street scene,  the teacher has them find either on their Smartphone/ tablet or print out a street scene picture and bring to class. The students identify the key street vocabulary from the book in the actual picture; they point to the object/person and say the word.  They review any words with which they had difficulty.  Then, without using their textbook or any review sheets, the students use the vocabulary in basic sentences to talk about the picture such as “There are many pedestrians in the street.  The cars stop at the stop light.”

Example 2: In Social Studies the teacher has students use their Smartphone/tablets or their home computers to find out what the Occupy movement is and what the movement’s goals are.  The teacher may start them off with some categories to explore such as purpose, method, etc.  The teacher has them create a similarity-contrast chart for Occupy and the American Revolution. Students use the chart as a basis for their critical thinking.

How do you move  your students from their dependency on the textbook to their  independent thinking?

I have many Spanish spontaneous speaking activities at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

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Education Leaders Promote Higher Users of Mobile Learning Technology

Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents for Curriculum, and Principals as  the educational leaders for their district and building  have the responsibility of  helping students to succeed.  One way to accomplish this goal is to assist teachers through showing them how to use  technology at higher levels to meet learning goals.  A current hot technology centers on mobile learning through tablets and Smartphones.

These educational leaders may enlist the assistance of the Director of Technology or a technology specialist to show teachers how to quickly climb the ladder of learning with mobile learning.  Unfortunately, when people introduce  a new technology, they  generally tend to show  its lower levels of learning such as for drill (memorization) or comprehension.  Those people demonstrating tablets or Smartphones will not focus on using these mobile learning devices to access factual knowledge such as through Chacha or Google.  Instead, they will show how students can create a Google Form survey and then send  it to collect much data about any topic .  For example, one group of  Health students create a healthy food checklist of how many servings  (0, ,1 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) of vegetables, fruits, meat, etc. people actually eat each day and an age range of the person such as 5-9, 10-15, 16-20, …  The students send it out to their friends, etc. and within 48 hours they have over 400 responses which Google Forms automatically tabulates for them. They prepare a mini-presentation about the results.

The leaders will show teachers how their students can use Google images to contrast visual information important to subject area learning.  As an illustration,  students in groups of two may search for Geography and each group has a  different country in South America such as Geography Venezuela, Geography Colombia, etc.  Students can find images that show ocean, rivers,  mountains, plains, etc.  The students do human graphs of geography.  The student group from Venezuela picks a geographic feature  from its country such as mountains. All the groups that have mountains in their country raise their hands.  Then, the next country Colombia picks a different geography such as ocean. Again, all the groups that have ocean raise their hands.  This continues until all the geographic features have been covered. The teacher keeps a chart on the board with the number of countries having the same feature. Students discuss the chart and its implication.

What high level uses of mobile learning will your teachers use?

I have many Spanish spontaneous speaking activities at Teacherspayteachers:  http://bit.ly/tpthtuttle

My formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

Replace Glogster Posters with Free QR code Poster

Many educators like Glogster since students can put in links to videos, music, and pictures instead of just text.  As a  free alternative, students can create a QR poster as their learning  poster.  Their poster can be a regular one page word processing document.

The students type in their project title and their name.  They can use their favorite font, font size and color.  They can even change the background color (Format ->page -> background in Open Office).

They decide on the content for their poster.  If they are doing a country report, they may have links showing a map of where the country is, its geography, and its  major cities. The students can shorten the links using bit.ly and then use a QR generator such as Create QR code  to put all of these links in the same QR code. They can select a small 100 x 100 or 150 x 150 so they can put numerous QR codes on the same page. They can label this QR as country info and list under it  location, geography, and cities.  The student can include a picture in under the  Creative Commons license.   They can find three news articles talking about some of the current issues in the country, shorten these links and put them in one QR code. They may label this QR  as current events.  They may  want to list the actual  events under that QR code.  They can find some songs and art of the country, shorten these links and put in another QR code which they label as Arts and again indicate the exact topics in that QR code. They repeat this process for any other topics such as economy, neighbors, tourist sites both for people within the country and  for visitors, or literacy

They can word process their evaluation of  how the country has changed (for the better or for the worse)  in the last fifty years and  what they think will happen to this country in the next fifty  years.

They can email it to you, post it on a class wiki, physically post it in a country gallery in the room, and email it to parents and relatives.  If you have a country gallery in your room, students groups can compare and contrast the countries within a continent and then compare and contrast countries among the continents.

Which type posters will your students use to show their learning?

Tuttle’s formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

Why Cell Phones and Smart Phones Differ from Previous School Technology

Cell phones and Smart phones differ drastically from previous school technology.

1.  The students know how to use these technologies. They use them daily. They text, they take pictures and send the pictures, they take videos/movies and send them, and they access the web. Teachers do not have to spend class time in teaching students the new technologies. Even when teachers “teach” a new program such as Yodio, the students already know how to take pictures, upload them to a program, know how to record their voice and how to send their voice files. Teachers save all the time they used to spend in teaching how to use a new technology which often was many days.

2.  The students always have these mobile learning devices with them. They may forget their notebook. They may leave their textbook home. They may be without a pen. Their dog may have eaten some critical papers. They may have lost their password onto the class website. However, they will have their cell phone or Smart phone with them.

3. The students can use their own mobile learning devices. The school does not have to provide it except possibly for a few disadvantaged students. Teachers can do lessons regardless of the various types of mobile learning devices (the various companies that produce the phones) and of the various carriers. The school does need to provide access to the school’s wireless.
4. With QR codes, students can be a click away from learning resources. Students do not have to turn on a computer, log in, and then type in a web address. Many students have trouble typing in a web address even when the web address has been shortened. The student instantly go from scanning in the QR code to clicking on the link(s). Class learning time is saved.
5. Students can easily be producers of information. They can take pictures to document environmental concerns in their community and make those into a multimedia story such as with Yodio. They can audio record the interview of various people as they talk about the importance of math in their careers. The students can make a movie about the various healthy habits of their family and friends for their physical education course. They have these tools on their phones and they know how to use the tools.

6.  Due to the richness of  web resources, teachers can move students to higher level thinking. Students can easily contrast two images of the same incident for an English class. They can evaluate the bias in reporting the same story as they read newspapers from around the globe in a Social Studies class.

7.   Students can be global in their learning.  Texting can be done  internationally. Students can text a science survey about using paper in school  to their friends in other states and other countries.  Elementary students can text math word problems  which students in other countries have written in terms of things in their country. For example, a school in Costa Rica migh offer this problem, “If you are really hungry and you buy a “casado” (rice and meat dish) for 2,500 colones and a fruit drink for 400 colones, how much do you spend? What is that in USA money?

Cell and SmartPhones: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

3 hour workshop

Classroom examples/lesson learned for each

Find Reference Info

Google 466453

Chacha 242-242
Apps – Dictionary, Thesaurus, …

Internet

Capture Information
Photo

Voice

Video

Communicate through texting

Celly

Twitter

Wiffiti

Communicate through media

Flickr slideshow

Yodio

Geo-tours with QR codes and GPS

Learn Globally

BBC
Collaboration

Do Higher Level Thinking

Contrast and Compare
Synthesize from various sources

Learn content

Interactive

Varied/differentiated media sources

Assess learning

Google Forms / Polleverywhere / Spreadsheet

Use QR Codes

Hints: 1 Name 2 Multiple 3 Link 4 See

QR code generator: http://createqrcode.appspot.com/

Tuttle’s formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook