Last week I was asked to create a lesson plan using my Maker Kit (MakeyMakey) that would engage students in creative learning. I chose to have my students work together to create an interactive musical room as a version of an ice-breaker / team-building task. I did not place many guidelines on the assignment, because I wanted students to be free to create whatever they wanted. You can click on my lesson plan to view it (with changes from last week in purple) here –> Weinlander MakeyMakey Sample Lesson Plan.
This week I watched a TED talk about the digital divide between educators who use new technology to replace old techniques and educators who use new technology to do things that couldn’t be done before. Richard Culatta spoke about three main challenges schools are faced with currently – treating all learners the same, holding the schedule constant, and performance data being shared too late to be helpful. These challenges resonated with me greatly. It’s actually one of the main reasons why I love working at my current job as an online Title 1 teacher at Michigan Connections Academy. Students are assigned a certain number of lessons each day to evenly distribute their course throughout the semester. However there are no hard deadlines other than the end of the semester. Students therefore can spend 15 minutes or 4 hours on a single lesson, however long it takes them to understand. They can work on school 5 days a week for 6.5 hours, or split their time another way. At the end of each lesson 3-7 multiple choice questions are asked to see if students understand the material. These do not affect their grade, and instead are to be used to direct future learning and gaps in knowledge. I was pretty convinced already at this point, but I did more research to see if personalized learning, collaborative problem-solving, and immediate feedback were the direction education should be taking (Cullatta, 2014). As I searched, I had my original lesson plan in mind. Yes, I had allowed students to work at their own pace, collaborate, and problem-solve, but I knew I could do better. I wanted to add an option of solving a problem I had given them, not just problems that they encountered along the way. Problem-based learning is a popular method of teaching in which students are given challenging and relevant problems to solve in a small group. “This approach is often used to increase learner interactions by working together collaboratively. Teams determine the needs, and work through the steps to solve the problem.” (Holland and Holland; 2014) Frequently that is how problems outside of the classroom will arrive – without direction. I hope to teach my students how to handle that in any way that I can.
I’ve updated my lesson plan to include some problems for students to think about, knowing that I could be interacting with students from Kindergarten to High School. A lot of these are open-ended questions to get the group thinking and discussing together. I’m planning on writing these on cards and having them placed in a common location for students to grab when they need. This way if the group feels that they are “stuck” or need a challenge before I recognize it then they can help themselves. Holland and Holland also talk about the benefits of active hands-on learning since students “need to hear it, touch it, see it, talk it over, grapple with it, confront it, question it, laugh about it, experience it, and reflect on it in a structured format if learning is to have any meaning and permanence” (Holland and Holland; 2014) I believe that with my added task after our four days together and the “problem cards” I have extended the learning experience for my students. While thinking through this lesson I was concerned about classroom management. I work online, students and teachers are not used to interacting in person as a whole group. Using a MakeyMakey after state testing will be a different experience than many are used to. Plus, this is a lesson where students are supposed to get noisy, move around, work together, talk, rip things, build things, move things, laugh, etc. However the focus still needs to be on the task of building a musical room. While I was reading an article about motivation with games I checked myself against the three requirements of motivation from the self-determination theory: “autonomy, competence, and relatedness” (Eseryel, Law, Ifenthaler, Xun, & Miller; 2014). Students were given a lot of autonomy in this lesson; they decided what they made with whatever materials they could. Students would be gaining competence each hour and each day because of the ease of use of the MakeyMakey. This technology is weird to use at first, but it gets easier. Students will gain ability relatively quickly while working in their group and the MakeyMakey. Lastly students will have relatedness because they are all working together for a common goal using something that most of them (if not all) have never seen before. There is a straight forward goal of making a room come alive by just touching it, but they get to decide all the details to get there. With these three main things ‘checked off’ I think that classroom management will be stress-free since students will be motivated and engaged. The main concern I have is students waiting for the MakeyMakey. I think I can get at least one more kit before I put this plan into action however. 🙂
- Culatta, R. (2014, July 14). Reimagining Learning: Richard Culatta at TEDxBeaconStreet. [Video File]TEDxTalks. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z0uAuonMXrg July 17 2014
- Eseryel, D., Law, V., Ifenthaler, D., Xun, G. & Miller, R. (2014). An Investigation of the Interrelationships between Movidation, Engagement, and Complex Problem Solving in Game-based Learning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 17(1), 42 – 53. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=db215c29-f1cd-4d15-b463-aa1128c74f6a%40sessionmgr114&vid=2&hid=112 July 17 2014 (14364522)
- Holland, J. & Holland, J. (2014). Implications of Shifting Technology in Education. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning 58(3), 16-25. Retrieved from https://web-b-ebscohost-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=c7893362-5816-4730-94af-ff2ed0cf3ecf%40sessionmgr114&hid=124&bdata=JnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=eft&AN=95712398 July 17 2014 (87563894)
- Kathyschrock (2009). Teaching. Retrieved July 17, 2014 from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kathyschrock/3548570278/
- Shannon (2012). Practice Makes Progress. Retrieved July 17, 2014 from http://www.technologyrocksseriously.com/2012/09/sayings-posters-quotes-oh-my-part-7.html