The NJ Technology Standards provide benchmarks for what skills students should be able to demonstrate at certain grade levels. Reflecting on the technology standard that dictates the outline for educational technology, I am going to discuss what 8th graders should be able to accomplish and provide certain learning activities in a math class that can help accomplish those goals.
The standard on educational technology provides six "sub-standards" that outline how students should use "digital tools" to research, evaluate, manage, and create information in order to solve problems and have the ability to communicate knowledge acquired by these means. Technology operations and concepts explains how to operate and use digital tools. By the end of eighth grade, students should be able to create documents on a word processor, create presentations on Microsoft Powerpoint, and create and calculate data and produce graphs on spreadsheets. A learning activity to demonstrate this ability could be spending class time in a computer lab creating graphs on spreadsheets. Students can learn how to switch from pie charts, to bar graphs, and to line graphs without creating a new table of data.
Under the standard for creativity and innovation, eight grade students should be able to publish information about a local or global issue on a collaborative web-based service. A great classroom activity is for the instructor to create a classroom blog and have students post graphs, charts, and videos from statistics that were created by various "classroom polls". For example, the instructor can poll the class on future jobs they might consider when they grow up, and create data based on that. Students will then be able to evaluate and organize that data, and post their findings on the blog. This will demonstrate their ability to upload information from spreadsheets and add links to the blog.
The communication and collaboration standard states that eight graders should be able to participate in a global online learning community to identify and understand global problems from a different perspective and work together to identify a potential solution. Hosting a school-wide or grade- wide model UN, would be a hands on way of reaching that goal. Based on the country given, a group of students can collaborate with students from that given country through blogs and wikis.
Digital citizenship is a very important standard, because it outlines appropriate online behavior, summarized the "fair use and Creative Commons guidelines", and explains how controversial information found online can be biased based on the author's views. Having a 10-15 minute mini lesson on these topics before the computer lab, is a good learning activity to accomplish this at an eighth grade level. Extra emphasis should be placed on how online bullying will not be tolerated and explain the consequences of such behavior.
Under the research and information literacy standard, eighth grade students should be able to gather and analyze data to produce a solution. A learning activity for this would be having students create two different line graphs on a spreadsheet to show results in findings on unemployment rates in the US from 1991-2001 and 2002-present. The students will place these two lines on the same graph, and then find the slope of each line to integrate the pre-algebra lesson on finding the slope of the line. Students then can come to a conclusion on unemployment rates and produce an educated hypothesis of where it might be ten years into the future.
The critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making standard states that eight grade students should have the ability to use an "electronic authoring tool" to work with students around the world to evaluate and summarize perspectives of other cultures about events. This can tie into the model UN learning activity I mentioned previously. To give students exposure to creating books and sites through an electronic authoring tool, a learning activity could be to have students research the history of a math topic, such as the Pythagorean theorem, and create an ebook on their findings. Two electronic authoring tools I briefly research were "iBook" and "Thinglink". Setting up a blog or wiki with another country that is doing the same project will allow for student collaboration.
Sources:
NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards: Technology
NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards
Looking back to when we were in elementary and middle school, I think the standards for technology use for students have raised drastically. This is very exciting thing to see in schools because school systems are trying to keep up with the quickly advancing technology in everyday lives outside of the classroom. The learning activity that you created would be very useful to kids because it would sharpen their skills with researching history of unemployment while using math to show it. Knowing what the unemployment rates are, they can critically think and come up with a hypothesis of what will happen in the future. I think critical thinking is something that kids need to do more in the classroom and technology can create more of that.
ReplyDeleteVery comprehensive. You have great ideas. The challenge will be with your planning - identify the specific skills students will need to learn - that is the starting point. You cannot assume that students know the technology.
ReplyDeleteCasey is right as i was reading what the standards are today i was wondering what they were when i was in school. I learned computer programs when i was a sophomore in high school, they taught us word, excel, etc. And now kids in eight grade should know how to use except and even the mathematical functions, what a change in standards. This assignment is a good way to be prepared for what's to come in their future.
ReplyDeleteI like your suggestion of establishing a model UN. This would incorporate everything from global awareness to networking and communication. Also the ebooks are an interesting idea as well. It's funny how the days of actually "handing in" your assignment seem to be long gone.
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