In a post elsewhere, I described working with colleagues in English who were preparing Y12/13 students for a forthcoming exam. They wanted to deliver a sequence of activities through our learning platform which is a SharePoint implementation. These are the five tasks which they wanted to deliver and my suggestions for possible ways in which this could be achieved:
- An introduction in which Q1 is stated with key phrases highlighted and explained in more detail using ‘balloons’ which pop out when hovering over the phrases.
Here we used a simple html page (Content Editor web part in SharePoint) to contain the introductory text with Q1. Each key phrase had a hyperlink attached to it which simply led back to the same page, but the ‘alt text’ provided the explanations of each of the phrases. An alternative way to do this might be to turn the text into an image, then create an image map with hotspots which pop-out the explanations of the text when hovering over. - The texts to be provided online so they could be read in turn and also to be ready to hand, whatever task the students were engaged in.
Here the texts were simply scanned (it was important to capture the original look and feel, rather than use an OCR tool to convert them to text), then uploaded to a Picture Library. This can be viewed as image thumbnails which can be clicked to open the texts full size. Importantly, this picture library can be surfaced on any of the other pages for the other tasks to allow provide the students with ready access to the texts. - Provide a means for students to choose a term by which the texts could be grouped (e.g. phonology, passive voice etc). To encourage a range of choices across the class, when a student chose a particular term, this was then to be disallowed to the rest of the class.
This was tricky and I settled for a second best by using the survey tool with a single multiple choice question. The allowed responses included approx. 15 suggestions for themes around which the texts could be grouped, but in addition, a free-response option was provided in case students wanted to provide their own theme. The results were visible at all times, so students could see which themes had already been chosen – in the instructions they were advised not to choose a theme which someone had already selected. - Provide a way in which each of the texts could be classified as either a good, less good or poor fit with their chosen term. This should be an interactive, graphical tool, similar to an interactive whiteboard.
A diagram had been provided by my colleagues of how they wanted this activity to work. I chose DabbleBoard as that seemed to provide the required functionality and provides an embed code which meant I could integrate it back into a SharePoint page in our platform (again using a Content Editor web part). It also allowed students to download a copy of their finished diagram as an image in case they needed to refer back to it. Despite instructions to the contrary, one student chose to ‘Save’ the DabbleBoard, which then meant their amendments became visible to all. Having a spare, fresh copy of the DabbleBoard prepared meant I could quickly swap a URL and the new one was immediately available. - Allow the students to write a paragraph each, justifying and discussing the grouping they chose. At this point they should also be able to refer to the mark scheme for clarification of the points they needed to home in on. In addition, students should also be able to comment on the choices and justifications of their peers.
A Discussion Board seemed to satisfy the needs here, allowing the students to create a post for their submission, then comment on each other’s posts using the Reply feature. Importantly, the visibility settings meant that initially it could be arranged so that they could only see (and edit) their own post, thereby not being able to crib from what others had written. When satisfied that responses were complete, the teacher could allow all posts to become visible with no more than a couple of clicks.
Given that you’re reading this edtech related blog, I guess you could have undertaken a similar process as I did, perhaps using different tools, perhaps arriving at more elegant solutions. But here’s the thing; what about the average teacher? Could they do that? Perhaps more importantly, do they need to?
Practically In the pICTure 