More Fuller Reflection

 

collaboration and timeline

 

Our timeline was short due to having to start over and jump in quickly.  Mrs. Bewley and I both would love to do this again next year with more lead time and more enactment time.

 

student engagement and response

 

At the beginning our students all seemed interested and excited to collaborate.  They all seemed to enjoy our Skype sessions and the "meeting new people" aspect.  Even with the challenges of technology and the timeline most students wrote that they thought the project was useful to them in their education.  They also seemed to enjoy sharing their mandala art, commenting, and receiving feedback.  Most students were able to define a mandala, compare the experience of creating mandalas in traditional and digital media, and reflect upon their experiences with Marqueed, Skype, and Mural.ly.  

 

Students at Ionia were able to reflect upon using Google Docs and Drive, Mural.ly, and Marqueed.  Students at Wilson had a more difficult time accessing Mural.ly and Google Docs and Drive--the latter because of the closed system that protects them the possibility of harm from the outside--if I am understanding it correctly.  

 

My more experienced/advanced Ionia students are used to using Google Docs and Drive and my website to retrieve and submit documents and other assignment related materials. My advanced students have also used Mural.ly before to collaborate across classrooms within Ionia visual arts classes. They collaborated on a senior ceramic totem project earlier this year.  Most of my younger and less experienced students had never used Google Docs and Drive or Mural.ly or Marqueed before.  Though we are used to a BYOD policy at our school, we all know that the policy doesn't eliminate challenges related to working with technology.  Our school computers are ancient, and some students don't have personal devices or even a camera of their own.  

 

Most of the design, interaction, and decision-making with regard to tools was done by the teachers.  However, I am excited to report that one tenth grade student, Kyona H from Ionia, initiated a plan for students to get to know each other better beyond what they were doing in their collaborative work through our classrooms.  She wanted to develop relationships via social media.  Kyona wanted to use Instagram as the vehicle for students to pursue relationships on their own.  We wanted to respect the privacy and policies at Wilson Central, so we asked Mrs. Bewley what she thought of the idea.  She asked administrators at her school what they thought about it. Mrs. Bewley gave us the green light. Students shared their Instagram identities as a student-led extension of our project.  

 

All students participated in question responses, formative and final assessment.  

 

In future enactments I will explore further how students can take the lead in shaping the enactment and projects.  

 

teacher engagement and leadership

 

Mrs. Bewley was a pleasure to work with! Luckily, she has a sense of humor--and a sense of adventure!  Mrs. Bewley is a very busy teacher who made the time to do this work together.  I am very fortunate to have been able to work with her and can't wait to do it again!

 

We knew we had a short timeline and we had to create a visual art assignment as the vehicle for the use of the collaboration software to be used across the miles.  We knew we would encounter challenges related to technology as neither of us had worked across the miles to make the rules, restrictions, equipment, and even the weather! work for what we wanted to do with our students.  

 

Mrs. Bewley did a great job of troubleshooting and working around the issues caused by the lack of allotted space on Marqueed. Neither of us had worked with Marqueed before.  I had a little trouble getting it through my head that Marqueed only accepted image files.  We tried limiting files sizes, but even that did not allow us to use the site for our entire enactment.

 

Mrs. Bewley knew that she could upload the images for her students to her Weebly site in order to help us complete the enactment in the time we had.

 

As I stated above, most of the interaction design and decision-making about our collaboration was done by Mrs. Bewley and me.  Mrs. Bewley and I have both expressed that we want to do this again next year.  I hope to make student-initiated aspects of a future collaboration take a bigger role.  With time to plan I know Mrs. Bewley and I can make an even more exciting and engaging collaboration project for our students.

 

future plans based on what I've learned 

 

I had fun and learned a lot by doing the enactment with my students and Mrs. Bewley and her students at Wilson Central.  I am excited about doing more collaborative work across classrooms.  

 

I've learned:

 

• time zones are important.  trying to work with someone who is 6 or 12 hours ahead or behind my time zone makes it very difficult to communicate.

• respect for culture is important.  

• what works in one classroom may not in another even if both have Internet and computers.

• enactment takes lots of time, patience, and a sense of and enthusiasm for adventure from all participants.

• there are a lot more possibilities than obstacles if we are open to them.

• sometimes we are at the height of what is possible with technology in the classroom and we still find that the use of good ol' paper and pencil work best in some instances.

 

future plans:

• design enactments across classrooms through the use of collaboration software so that students can take more of the lead in designing activities and questions.

• I hope students will come to me with great ideas about how we can make our enactments better and have more fun with them.

• extend the timeline to allow for more planning.

• develop excellent extensions to learning beyond the enactment period.

• think about sustainability and how we could include service learning.

• think about ways to gamify learning experiences.

• develop a resource for other educators and students based on our project.