Using Technology to Enhance Conceptual Understanding of Elementary Students

This past week I decided to take literature circle discussions and book clubs to a new level.  My students typically lead their own discussions in a face-to-face format.  This week, I decided to try out the iChat tool on our computers in the school's lab.  I had some hesitation when I first thought of doing this.  I am unable to set up groups at school (a feature that is blocked by our tech. department).  I was unsure of my young students' abilities to manage multiple conversations at once.  I decided to start by giving each student two additional group members.  They would have to individually select each member of their group and and carry on two separate conversations using the questions being projected on the screen as a guide for their discussions.  I was amazed at the ability of these novice typers to manage and keep up with both discussions simultaneously.  Not only this, but they also discovered during the second iChat session both the video camera tool and the screen sharing ability of the program.  Talk about motivation!  The expectation for these students to maintain focus on the discussion questions was clear.  They didn't dare vary from this in fear that they would loose the opportunity to participate in these chat groups.  I didn't even have to remind them once to stay on task.  Not only this, but the detail that I saw in these discussions was at least as good, if not better, than the details that they say in their face-to-face discussions.  They had to think of ways to succinctly verbalize, through typing, the thoughts that they wanted to get across to the other members of their group.  They have limited typing skills so it is important to them that they say what they need to say succinctly, even though most do not know what the meaning of the word "succinctly" is.  The power of this chat feature is huge!  We will be using this in our classroom as often as we can get into the lab for these last few weeks of school.  I also plan to implement the use of this tool early on next school year!

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In 2004, when I temporarily left teaching to stay at home with my new daughter, I hadn't yet heard of wikis, blogs, digital storybooks, or podcasts.  I'm sure that they were around but they weren't yet widely used in my neck of the woods, certainly not in elementary school.  I have had the most exciting school year introducing my third graders to many of these web 2.0 publishing tools.  Talk about motivation, it is almost effortless on my part to stir up the motivation and stamina needed for students to successfully complete the learning required to complete such projects.  I'm not even sure that my students are always aware of the learning that is taking place, they are much more focused on the products that they are developing.  As is the case in many schools, ours is a bit technologically limited.  The tools that we do have access to are not always able to be used to their full potential (we could use a lot more bandwidth, for example, as it takes about 15 minutes to log into the get started with our class blog).  Even so, my students find within them the patience needed to get through each task that I've assigned them when they get to create products using these technological tools.  The following posts in this thread will focus on specific uses of different web 2.0 tools and how these have enhanced conceptual understanding of young learners.  Please share your experiences as well so that we may take away ideas and strategies for use in our own classrooms.  Happy blogging!

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Over the past two years I've worked on transforming my classroom into a much more student-centered environment.  I've always believed strongly in a constructivist approach to teaching and learning, but didn't necessarily think that students needed to do very much talking to each other as a part of the knowledge acquisition process.  I used to think that students who were quiet were able to concentrate better and thus learn more.  Not to mention the pressure that I felt at any minute to appear to have an engaged and well-controlled classroom.  I realize now that an engaged and well-controlled environment can be created with talkative students, and that this talking is useful and beneficial to the learning process.  My own observations over the past five years, along with the extensive reading that I have engaged in about how students learn and acquire knowledge and understanding, have led me change the ways that I structure learning opportunities for my students.  I have discovered the power of carefully focused opportunities for student talk that is monitored by the teacher.  These opportunities can be much more powerful than any words that I may come up with to describe the content within the learning goals.  I will continue to make postings to this thread detailing examples of the power that I've found in student talk and how this strategy has led to increased conceptual understanding among my third graders.  I encourage you to share you own thoughts, ideas, and discoveries related to this post in hopes that we can help each other to add effective approaches to our own teaching practice.

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