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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