Creative Tools in the English Classroom

As an elder millennial, I grew up around technology. I had teachers incorporate it very well, I had teachers use it as a crutch, and I had teachers refuse to use any non-mandated technology. Shifting from learner to educator, I was dismayed but not surprised to work with educators in a similar pattern. Tech use only increased, and yet many teachers seem almost proud to shun technology in the classroom. Thankfully, I think the Luddites are slowly coming around (or retiring), and just in time. Educational apps are a huge market, and there are so many apps and websites designed to creatively engage students in authentic learning.  

This week, I dove into creative tools-anything that allows a student to create or produce. A quick Google search brought back over a hundred million sites, and it was fun to look through lists and narrow down a few I thought would work best in the high school ELA classroom. 

Creative Apps

The first app I looked at is Mindomo. As an English teacher, I am forever trying to persuade my students to prewrite. For some reason, adolescents don’t want to take the time to write, you know, before they write. However, I have found that letting them fill out graphic organizers seems to take the sting out of drafting. 

A concept map (or graphic organizer) is a pictorial representation of ideas, especially useful in getting students to grasp abstract connections. Research dates back to at least 1989 regarding the numerous benefits of concept mapping including encouraging a group to stay on task; allowing a student-developed framework entirely in the language of the participants; showing major ideas and their interrelationships; and even improving a groups cohesiveness and morale1. Wanting to find a concept mapping website or app that would work in my 1:1 classroom, I found Mindomo. 

Pros:

Cross-platform mind mapping app. Using it on my Android phone was surprisingly painless. Single sign-on so users can use their Google login. Dozens of templates from essay planning to goal setting. Built in collaboration. Free account limits you to three mind maps.

 Cons:

On the downside, sharing mind maps between devices was clunky, requiring me to access my downloaded files instead of just opening in the app when selected. Teacher edition starts at just $3/month and offers perks like LMS integration and unlimited mind maps.

iMovie

I am an Android user, but I borrowed an iPad to play around with iMovie. A popular idea is having students use iMovie to record book trailers over their reading. I like creative options for discussing reading, but many creative options for book presentations are all flash, no substance, so book trailers sound intriguing. 

Pros:

Even without being an Apple user, iMovie was dead simple to use. My 14-year-old was able to make a 30-second book trailer in less than an hour. The trailer templates that came with the app were engaging, and I could see students having a lot of fun with it. The trailer templates especially made polished, professional-looking videos. 

Cons:

It’s only for Apple. Our school has an iPad cart, but that’s kind of a hassle. I couldn’t see a way for students to easily collaborate, even across Apple devices, so they would have to share a device. There was some difficulty in getting pictures to upload, and the only otion we found to share was via Youtube which my school does not allow.

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a new-to-me tech tool. My school introduced it in the fall, but I didn’t make time for it until now. This tool allows the user to create videos, infographics, social media posts, almost any visual imaginable. It’s an aesthetically pleasing website, and I appreciate the easy to navigate tools. This is the tool I’d like to further explore. 

 

Pros:

It’s easy to use. Free for educators. It includes tons of templates. It also has already developed lesson plans to help teachers incorporate it in class. Kids can log in with their Google credentials. Designed with Chromebooks in mind.  

Cons:

I don’t see any immediate downsides. I emailed a friend who used this tool extensively last year. She had one issue where a student deleted his entire graphic and could not get it back, but I think that’s a risk with a lot of apps/tools.

Adobe Spark 

Adobe Spark is very intuitive. There are easy to follow video tutorials, extensive FAQs, but even skipping those, the website makes it very easy to create. The plus button allows you to add, each option is labeled with words and icons, and the site is streamlined. I feel confident the majority of students familiar with cell phone apps or basic web usage will be able to easily navigate the site.

One way I would like to use Adobe Spark next year is with getting-to-know-you presentations. One standard I address is to “make strategic choices in a text to address a rhetorical situation.” The rhetorical situation is easy to define and hard to explain; introductions are a low stakes way to begin analysis. Furthermore, as a constructivist, introductions begin the student-teacher relationship that will guide our year together. 

Adobe Spark will allow the student to create beautiful introductions. The rhetorical situation requires students to consider their audience (in this case, their peers and teacher) and speaker (what information about themselves do they need to impart) in order to establish their message (the values are they communicating). Adobe Spark offers many templates, so students can choose to do this assignment as a video, an infographic, or a post. They can add sound, text, or photos. Adobe Spark is as easy to use as Canva or Google Slides, but I find the layout much less overwhelming and more streamlined. I think the affordances and ease of use will help students focus on the task without getting bogged down in the creative side.

Introducing the rhetorical situation can be done on paper or with a variety of other tools, so this is really just an augmentation of a traditional task. To bump it up to redefinition, I would like to have students post their introductions on their blog/website and invite other students to analyze their rhetoric. Adobe Spark makes it easy to create beautiful presentations, and adding an authentic audience to their work will also address speaking and listening skills.

Conclusion

When I first started teaching, my school in Texas was moving to iPads and it was a Very Big Deal for my Title One school in 2007. Many teachers in my building eschewed the technology completely or used it as a glorified word processor. One English teacher even wrote a grant to buy Bluetooth keyboards and mice. To be clear, her students did not request or need a keyboard, but she couldn’t imagine comfortably using an iPad to accomplish what she used a computer for, namely web searching and word processing. 

As an Android user, I was very trepidatious because of the unfamiliarity of everything Apple, but I knew my students deserved creative tools in my classroom. I think most teachers would agree that engaged students learn more, so why wouldn’t I use everything at my disposal to foster student engagement? My comfort should not take precedence over learning. My classroom is not about ME. My class is about student learning.

Furthermore, I think nearly every student benefits from creative applications. While I still require my students to take handwritten notes, I still use board games in class, I still throw out a flashcard or two, I also realize my students have pocket computers with computing power almost unimaginable 50 years ago. Content should always be the focus in our classrooms, but there is no reason to only use teaching methods from 25, 35, 50 years ago when there are so many engaging ways to teach the same content. 

Forbes reported that employers seek traits such as working well on a team, thinking independently, being a problem solver, and being happy to learn new things². Creative tools foster all of those traits, and I owe it to my students to incorporate them into my classroom.

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Sources:

1: Trochim, W. M. (1989). An introduction to concept mapping for planning and evaluation. Evaluation and program planning, 12(1), 1-16.

2: Ryan, Liz. (2016, Mar 2). 12 Qualities Employers Look For When They're Hiring. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/03/02/12-qualities-employers-look-for-when-theyre-hiring/#1451d8652c24

The Affordances of ePortfolios

As a learner, I remember very few essays I've written, and I remember even fewer quizzes and tests I ever took. There are some standouts: a big paper I wrote over Chaucer, the rocks and minerals test I took in geology, an especially horrific test that had me matching poets and first lines of 75 plus poems. But by and large, from 18 years of education, I remember a small percent of the assignments that made up said education. Certainly my education is worth more than the sum of its parts, and I retain the skills I gained as a reader and writer, but when I think of how much time I spent making flashcards, reviewing, and completing assignments, I can't help but think it could have been done in a more meaningful way. 

As I looked through portfolios this week, I remember different semesters of college where I would have to collect work, but there was never an overarching purpose. It felt like each teacher was going rogue. Although I found value in the portfolio assignments, because they were only done intermittently, they never really achieved what I would think of as the full goal of portfolios.

Defining Portfolios

Loyola University defines an ePortfolio as 

a digital collection of work over time that showcases skills, abilities, values, experiences, and competencies through a broad range of evidence-based learning. An ePortfolio may include a variety of artifacts - or relevant documents and media files - that provide a holistic representation of who you are, personally, professionally, and academically.

According to this definition, a teacher could use many different assignments as a type of portfolio. I think of giving my students journal prompts throughout the semester or having them write a beginning, middle, and end of the year assessment. But to me, the last part of the definition is most important: a holistic representation of who you are personally, professionally, and academically. Haphazardly assigned writing prompts or the portfolios I completed as an undergrad do not fulfill this purpose. They were all pieces and parts, but never came together as that holistic view of me as a learner or as an educator.

Affordances of ePortfolios

Last week, I discussed blogs and asserted that any student familiar with internet access and a passing familiarity with word processing software can maintain and update a blog. EPortfolios can be nearly that simple or can be built from scratch including the coding to create the web page. With websites like Wix and Weebly, the affordances of ePortfolios make it a great tool for student learning.

Wix and Weebly have drag and drop tools that allow students to easily customize their website, and they also have a myriad of editable templates. One potential drawback to these websites is that they are ad-driven, and to remove the banner requires payment. Additionally, some school districts may block them as social media.

Another great option is Google Sites, free with any Google account. If you go this route, Google also provides a gallery of templates to begin, including a portfolio option. An embedded tour guides the creator in adding elements and eventually publishing the site.

Wikis are another option for portfolios. One main way Wikis differ from blogs is that they allow groups to maintain the same site. Of course the ubiquity of Wikipedia ensures that everyone's heard of a wiki, but in my experience few of my students have ever used or edited one. When I first began teaching, my students used Wikispaces to create websites but that site was shut down some time ago. PBWorks is another collaborative website that has undergone such a dramatic change it doesn't even look like a traditional wiki. That's not a bad thing because, to me, one of the main drawbacks of wikis is the somewhat dated appearance and lack of usability. However, with Wikispaces and PBWorks gone, I don't see myself using or recommending wikis.

Another interesting e-portfolio option I found is within Canvas, a learning management system very popular in Oklahoma. Our campus has been using Canvas for a couple of years, but only when I became a student at a summer course did I see the portfolio option.

It's very easy to create the portfolio within Canvas. It begins with a brief overview of what an ePortfolio is and includes a “Getting Started” wizard to help you begin. My students are very familiar with Canvas, but I would hesitate to recommend this option because you have to have a Canvas account to access it. If an ePortfolio is designed to showcase lifeline and lifelong learning, I feel it's important that it's hosted somewhere with the most access available.

Google Sites have come a long way in the last few years and are really as simple as Wix and Weebly. It's a very clean interface with a robust help and FAQ section. Pluses to a Google site is familiarity with the brand, the majority of students will have a Google account, and it's free. One negative would be ensuring that students create the site under a personal email. Our students have Gmail addresses that go away after they graduate so they would need to use personal email addresses that are difficult to access at school. For my personal ePortfolio, I'm going with Sites. I'm a big fan of Google tools and think it has the look I want combined with the ease my non-coding self requires. ***

ePortfolios in APLang Class

As a writing teacher, having students keep an ePortfolio would be a great addition to my course. I struggle in AP Lang with midterms and finals because multiple choice tests don't feel like an accurate representation of what my students have learned. However, assessing full-length essays isn't always possible in the last couple of weeks of a term either. I feel like ePortfolios are the best of both worlds. They're a much more authentic assessment of what my students have learned and add the authentic audience that I so value in blogging. I think blogging has a place in my classroom as well, especially as a reflection piece. But I really like the idea of incorporating portfolios as an authentic assessment of my students.

APLang centers around three types of writing: rhetorical analysis, argument, and synthesis. I would like my midterm and final next year to be an ePortfolio with one sample of each type of essay. Having students curate their writing pieces throughout the year would probably just be augmentation on the SAMR model. I'd also like to add a visual component where students explain which pieces they choose which would bump it up to at least modification. I intend to model the different portfolio tools I've looked at, and then allow the students their choice of what site to use.

***There are many paid options for ePortfolios, but as an underpaid public school teacher, I focused on the plethora of free options.

Affordances of Blogging

At its most basic, a blog is a free, online publishing forum. It can be run by one person or a team and can have any infinite number of topics. Many blogs are centered around a main topic like fashion or teaching. Blogs aren't usually as media centered as glogs or vlogs, focusing on the written word, although writers certainly use videos or pictures to augment posts. Posts are drafted in essentially an online word processing document and may be published immediately or scheduled for any time the author chooses, while adding tags to posts allows readers to filter entries. Wordpress, Medium, and Blogger make blogging easy and free to begin and blogging is also a common option on website builders such as Weeby and Wix. Blogs include a commenting section (that can be turned off), but the discussion is typically more one-sided than discussion boards or social media.

As a learning tool, blogging offers the student the opportunity to become a published author. This affordance drives every aspect of the blogging experience, from designing the page to proofreading for an actual audience to collaborating with other bloggers. This desire to produce quality blog/vlog posts for an authentic audience is potentially intrinsically motivating although the grading aspect and commenting/liking posts provides extrinsic motivation as well. The familiarity of blog platforms is another affordance that makes it easy to use. Even if it’s a new technology, the on-line writing process looks similar to the more familiar Google or Microsoft Word doc.

Looking at different blogging platforms helped me better refine my idea of what I wanted in a blog. As a creator, I found the Wix interface distracting with editing toolbars on the left, right, and top of the screen. Weebly has a more clean interface, with a scrolling left toolbar that has editing tools. Features like photo galleries, contact forms, and embedding videos make blogging on these websites a more robust experience than Blogger, which is just about the posts. For students, Blogger comes free with a Google account and requires minimal set-up.

Potential Uses

As an English teacher, blogs are a natural fit. Unlike social media posts, there is no character limit on a blog post, lending itself to thoughtful, reflective responses. Because independent reading is a standard for K-12 in Oklahoma, it would be easy to have my students create a blog to do reading reflections. I could give a list of possible reflection topics like making textual connections (text to self, text to text, and text to world) and if I ask students to include links or pictures, I think creating a blog post would be the augmentation level of SAMR.

Allowing students to easily read and comment on each other's work would be an enhancement on the traditional reader response although asking students to discuss their reading is relatively low on Bloom’s. A more transformative assignment would be have students add a recording to their responses, like with a Flipgrid. After blogging the textual connections, students could add a video with a 1-5 minute book review and then comment on each other’s videos. Adding the evaluative element would level up the complexity of the task, and if I curated the videos, it could act as ongoing student-led book talks. I often recommend books to students, but I would love it if they could take ownership of recommending and finding books for each other.

Potential Drawbacks

Some schools block blogging platforms as a social media and the potential for spamming/trolling comments. Also, keeping up with 100+ blogs could be cumbersome in addition to a teacher's normal workload. One site I found, EduBlogs, is designed to make classroom blogging tenable. Teachers have a dashboard that updates with each new blog post. The dashboard tracks comments and activity and lists classroom blogs in order of last activity. Students still create their own blog and can personalize it, but EduBlogs allows teachers to not be dragged down by minutiae of checking so many pages.

Final Thoughts

I often have students reflect on their reading, usually as a short written response in class. Blogging responses adds the publishing element of the writing process that is often left out. Writing for an authentic audience typically ensures students will complete the work with more fidelity, especially if they know their peers are reading. When we have class discussions over independent reading, it’s often the same few students contributing. Blogging would give every student a voice, and by requiring students to read/comment on each other's blogs, they will be exposed to different responses that we might not have time for in class. Blogging marries an authentic, real-world audience and building a life-long habit of reflecting on reading/events/thoughts in a way that in-class assignments cannot do. I’m very excited to integrate EduBlogs into my classroom in fall!