A former English teacher, Megan Kelly is eager to discover how she can incorporate the learning power of storytelling into history units. As a first step she created a transmedia storytelling experience that had summer camp students exploring where ‘history’ comes from.
Close Reading the Media / New Vocabulary
by Frank Baker · Published 01/09/2022 · Last modified 01/10/2022
Metaverse? Prebunking? Zombie claims? The rapid evolution of digital technology and methods of persuasion has unleashed a flood of words and phrases that need to be in students’ vocabularies. Media literacy expert Frank Baker offers examples from across current culture.
Bouncing off a family session of Scattergories gone wrong, Curtis Chandler considers how to tap into multilingual learners’ interest in games and competition – including challenging tasks – by offering opportunities to play with and practice new skills in collaborative settings.
Middle grades teacher Kathleen Palmieri shows how Google’s Applied Digital Skills videos and lesson plans can help students in grades 5-12 tap the power of Google Docs and the Google Drive to learn portable skills like digital collaboration, file sharing, and organization.
Close Reading the Media / Evaluating Media
by Frank Baker · Published 11/14/2021 · Last modified 11/17/2021
Students are constant targets of advertisers and influencers, writes author–consultant Frank Baker. Introduce kids to seven key media literacy questions that can boost their critical thinking skills and get them in the habit of always asking “What’s really going on?”
Kathie Palmieri likes the free teacher-owned Flippity site, offering engaging teaching tools in all subject areas. She shows how to easily create multimedia flashcards, involve classes in randomly choosing partners, and make interactive spelling lists tailored to students.
Middle grades teacher Kathleen Palmieri is taking advantage of her students’ growing comfort level with online apps to set up interactive notebooks in Google Jamboard and use Google Slides to simplify the process. She includes all her steps plus extra tips and resource links.
Just like adults, our students will respond better when we offer an empathetic response to their situation. School psychologist Katelyn Oellerich relates the story of “Justin” as an example, highlights the Restorative Conversations process, and shares some helpful resources.
Want to keep content from last year’s digital classes while at the same time close down your prior students’ access? Follow along as NBCT Kathleen Palmieri shows how she’s organizing her files and folders to prep a fresh Google Classroom space as the new school year begins.
Suzanne Kelly and Elizabeth Dobler help us understand that technology, when used with intention, can help teachers augment instruction without letting it dictate what we do.They offer many tools and ideas to guide decision making as we integrate tech into our lesson plans.
