One of the biggest takeaways from this week’s work is that creating my own media isn’t as scary as I make it out to be in my head. For my assignments this week, I chose to play with images, create a rubric, dive into the world of infographics, and try my hand at Padlet as an organization tool. Although some of these things were fairly “comfortable” to me, there was still a lot left to learn in terms of each area.
Infographic:
The first artifact that I worked on was my infographic. One of the reasons I chose to work on this first was because the thought of creating an infographic felt daunting, like something only “tech-savvy” teachers could accomplish. When I began playing around on Piktochart, I realized that it was a lot like building a website, which is something we have continually worked on in the MALDT program. Furthermore, the use of images as an organizational information tool clicked with my brain instantly. I could see the layout of my infographic clearly in my head, and I found that Piktochart had a lot of great resources already embedded into their site for me to use.
In the end, I ended up creating an infographic on Athens versus Sparta, which can be seen here, for my Greece Unit. I plan on using this infographic to show the similarities and differences between the two city-states, all while giving the students a great study tool. Additionally, I do a big project on Athens and Sparta, so my infographic will be another source of information for the students as they work through that project. In the long run, I hope to have students jumping on and creating their own comparison infographics, much like my Athens/Sparta one, as there is a lot in our curriculum that asks students to compare and contrast.
Rubric:
The next area I chose to work on was the creation of a rubric specifically designed toward a project that uses multimedia. I have been itching to get my kids to do Knight Labs Story Mapping, and I wanted to work backward and create a rubric to jumpstart this unit. I focused my rubric on World Religions, which covers two very important standards in our curriculum. In the past, I have had students do a poster project with these standards, but I think using the Story Maps will expand their understanding and allow them to really take ownership of the content.
The rubric builder I used was Rubistar, which is one that I haven’t used before. I typically use embedded ones in Classrooms because our district is very pro-Classrooms. However, I wanted to use a tool that I hadn’t used before to see if there were better tools out there to suit my needs. In the end, I really didn’t like using Rubistar because it was clunky, not very visually appealing, and didn’t give anything “extra” versus the Classroom rubrics. I wouldn’t necessarily use Rubistar again simply because I could use Classroom rubrics instead, which would be directly accessible to my LMS.
One portion of this particular artifact journey that I did find extremely beneficial was the backward design approach that I took to creating my World Religions rubric, which can be seen here. I think, when thinking about backward design, creating a rubric is a great place to start as an assessment tool and organizer of thoughts. When I was creating my rubric, I pulled up the specific standards I wanted students to show proficiency in, and I worded my rubric to suit those standards. In my mind, when I go to build my World Religions unit in the winter, I can now look back on that rubric and use it as a guide as to what needs to be addressed in my lessons. This is a huge eye-opening experience for me, and I can’t wait to work on more rubrics in terms of backward design for my other project-based units.
Digital Media:
The third artifact I worked on was manipulating images using Ipiccy.com, which is what our seventh-grade computer students use in their computers class. I have to admit that I was pretty excited about this artifact because this is something I have been doing both personally and professionally long before this assignment. I ended up creating my images and putting them into a Google Slides presentation, as seen here so that I could really get the full effect of what the before and after images looked like.
Since this is a process that I am extremely comfortable with and already use, I know I will continue to use it in my teaching. Many of the images that I find online for Social Studies are not a “best fit” image, so it is usually up to me to make them the best fit for my classroom. One image I am especially excited to use in the fall is my “Out of Africa” migration color splash that I worked on. This is always a topic question that students miss on the exam, and I think by having a color splash image that places emphasis on Africa as being the starting point of migration, the visual will resonate better than other tools I have used in the past.
Padlet and Copyright:
Out of all the artifacts I worked on, this was the one (initially) that I was least excited to start on. One of the things holding me back is that I feel like my teacher education courses did not properly prepare me for accessing different copyrighted and public domain materials. In fact, until about a year ago, I had no idea that sites like Creative Commons existed (I can’t believe I survived all these years without it). Similarly, I wanted to test my hand at Padlet, because I have seen a lot of teachers on my PLN discuss it, and I thought it was time for me to give it a whirl.
Padlet is, in my opinion, going to be a lifesaver in the fall. It is a great organization tool, and it’s very user-friendly. One area that I could see me really utilizing it is for note-taking and information gathering for each of our civilizations. We usually follow a GRAPES organizer method, like the Padlet I did here, and I would love to get my kids engaging in each other’s Padlets, all while going out and finding information of their own to categorize and collect (which really aligns with the ISTE Standards). Padlet is a tool that I could see being highly utilized in my classroom, and I can’t wait to do some Screencasts of it for my LMS.
The other portion of this assignment was as equally eye-opening as Padlet was. Again, I am not the greatest with the whole “copyright” thing, so this was an assignment that I worked and picked my way through so I could really get some useful information. One of my biggest takeaways was actually looking at the Creative Commons licensing pages and reading all things each license did or did not afford to the user. By the end of this assignment, I really started to get the hang of what the different license letter combinations meant, and this cut back on my “search” time. In the future, I will definitely be using Advanced Searches through Google, Wikimedia Commons, and Creative Commons to pull accessible and modifiable content for my class.
Conclusion:
Overall, I felt like this week excited me and challenged me, all while providing me with new resources to use in my classroom. Although some of the resources I used did have some minor drawbacks, such as Rubistar, for the most part, these artifacts are the type of things that my classroom is really going to need as we move into a new way of teaching in the fall. I love how creativity and self-expression can have some big emphasis on tools like Padlet and Piktocharts, which is something I continually worry about with middle schoolers and remote/online learning. These user-friendly tools are ones that I am going to continue to use for the school year to come.
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