After
I watched a video interview with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, found here, about Flat Classroom projects that they have
developed, I was left thinking about student collaboration and taking steps
towards improving teaching. Davis said that we grow as teachers “one day at a
time… We can’t do everything, but we can do something.” While I find a project
in which I am committing to communicating and planning with another classroom
around the world intriguing, I know that I am not there yet. I need to feel
that I can better facilitate my students working together in the classroom
before we start global collaboration. Davis stated that “schools are moving to
bricks and clicks.” I am enjoying this move. I love having my students in front
of me, but there are so many parts of the world that we can peek into using
technology.
So
here is my something. Howard Gardner discusses our role as teachers to model respectful
thinking. When we teach history, we should find multiple points of view, or “neutral”
versions of what happened. (Gardner, 2008) This is not an easy
task. What I learned as a child was heavily American centered. As my father has
frequently told me, the winner gets to write the book. If the winner’s version
is the only one you have read, where does the other side come from? Thankfully
today’s text are not as one sided, efforts have been made to tell a more
balanced version of history. There are other resources available as well to
speak about history from more than the winner’s perspective.
I
have an interesting switch in Social Studies just after the first quarter. The
whole first quarter we spend learning about North American Natives and how they
lived their lives. The students become attached to various tribes. It is almost
like they are picking a favorite sports team. Then, just after they have become
attached, we learn about how the European explorers came in. It then becomes a
balancing act. The natives did not fare well when the two worlds met, but
destruction of different groups of people were not the true intentions of the
Europeans. In terms of history, this is one of the first lessons they are
learning about how there are two sides to a story. We have many conversations
that follow that center around what was right, fair, or ethical in these
encounters. Were any of the sides respectful in how they were treating the other? What were their limitations in dealing with each other?
When
I started teaching 5th grade, I found this great book that excited me. What I found was I Columbus : My Journal :1492-1493, this book is made up of translated excepts
from Columbus’s journal of his first voyage to the Caribbean. The readings show
what he was thinking at different stages in his journey. This journal of his motives help
student understand why he was doing what he was doing. It also shows what he
thought of the natives when he encountered them. He thought he was in Asia at
the time, and this colored his thoughts on who he met.
Last
year I tried a project with this. It was a huge project that spanned the whole
5th grade as I had each of the three classes. I broke them into
small groups of 2-3 students. Each group took a journal entry or two and told
the story of that moment. I let them choose how they were going to tell the
story. Each group learned more about their moment, and told the story to
various degrees of success. Then I had a technology glitch. By allowing them so
much freedom, I had projects coming in on all sorts of platforms. Some of them
had recorded short movies, some had hand drawn comics, some had made Power Points,
and some had chosen other forms. My plan had been to put it all in a Prezi.
What I didn't realize is that when I pulled the Power Points into Prezi, it
changed it to a Prezi and took out all the formatting the students had worked
on. So, while the individual parts worked, the student groups worked, I
couldn't make a cohesive end project.
Now
I am back to the drawing board. I want the students to work together and talk
out what was happening in this time. What were the interactions between
cultures? Who was respectful? Who was ethical? Can it be said that all
Europeans were wrong? Or that all Natives were right? (My answer is that it is
not as simple as that, there were good and bad motives on both sides. Different
groups and countries need to be looked at, and thought of on their own.)
The
next project that they are working on in this unit is their own explorer with a
Fakebook
page to share what they learned. This technology was troublesome for some students, to the
point that they had to do the work on paper in the end. Here is my plan moving
forward. The students will collaborate on one Fakebook for Columbus based on
his journal entries. We will share the page and access to it. This will have to
be done on a rotating basis since there is not simultaneous access to the
webpage. What I want them to do is rewrite what is happening from Columbus’s
perspective. Since we have his words, this will not take a large amount of
creativity. But, what did the other sailors think? What did the natives think
when he came to shore, or traded with them? Students will need to step back and
look at how others would have been effected by and perceived the events in
their section. They will add comments from the other sides to tell a more
complete story about what was happening. As an added bonus they will get
practice time on Fakebook, so they will be able to complete their independent
project.
In
the end we can review what each class thought of different sections and how
they think everyone around was effected. Did each class end up with the same
thoughts? How or why are they different?
Perhaps
at some future point in my career could I look using this to connect to another
group somewhere else in the country, or around the world. Then I need to ask,
would an outcropping of this project work for them too?
Columbus, C., & Roop, P.
(19911990). I, Columbus: my journal 1492-1493. New York: Avon.
Fakebook. (n.d.). . Retrieved July
28, 2014, from http://www.classtools.net/FB/home-page
Gardner, H. (2008). Five minds for
the future (Pbk. ed.). Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.
Juliani, A. J. (2013, February 28).
Education Is My Life: Interview with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. YouTube.
Retrieved July 28, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vwq1RhFso8
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