Apologies for the delay in posting part 2! The end of the
school year is so busy!
We also greatly enjoyed Kate Baker’s session on using
technology to promote and assess student engagement with texts. Her quick,
hands-on tutorials and models for using GoFormative, EDpuzzle, and
ActivelyLearn have inspired us to try them out and share them with others!
All three of the tools enable teachers to embed the kinds of
discussion prompts alongside a text that we advocate in our model for supporting student success with informational texts. All three also allow
students to annotate texts as they read, view, or listen. And because we always
advocate the use of multimedia texts, we of course liked how EDpuzzle allows
teachers to embed questions and comments in videos at various stopping points
that they determine. However, it was ActivelyLearn that particularly caught our
attention.
ActivelyLearn allows teachers to embed questions and
comments throughout single or multiple texts included in an assignment.
Comments might be used to draw student attention to a particular text feature
and/or direct students to turn and talk with a partner about some aspect of the
text. Questions that teachers embed in the reading must be answered before a
student can continue with the reading.
Students can also annotate and post questions or comments
about the text as they read, even indicating parts of the text that they are
struggling with. Teachers can immediately view the responses students have
submitted, give feedback on them, and have students revise them if so desired.
The paid version of the platform even includes a GoogleDocs add-on that allows
students to import content from both readings and their own responses in
ActivelyLearn directly into a GoogleDoc!
ActivelyLearn also struck us as a great platform for cross-disciplinary collaborative assignments or projects. The model that Kate shared with us, a
unit created to support students in writing a research paper on the
attainability of the American Dream throughout history, included a variety of
informational and literary texts (see screenshot).
Using Kate’s model as an example, an English teacher and a
history teacher could have students read and annotate specific texts during
their respective classes within the collaboratively created assignment.
Students could then draw from all of their work in the ActivelyLearn assignment
to create some kind of cross-disciplinary project.
One thing that Kate also noted during the session was the
fact that smaller tech companies like ActivelyLearn (as opposed to, say,
Google!) are very responsive to teacher interest and feedback. We experienced
this ourselves when we asked, through Kate, about the collaboration
functionality in ActivelyLearn. Natalie from ActivelyLearn responded the same
day and confirmed that teachers on the paid team and school plans can
collaborate by sharing and tweaking each other’s assignments and also by
co-authoring lessons together. (With the free plan, teachers would have to
share an account in order to create a lesson together.) We will be looking for
an opportunity to try this out. If you are able to do so, please let us know
how it goes!
