Technology Integration Plan

The lesson plan I chose was from my Padlet unit plan and involved reading informational texts and displaying an understanding of what the student read by transforming their knowledge into another medium, kind of like a book report but more creative. The original lesson plan uses a newspaper article as the transforming medium that students use, however for this assignment I chose to change that to a comic strip as I felt it allowed for more creativity and made it more interdisciplinary with the use of art. In addition, the original lesson plans assumes that students already know how to read an informational text critically. However, in my technology integration matrix, I added sections that allowed me to provide that background knowledge to my students to ensure that they knew how to make the most of their reading time, and what to look for while reading.

The first line of my matrix represents the actual reading of the informational text that starts off the entire lesson. While they are reading they are to annotate, such as highlighting, underlining, or taking notes in the margins. For this task, I included the use of Google Spreadsheets giving students the opportunity at the end of their reading to collect all of the notes and highlights that they made in their text into one streamlined, easy to read format. In doing so, the students should also be able to use columns next to their reading notes to jot down inferences they were able to draw from their reading such as connections they may have noticed between characters and other characters or to the larger event, or any other influence they may have concluded on that impacted the event.

The second line of the matrix provides further background information on informational texts. Using a Prezi presentation, I would provide my students with a brief lecture on what distinguishes opinion from facts and how to determine the author's position in relation to the purpose of the text and how it impacts the text overall. I would conclude with an exit card, 3-2-1 activity where I would have students write on a small card 3 instances from their reading where they saw the author provide his point of view, 2 inferences they drew from the reading, and 1 question they still have. This form of assessment would allow me to determine if my students are understanding how to determine when an author is providing their opinion or offering a fact, and telling me how critically they are thinking about the text they read based on the inferences they've made. The question at the end also gives me an opportunity to receive feedback from the students and see if there is any further information that they need to be provided to further understand what they are reading, so in this way this assessment is for me as the teacher too!

The last line of the matrix is the follow up activity. Students will demonstrate here that they understand the events that occur and the characters they are introduced to in their reading by applying it to a completely new medium. In small groups, the students will discuss and create a comic strip using Bitstrips, a website that allows you to create and customize your own comic strips. In this comic strip they will need to identify the characters and events from their readings and portray them in a manner that displays an understanding of how the characters interact with one another and influence the event(s) that take place. In addition, they will create a Word Press blog, as the more formal assessment, to narrate the comic strip and provide background information as to why they chose to portray characters in the manner they did, why the events are depicted in the way they are, and what inferences they made from their reading that have impacted the way that they chose to display any characters or aspects of the event.

Increasing student understanding of informational texts
Standards	Strategies	Technology
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text	Annotated Reading (S)	Google Spreadsheet
ISTE-S Research and information fluency
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.6 Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position from that of others.	Lecture (T)	Prezi
ISTE-S Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making	3-2-1 (S - A)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.3 Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).	Group Discussion (S)	Bitstrips (https://www.bitstrips.com/create/comic/)
ISTE-S Communication and collaboration	Sticky Note Graph (T/S - A)	Word Press Blog

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dT9oapRqLFMw8f1YG5EpR8bbxdLzixKtB641LRPkdXY/edit?usp=sharing

Padlet Unit Plan

Padet Unit Plan

For my unit plan, I chose to review informational texts because they are not only a central part of the NJ Common Core Standards for Language Arts Literacy, but they are also a key part in any kind of future research that a student will need to perform. I tried to construct unit goals that were aimed at answering the essential questions I created for this unit, and the essential questions were formulated by going over the Common Core Standards and understanding what key skills a student should learn in the grade level that I chose. I would like to teach middle school in the future, and my most recent subbing job prior to the start of this project was for a 7th grade teacher, so I had this particular age group fresh in my mind.

The majority of the lessons that I cited in my Padlet are from the ReadWriteThink site by NCTE. This was one of the sites I used to conduct research on lesson plans from Interactivity #3, and it proved to be extremely helpful here as well because the site comes equipped with recommended technologies, websites, and outside research ideas for students. This made it extremely easy for me to find technologies that were student-friendly and creative ways to include them in the lessons. I specifically chose the resources and technologies I did for their ease of use and navigation, and their seamless integration into the lessons.

Adapt Content: Book Creator

Book Creator is a simple, easy to use app that allows you to create your own book, and now with a recent update comic book as well! You can choose for different book shapes, upload your own photos or videos to embed in your book, and show tons of creativity by changing font sizes, colors, types, and all sorts of backgrounds. For my future classroom, students could use Book Creator as a medium for a large project. For example, the assignment could be to choose an independent novel that the student has read and relate it to any of the books read in class up to that point in the year. The students could then use Book Creator to write up their assignment and provide visuals of the two book covers, images of what they think the characters look like, and they can even take advantage of a double page spread to do comparisons! My students could then use platforms like Evernote (which I reviewed previously), to share their books with myself and their classmates.

While this app is free to download, you only get to create one book for free. In-app purchases allow you to upgrade to be able to create more books.

Due to previous criticism about its incompatibility with any platforms other than iOS devices, Book Creator is now also available as an app for Android and Windows devices, meaning it is easier for everyone to have access to this app. The only drawback I see is the sharing capabilities because it requires you to share over another platform which could cause confusion and higher risk for technology to go wrong.

(video presentation of how Book Creator works)

Supporting Instruction with Technology

While searching for lesson plans to use for this assignment I was looking to see if there was anything that resembled an activity that I had previously done in school myself that I enjoyed, or if there was anything that was highly student-centered. This lesson plan fit both of those. I actually remember doing a similar task in middle school, and I liked that it was heavily involved with student-on-student discussion because I feel that, especially for English, less teacher involvement is the best way for kids to share ideas. However, this lesson plan didn't include much use for technology, and was so student-based that I had to add a bit so that the teacher could provide some background knowledge.

I think mindmeister was an incredible tool! Especially for English Language Arts, students could use these maps to organize their ideas and thoughts when drafting papers, or throughout the reading of a novel to organize characters and themes as they arise. The website was incredibly easy to navigate as well, incorporating keyboard functions that eliminated the need to click on common functions, such as pressing "TAB" or "ENTER" to add a new level as opposed to having to click. The only downside for me was in regards to design, it had very few options and lacked bright colors that would have better captured students' attention.

Take Notes: Evernote

Evernote is a free online tool students can use to take notes. Your notes save onto the Evernote cloud so that you can access them at school, home, or anywhere else you may go to study! Evernote allows you to keep everything organized, and even include hyperlinks and graphics. Students can also build check lists that could help them stay organized! With more and more schools investing in personal devices for their students, using Evernote for class notes seems easy. Unfortunately, not all schools are fortunate enough to give each student a device. In addition, having any type of device in a classroom setting could easily become a distraction.



Evernote does have paid services with additional features such as offline access, and password protections across multiple devices.

As a prospective English teacher, Evernote could be a great note-taking tool for my students. I could require them to share their notes with me, so that I can check to make sure they're understanding the major themes and concepts from lessons. In addition, they could share their notes with the peers, like if a student were absent for class one day. They would easily be able to share class notes via email.

History of Technology in English

Mass-production of the pencil in the late 19th century has made a drastic impact on English classrooms everywhere. The pencil allowed all students more portability to write anywhere!

Share Ideas & Opinions: Kidblog

Link: http://kidblog.org/home/

Kidblog is a publishing tool that gives teachers the ability to provide a safe, kid friendly environment for their students to publish online. Teachers can monitor all of their students activity, even comments, and have control over what material goes live and to how wide a range of audience. Students can even send codes to their parents to give them access too! The site even allows other classes to connect with one another! With Google integration, students can also embed Google Docs, Presentations or Drawings to enhance their publishing.

Teachers can start with a free account which gives them basic access to all of the sites features, and allows them to invite or send special "join codes" to up to 40 students per "class". There are two tiers of paid accounts, the "Teacher Premium" and "Admin Pro", which start at $29/year per teacher.

As a prospective English teacher, I can imagine using Kidblog as a great tool for my students to write their impressions and opinions of the books we read in class, and talk to one another about them. One feature of this site that I find most appealing for my future classes is the class connect feature. As a secondary teacher, this would be a great way for me to get all of my students to talk to one another on the same material.

I feel that this site really aims at relieving any technological limitations by creating a very basic, straight-forward interface, allowing all users to navigate the site easily. Since teachers are in the middle of everything that goes on within the class, and there are no ads within the site, I think it makes for a very safe environment as well for students. The only limitations that I see are for other content areas, as in I'm not sure how a math or science class could benefit from a class blog.