So this Wednesday February 1, 2012 marks the first ever nationally recognized Digital Learning Day! The first time I heard about this I thought, Of course…, surprised it hadn’t existed before this year. So what is it, exactly? Digital Learning Day is the culmination of a year-long national awareness campaign to encourage innovative teaching and learning through digital media and technology that engages students and provides them with a rich, personalized learning experience. Digital learning is defined as:
“…any instructional practice that is effectively using technology to strengthen the student learning experience. Digital learning encompasses a wide spectrum of tools and practice, including using online and formative assessment, increasing focus and quality of teaching resources and time, online content and courses, applications of technology in the classroom and school building, adaptive software for students with special needs, learning platforms, participating in professional communities of practice, providing access to high level and challenging content and instruction, and many other advancements technology provides to teaching and learning.”
You can recognize Digital Learning Day in a number of ways by simply trying one new thing with technology. It could be using a feature in Finalsite that you’ve never tried, like uploading a resource file, facilitating a class blog or discussion board, or conducting an online quiz. Or it could mean “flipping” your class with online instructional videos to teach a new concept–something I previously blogged about here, and something teachers right here in Madison are already trying with great success.
The official Digital Learning Day website has excellent resources and toolkits to help teachers get started. And, of course, I am always willing to help see your vision through. Don’t forget that you have great resources in your building, too, whether it’s the library media specialists, computer lab paras, or your colleagues who tend to be quick to embrace technology as a teaching tool. So start talking to each other and leave a comment below about what you might do to celebrate digital learning.
As daily newspapers continue to make the shift to the digital platform, I have had to change the way my journalism classes engage themselves in our daily reading of the paper to kick off the beginning of each class. The NY Times Replica edition ha been a great asset in getting students to engage with a myriad of stories–and story ideas that we write. Our only challenge remains that our school does not have enough individual computers to allow each student a n opportunity to read the paper online (digitally) and we have had to shift lots of story assignments–to the stdents’ home computer. This has slowed the progress of our classes–but our students have been able to gradually make the adjustment–we are completing less assignments. The Journal Register Comapny, parent company of the New Haven Register, has recently made the switch to a digital platform–and I have been impressed with their ability to offer students a digital paper, too. Again, the lack of individual computers in each classroom slows the overall learning process-but again, we have made the adjustment. My hope and dream is for all schools some day to have the ability for the distribution of individual note pads to their students (for a user fee during four years) in order to begin an assimilation that will meet the needs of the workplace they will be entering in the future. With new student and teacher standards looming in the future for Connecticut public high schools–I wonder how school districts across the state will be able to have their high school juniors take the new standardized tests needed for high school graduation–when ALL of the online tests that will be required for a diploma will have to be administered at the end of junior year–on individual computers! How will school districts meet the new state requirements of online testing for juniors–when schools do not have enough computers for students to take the tests? My belief is that all schools will have to have WiFi capabilities—AND–smaller, portable computers/word pads in order to meet the new state testing standards. The new tests for graduation–will be a challenge financially for every Connecticut school district in terms of the amount of computers needed for the tests–something to think about for 2013–and beyond!
Frank,
You are absolutely right…we need to move in the direction of providing students with more access to information via portable devices. Who supplies them will be the big question. As for online testing, I recently spoke with someone at the CSDE, and he admitted that they don’t even really know how this is going to work with all the complications involved (student machines, bandwidth, test security, etc), but he assured me that they are working on it.
For Digital Learning Day my highschool students created an account on http://www.scriptbuddy.com where they used an online scriptwriting software to create a script for a 3 act screenplay. Script buddy helps students with the formating of thier scripts and places Actions, Transitions, Dialogue, and Direction in proper places.
The only down side is that you are only allowed to make one script per account.
We read non-fiction articles from Tween Tribute and then ‘blogged’ about our thoughts on the articles.
Just to clarify, we started a class blog with Mike’s help! http://blogs.madisonct.org/mongillos
Yesterday we started a class blog. The students are very enthusiastic about contributing their thoughts and opinions on learning. For digital learning day, we are working on reflecting on the learning presented today.
Mike,
In honor of “Digital Learning Day,” we incorporated technology into our instruction, much the same as we do every day here in the elementary schools, but I added a new twist.
I asked a group of fourth-graders who had been exploring different numeration systems, including our own Base 10 number system along with the “Land of Treble’s” Base 3 number system, and the Ancient Egyptian Face Value numeration system to share what they learned by posting a comment to my educational math blog. So far, we’re at 30 comments and counting . . . see what our students posted at:
http://blogs.madisonct.org/roser/2012/02/01/digital-learning-day-february-1-2012/
Ruth Rose
Math Specialist, Island Avenue & Ryerson Schools
Ricki, your skittle project sounds delicious! I spent the day signing students up to use Easybib Student’s edition. Which as I’m sure you can imagine they were thrilled. It actually is a very useful tool…one that I’m very impressed with.
Hi Mike: My 6th graders are just finishing our “Skittles” project using EXCEL spreadsheets to show number/percentage of each color of skittles in a fun-size bag and also comparing actual numbers to predictions made before opening their bag. For Digital Learning Day we are going to explore the following website which I posted to my 6th grade classes FinalSite: http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/ I’ll let you know how it goes! Ricki