Technology in Service to Learning

    Over the last several weeks, there have been a number of candidates on campus interviewing for open positions.  I asked one of them to talk about his thinking regarding the place of technology in a school setting.  One sentence stuck with me: "Technology should be in service to learning."
    I'm sure one of the reasons this sentence was memorable was that it closely aligns with my thinking.  The essential role of technology in a school is to broaden and deepen learning opportunities. But this candidate's statement also reminded me of two recent projects that showed how technology can support learning.  Each of these two projects began with a teacher wondering if there was a technological solution to a pedagogical problem. In both cases, the answer was yes.
    The first problem was posed by Amy Newman. Among other courses, Amy teaches a Photography section in the Upper School.  Amy was looking for a way to post student photographs online.  She wanted students to be able to easily share their work with a broader audience.  She was also mindful of the fact that the time and expense of printing photo work was burdensome, and she saw online postings as a sensible alternative.
    Amy didn't just want to post these photos online. She wanted students to be able to post their own photos.  But she wanted to be able to manage these postings with full editorial rights over content.  Additionally, she wanted students to write about their photos.  This meant that any online solution needed to support images and text.
    Finally, Amy wanted other students (and herself) to be able to comment on the work of classmates.  Art classes have used peer critique as a tool to identify strengths and weaknesses in art work for generations.  An online solution could provide an ability to offer peer critique in a uniquely convenient way.
    Amy asked me if I had any ideas and together we worked through several possibilities.  I was hopeful we might find a way to use her KnightSite class site, but there is no way to allow students to post their own work. We eventually decided that PBworks provided the right solution.

The front page of the PBworks site used to post photos.

    PBworks allows teachers to create sites that are structured for classroom use.  The education division of the company began to develop learning management sites before they were commonly available to schools. The sites are free to create and use. Amy signed up for a site and began to structure it according to her needs.  She first created folders for each class section.  Then, in each class folder, she gave each student a web page with administrative rights to add/edit content.  All other students had rights to comment on any posted work.
   Here's a look at a couple of student pages:

A student photo and explanatory text; below, the comment thread just below the picture.

    Without too much bother, Amy was able to set up a single web site that allowed her to create spaces for each class, and pages for each student.  Students can post pictures and include textual information. Other students, and the teacher, can offer helpful commentary.  In short, we have here a nice example of technology in service to learning.
    I mentioned earlier that there were two recent projects that came to mind. The second project comes out of an Upper School Unit offering called Film Forum. This class is designed to give students film literacy through film history, scene analysis and an overview of how films are put together. The lead teacher, Fred Corona, wanted to include a "People's Choice" selection among the films that would be screened during the course. For this selection, students would be able to nominate a film and through consensus, one selection would be screened.  He wanted to give students time to think about their selection. He also wanted other students to see each posting, and to be able to comment on postings. Fred asked me about what I thought might be the most efficient way to gather the data.  I considered a shared survey, a tool supported by Office 365, but ultimately decided the easiest way was to use the Topics function of KnightSite.
    Each KnightSite class site has four tabs: Bulletin Board, Topics, Assignments and Roster. Topics allows a teacher to create a separate section for a particular unit of study. (As a reminder, after clicking on the Resources tab on KnightSite, you can access the Help Guides folder and find a Help Guide on using the Topics feature.)

    After creating a Topic, a teacher can add content using such content channels as links, text, photos, downloads, etc.  These content channels also appear on the Bulletin Board page. But the Topics options also include Discussion. The discussion content channel allows for class members to post text, and for others to comment on posts.  This  is the solution Fred was seeking.

    On the Film Forum class site, a Topic was created titled Your Film Suggestions.

To edit this Topic, click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of the Topic icon.

    When in editing mode, you can choose your content channels as needed. For this class, a Text option was selected to give directions, and then a Discussion option was selected so that students could post film titles.  The next screen shot will show this Topic in editing mode.

    After content channels are properly placed, the Topic is ready to be utilized.  The screen shot below will show the newly organized Topic. Though the site has not been up long, a few students have started to weigh in with their choices. You'll also notice that students' comments are attributed by name. This is handy because a comment is always linked to the author.

    There's nothing particularly fancy with this feature, but it works exactly as needed. It's another fine example of technology in service to learning.