4.

3 Diversity, Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness

This artifact, the Engaged Learning Project Field Experience Log, describes a project embedded
into a 4 week study of African geography in a 7th grade classroom. This project is designed to meet high
levels of engagement in the classroom. Technology integration was measured using the Levels of
Teaching Innovation (LoTi) scale. This artifact was designed to provide research opportunities for the
students while providing them an opportunity to make connections with experts outside of the
classroom to prepare them for a mock Model UN session. This artifact describes the timeframe for the
projects, how students will gather and share their research, which content standards will be achieved
through completion, how technology will effectively be integrated into the classroom, and the final
product. The project is intended to demonstrate the importance and the connections that the students
and their community have with their content.

Elkins Pointe Middle School is a highly diverse learning community. This field experience
describes a lesson designed to support and engage students from this extremely diverse student body.
This artifact demonstrates my ability to model and facilitate effective incorporation of technology to
support diverse student needs, enhance cultural understanding, and increase global awareness.
During this field experience, students were making connections with their personal family history with
the content in the classroom. This allowed each student to create their own authentic and embedded
learning experience. Using technology, students were able to connect with a variety of different cultures
while making connections with their own ideas. Using Skype, students made connections with
community members and brought these new cultures and voices into their classroom. Without effective
incorporation of technology, it would have been difficult to provide this opportunity to so many
students.

What was really interesting about this artifact was watching the students get excited about
finding diverse community to Skype and bring into their classroom! One of the things that made this
activity so engaging was breaking down the walls of the classroom through the use of technology. Too
often we ask students to stay focus on the information being shared at the front of the classroom while
putting blinders on so that they are not distracted by things outside of the classroom! It is such a
disservice, especially in this age of technology to expect students to remain oblivious to things
happening in their world. If I were to complete this artifact once again, I would utilize a lot of the same
tools and resources, One thing that I believe I would include would be a step to build a continuous
connection between the classroom and some of the Skype participants. It was such an engaging lesson,
it was unfortunate that only a few days after its culmination, students and teachers had already move
on to the next task.

This project impacted faculty development and student learning. This project was shared with
the seventh grade teachers at Elkins Point and was implemented in each section of every seventh grade
geography course. Furthermore, the interviews that the students completed with their family members
and local experts have been stored in the schools video channel for teachers and students to use in the
future. This project impacted faculty development by demonstrating how technology can increase
student engagement with content and with authentic learning opportunities. Several teachers have
asked for help planning and implementing Skype sessions with experts in their classroom. The number
of teachers and students using Flipgrid and Padlet continue to increase with each new instance of its use
in the classroom. While students are familiar with traditional research techniques (media center and
web research), using personal interviews for research was a new technique. The impact of the project
can be seen through the increased use of Skype to bring experts into the classroom as well as the
increased use of Flipgrid amongst seventh grade social studies teachers to provide reflection
opportunities for their students.

References

ISTE Standards for Students. (2017). Iste.org. Retrieved 21 August 2017, from

http://www.iste.org/standards/for-students

LoTi. (2017). Loticonnection.cachefly.net. Retrieved 21 August 2017, from

http://loticeonnection.cahcefly.net/global_document/LoTi_Framework_Sniff_Test.pdf