EDU 6433 Facilitating Learning and Creativity in Research without the Internet

In other classes here at Seattle Pacific University (SPU), and in my internship experience, I have been informed that a key part in teacher evaluation, and often a difficult level to attain, is to have all students actively engaged in learning. For students to take learning into their own hands, and be accountable to themselves for their own learning, however, there should be creative and engaging learning activities for with which students may then express their learning. This implies a need for partnership between teachers and students, where ideas for interesting learning activities come from both parties.  In order to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, which lead to engagement and accountability of individualized student learning, there should be input from students.

With my triggering question specific to the notion that my students have no internet privileges (What are other ways for students to conduct research aside from print and online?), it was interesting to begin to explore ways of incorporating technology not related to the internet.  Although I was met with some trouble in my research on the topic, as most articles, such as that by Shiveley (n.d.), suggest that internet use is a necessity for best social studies teaching, I was able to begin to understand how to use teacher-scaffolded internet in the classroom, and then draw some creative ideas from Pickett’s 50 Alternatives to Lecture (n.d.). I found the following alternatives to be both applicable to the idea of internet research alternatives, as well as creative learning experiences for students:

1. Conduct an interview. Not only are students accessing a non-internet source, they may be engaging in conversation with a primary witness/source to an event.

2. Guest speaker. Similar to the interview, students may have the opportunity to engage in first-hand experience from the perspective of a speaker whom experienced an event.

20. Field trip. Taking students to a historic building/place/site could certainly serve as a creative alternative to online research.

21. Film/video. We do not often show videos in class, but when we do, we make them meaningful and students are encouraged to use/reference the source (see image below for emphasis).

Reading through the trigger questions of peers and seeing their research, I am reminded of the importance of finding out what motivates students, as suggested by De Oliveira (2012) and incorporating student input into creating learning activities as described by Hayden (2015). If I were to incorporate any of the above strategies for research and/or lecture alternatives, I would make sure to provide avenues for student input. Students would have choice in interview subjects, they could have a hand in getting a guest speaker to attend in the first place, and they could have specific, but chosen, field trip research goals. While just beginning to scratch the surface on ways to facilitate student learning and creativity, I plan on continuing to implement creative learning experiences, with student input when available. Just recently, for example, we allowed students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of samurai by having them guide their learning through multiple days of various stations that exposed them to primary and secondary sources related to samurai, while also incorporating questioning, group discussion, and a creative art piece. While there was no input as to which stations to do (all were required), there was choice in the direction of discussion that each station prompted, as well as within the art piece. Although the impact and use of technology was minimal, (although we did use the internet to look at some colorized original photos of samurai from the 1880s), it seemed to be an engaging activity for all the students, at least in comparison to simply reading from the textbook.

Reference List:

De Oliveira, Liliane (2015). Building Student Engagement in the Language Classroom Through the use of

Interactive Technology. Master’s Thesis, University of British Columbia, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy.

Hayden, Michael (2015). Personalized Learning Through Project-Based Music. National Association for      Music Education. http://www.nafme.org/personalized-learning-through-project-based-music/

Pickett, Alexandra M. (n.d.). 50 Alternatives to Lecture. SUNY Learning Network.

Shiveley, James M. (n.d.). Toward Assessing Internet Use in the Social Studies Classroom: Developing an    Inventory Based on a Review of Relevant Literature. Contemporary Issues in Technology and         Teacher Education.