Dedra Van Gelder's Digital Portfolio
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Standard 1 Standard 2 Standard 3 Standard 4

Standard #2:  Teaching & Learning

Objective:  Information Literacy Curriculum

Indicator: Candidates assist students to use technology to access, analyze, and present information.

 

In today's technology driven world, people often make the mistaken assumption that all students are competent and confident computer whizzes. In reality, that is so not the case. Many students are just as intimidated as they are excited when they are presented with the opportunity to use a laptop or other piece of equipment at school. A quality media specialist understands that making technology accessible to students requires more than just handing it to them.

During Black History Month, I created a lesson in an effort to help all of my students increase their level of confidence in using a laptop as an educational tool to conduct research and to create a professional end product. Check out procedures, how to safely handle the equipment, and how to power up and log in were all essential components in the lesson. From there, students were introduced to a special feature of the SIRS Discoverer database- biographies. As a class, students analyzed the benefits of using this special feature compared to conducting a Google search or even conducting a regular search on SIRS. The students focused in on identifying times when utilizing this feature would be their best bet. Additional discussion surrounded the various ways to locate a biography while in this section of the database. Pluses and minuses of each method of locating the information were brainstormed and debated.

After conducting their research on notable African Americans, the students turned their attention to a creative way of sharing what they learned, composing a biopoem. Once drafts were written and revised, I turned the students' attention again to the laptops. This time we approached them as a tool for word processing and production. I led the students step by step through the creation of their final product- a professional looking document. Modeling and guided practice were key as students learned how to choose a font that was appropriate in both style and size for their individual piece. Decisions on alignment and text features (to bold or not to bold... that was a frequent question!) were taken quite seriously. Final copies were printed and presented with pride on a classroom bulletin board. In the end, students learned about important African Americans and so much more.

 

 

Biopoem lesson
 

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