Below are screen shots and links to the “beta-version” of the Google Site and Google Classroom content that has been developed:
The document below includes Meeting Minutes, Progress Notes, and Feedback from weekly meetings throughout the duration of my project.
Third Grade Common Planning Time (CPT): March 17, 2020
On February 11-13th, 2020, I attended the OETC20 in Columbus, OH along with two other members of my practicum team (Mary Ann Durkalski (building technology integration specialist) and Marie Marschall (third grade teacher), as part of this project and alignment with the Shaker Heights Schools i3 Initiative. This conference enabled us to attend sessions focused on the goals and objectives of the i3 Initiative and build our professional learning resources to share with staff and students. Below are my session notes from OETC20.
Interim Deliverables and Revisions
The i3 Design Lab has continued to evolve throughout the process of the instructional development and design. The initial vision included the use of a companion Google Site and Classroom, but the instructional model was to design for an in-class flip. More specifically, the i3 team had hoped to integrate this curriculum design into a station-rotation model for the school Makerspace that is currently in planning and development stages. As we progressed with this vision and instructional model, the Lomond i3 Team was told that the plans for the physical Makerspace development had been put on hold. As a result, we shifted our instructional design to fit a blended learning structure where students would interact with instructional materials for each learning engagement on the Google Site and in Classroom, but also participate in collaborative, hands-on learning with their classmates in their homerooms to support the digital content.
On March 10, 2020, the Shaker Heights City Schools announced that they would be closing schools for a minimum of three weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis response mandates from Governor Mike Dewine for social distancing. Although initial statements only indicated a three week extended closure, we were encouraged by our administration to begin planning for fully-online instruction beginning the week of April 6, 2020. The third grade team and IB curriculum coordinator expressed a strong desire to further develop and design the content for the “Sharing the Planet” (STP) unit of inquiry (UOI) in order for students to engage with the design challenge activities through distance learning. While this was a change from the initial project vision in terms of the instructional delivery model, it is still in alignment with the goals for incorporating new STEAM learning engagements in the curriculum and also building teacher TPaCK in the process. As a result I have developed the “beta” versions of the Google Site and Classroom in collaboration with the third grade teachers, IB coordinator, and library-media/ tech specialist at Lomond and seeking their feedback before the online learning launch.
Incorporation of Feedback
After meeting with Dr. Voithofer and reviewing my current project materials on March 4, 2020 he suggested making some revisions to the Google Site in order to clarify my target audience. My original site design included pages for both teachers (content to support teaching Design Thinking) and students (content to support learning about Design Thinking through the design challenge). I appreciated this suggestion from Dr. Voithofer because it helped me to reflect on my design and focus on my target audience. In this case, the site content became solely focused on the learners (third graders). I removed the teacher resource and FAQ pages and included the student resource pages for navigating Google Classroom and accessing digital library resources. I still included some resource links for teaching Design Thinking and templates that could be used with students for the UOIs, but these were developed and linked in the Classroom template. This allows teachers to have access to the materials and resources, but the content for teachers will not be reposted or published to each homeroom’s Google Classroom.
In a typical situation, I would have ideally liked to do a learner-try out with students to observe their interactions with the instructional content and design. Unfortunately, due to the timeline and extended school closure restrictions this has not been possible. I am hopeful and optimistic that relying on the third grade cohort for guidance and direction has helped to develop a learning experience that is both engaging and educational for all students.
I also sent out a formative survey to the third grade teachers on the i3 Design Lab Site and Classroom to gain feedback on the current instructional design and development process. I received overwhelmingly positive feedback, but there were two areas that I wanted to develop further based on their suggestions. One area was in student accessibility. I had talked with the team about concerns with the amount of text for struggling readers. We worked to incorporate a variety of media as much as possible, but with the explicit instructions for distance learning, the text quantity had grown exponentially. This led to the decision to embed audio bars for students to hear the directions and text read to them. I also received feedback that one of the teachers felt that this collaborative design and development process had only “somewhat improved” their knowledge and skills in working with Google Sites and Google Classroom. Since teacher TPaCK development is one of my project objectives and a goal of the i3 Initiative, I was able to spend some time working with them one-on-one to answer their questions and help them navigate using the online instructional materials and Google platforms.