Making the Move With Ed Tech

MAKING THE MOVE WITH ED TECH

10 Strategies

to Scale Up Your IN -P ERSON , HYB RI D , and R E MOTE Learning

Copyright © 2023 by Solution Tree Press

Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hicks, Troy, author.

Title: Making the move with ed tech : ten strategies to scale up your in-person, hybrid, and remote learning / Troy Hicks, Jennifer Parker, Kate Grunow.

Other titles: Making the move with educational technology

Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022056066 (print) | LCCN 2022056067 (ebook) | ISBN 9781954631717 (paperback) | ISBN 9781954631724 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Instructional systems--Design. | Educational technology--Computer-assisted instruction. | Education--Effect of technological innovations on. | Lesson planning. | Teaching--Fieldwork.

Classification: LCC LB1028.38 .H5 2024 (print) | LCC LB1028.38 (ebook) | DDC 371.33--dc23/eng/20230301

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056066

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056067

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Making the move with anything, and especially with technology, requires many creative people with steady hands, open minds, and a good sense of humor. There are so many people that we could each thank, ranging from our connections at Central Michigan University and the Macomb Intermediate School District, as well as in our broader networks, to groups such as the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL), the National Writing Project, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Regional Education Media Centers of Michigan, and McREL International. Of course, in trying to extend our thanks, we will miss many individual colleagues, family members, and friends. Yet, we will try to summarize a few of the key acknowledgments here.

• From Troy, a special set of thanks goes to my children, with whom I have had many conversations during the past two decades about what has worked for them in their own learning with technology and what has not. For all the conversations about how you have experienced your own K–12 learning, I appreciate all of you: Ty, McKenna, Lexi, Beau, Shane, and Cooper.

• From Jenn, a huge thank you to McREL for the opportunities to facilitate training for “Classroom Instruction That Works” and “Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works” and the

collaboration with Bj Stone, Howard Pitler, and Matt Kuhn. A special thanks to Howard Pitler, who provided me with so many opportunities to re-envision educational technology through our work with McREL and beyond. I am forever grateful for your collaboration and support.

• From Jenn and Kate:

ϩ To Kristi Martin and Mark Cummins, under whose innovative leadership our 21things4 Project has continued to flourish by expanding beyond our 10,000 teachers and 130,000 students in Macomb County to Michigan’s K–12 landscape to reaching preK–20 educators on an international scale. Thank you for allowing us to grow and continue to curate amazing free resources to support digital-age teaching and learning.

ϩ To our 21things4 co-creators and family of educators, who continue to curate, create, and shape the vision of free is good: Carolyn McCarthy, Melissa White, Janice Harding, and our Regional Educational Media Center Association of Michigan (REMC)-Regional Instructional Technology Specialist colleagues and Michigan Region IV Assistive Technology Consortium leaders.

ϩ To MACUL, REMC Association of Michigan, Michigan Virtual, and the family of the late Frank Miracola for continuing to annually honor ed tech educators for their innovation and creativity with the Frank Miracola 21st Century Educator Excellence Award. Thank you for providing us with an opportunity to continue to share 21things4 with educators and grow our global digital network around Frank Miracola’s original vision of free is good.

We also thank the entire team at Solution Tree named on the previous page as part of the production team. In particular, Amy Rubenstein was very helpful in her specific, clear feedback and willingness to meet with the three of us to wrangle three overlapping—though sometimes competing—visions of what it means to make the move with ed tech, and to think carefully about how we could frame the book to make it accessible to a wide audience of K–12 colleagues. In doing so, Amy, we appreciate your patience and consistency, helping us articulate our vision in a clear and creative manner. We also thank the reviewers, who helped us refine our message and articulate the central argument in our book. Yes, as you noted, these are strategies that should be familiar, yet we can integrate technology to re-envision these strategies, and to make the familiar new again. Also, we thank Maryanne

Barrett, a colleague connected with the Central Michigan University educational technology program, for providing her copy editing skills in the final stage of looking at the book.

Finally, to all our K–12 colleagues with whom we have collaborated in some manner and are unable to list in detail here, we thank you for the work you do with and for your students, making moves with ed tech in your classrooms each and every day.

Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:

Beth Balch

Math Specialist

University of Alabama Huntsville/ AMSTI

Decatur, Alabama

Taylor Bronowicz

Math Teacher

Sparkman Middle School

Toney, Alabama

Courtney Burdick

Apprenticeship Mentor Teacher

Spradling Elementary—Fort Smith Public Schools

Fort Smith, Arkansas

Jennifer Carr

Learning Director

Golden Hills Elementary School

Tehachapi, California

Justin Fisk

Director of World Languages and ELL

Adlai Stevenson High School

Lincolnshire, Illinois

Laura Hesson

Washington County School District Board Member

Washington County School District

St. George, Utah

Dominic Hill

Engineering and Technology Specialist

Laurus International School of Science

Tokyo, Japan

Jed Kees

Principal

Onalaska Middle School

Onalaska, Wisconsin

Ian Landy

Principal School District 47 (Powell River)

Powell River, British Columbia, Canada

Samantha Mendenhall

Classroom Teacher

Port Allen Middle School

Port Allen, Louisiana

Paige Raney

Chair, Division of Education

Spring Hill College

Mobile, Alabama

Lauren Smith

Instructional Coach

Noble Crossing Elementary School, Noblesville Schools

Noblesville, Indiana

Rea Smith

Math Facilitator

Rogers Public Schools

Rogers, Arkansas

Jennifer Steele

Assistant Director of Athletics and Activities

Fort Smith Public Schools

Fort Smith, Arkansas

Sheryl Walters

Instructional Design Lead

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Laurie Warner

PLC Trainer

Deer Valley Unified School District

Phoenix, Arizona

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Troy Hicks, PhD, is a professor of English and education at Central Michigan University (CMU), where he collaborates with K–12 colleagues to explore how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. He directs the Chippewa River Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and teaches master’s and doctoral courses in educational technology. During the 2022–2023 school year, he served as the leader of a Teaching with Primary Sources grant through the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Library of Congress and as a coeditor of the Michigan Reading Journal.

Since beginning work at CMU in 2007, Troy has earned numerous distinctions, including the Michigan Council of Teachers of English Charles Carpenter Fries Award (2008), CMU’s Provost’s Award for junior faculty who demonstrate outstanding achievement in research and creative activity (2011), the Richard A. Meade Award for scholarship in English education (2014), the Michigan Reading Association’s Teacher Educator Award (2018), CMU’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2020), and the Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research’s Divergent Award for Excellence (2020).

In 2019, Troy earned recognition as an International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Certified Educator. In 2021, he completed a facilitation

certification course in digital storytelling through Story Center, and in 2022–2023 is pursuing certification as an Apple Learning Coach. He regularly consults with many educational companies and nonprofit organizations. In addition, he is a regular presenter at the annual conventions for the NCTE, the International Literacy Association (ILA), and ISTE. Finally, in addition to offering regular workshops and webinars, Troy has authored dozens of books, articles, chapters, blog posts, and other resources broadly related to the teaching of literacy in our digital age.

Troy earned his doctorate in curriculum, teaching, and educational policy from Michigan State University in 2007.

To learn more about Troy’s work, visit his website (hickstro.org) or follow @hickstro on Twitter.

Jennifer Parker, EdD, is an instructional technology and school data consultant for Macomb Intermediate School District and adjunct faculty member for Central Michigan University’s master of arts in Learning, Design, and Technology program. She has collaborated on hundreds of educational websites and online courses, most notably as co-creator of the 21things4 Project. She is recognized as a leader in connecting standards to best practices in educational technology and has led many state initiatives.

Jennifer has been a keynoter and presenter at many state, national, and international conferences and served as a proposal reviewer and conference chair for several organizations. In addition, she has over thirty years in education as a career and technical education teacher, K–12 library media specialist, district technology coordinator, and curriculum and school-improvement expert.

Jennifer is a McREL-certified trainer in “Classroom Instruction That Works” and “Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works” and the co-creator of supporting resources like Tech Best Practice.net. In addition, she holds credentials in Cognitive Coaching and Adaptive Schools.

Jennifer is an ISTE Certified Educator and ISTE’s 2018 Digital Leader of the Year. Her consultant work includes ISTE Certification, ISTE Library Standards, and authoring ISTE-U courses. Her projects include several ISTE Seals of Alignment. Tech and Learning magazine recognized Jennifer as one of the top ed tech leaders to watch (2018) and for best digital curriculum (2022). She served on the state executive board for the Michigan Continuous Improvement Facilitators Network and as the state lead for professional development on Michigan’s data portal, MISchoolData.

She has a bachelor of science in education, a master of arts in library media, and a doctor of education from Central Michigan University. She also holds a master of business education from Eastern Michigan University.

To learn more about Jennifer’s work, visit her website (https://drjenniferparker .com) or follow @drjennparker on Twitter.

Kate Grunow, MA, is an instructional technology consultant for Macomb Intermediate School District, where she serves 130,000 students and over 10,000 teachers in Metro Detroit. She is also the district’s Schoology implementation lead and has trained over three thousand teachers on Schoology basics and tech best practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate has been in education for over a decade as a K–12 digital media specialist and English teacher. She has taught middle school English language arts, digital literacy, and media design, and developed district technology curriculum and professional learning.

Kate is a recipient of the Frank Miracola 21st Century Educational Excellence award and is a presenter and panelist at regional events such as PowerSchool CONNECT CENTRAL and LIVE as well as ISTE, MACUL, and the Future of Education Technology Conference. She has also served as a presenter at local, state, and national conferences on topics such as blended learning, free technology tools, learning management platforms, and digital-age teaching and learning.

Kate is a co-creator of the 21things4students and 21things4educators projects and a creator of several websites and online courses. In addition, she is also a member of the Discovery Education Leadership Council and a Discovery Education Network (DEN) STAR educator. She is a recognized expert in Schoology implementation and blended learning in the classroom. Her work includes cofacilitating the Macomb Academy for Digital Educators, a two-year blended learning academy for K–12 teachers.

Kate has a master of arts in learning, design, and technology focused in educational and instructional technology from Central Michigan University.

To learn more about Kate’s work, visit her website (www.kategrunow.com) or follow @k_grunow on Twitter.

To book Troy Hicks, Jennifer Parker, or Kate Grunow for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.

FOREWORD

BY HOWARD PITLER

In 1976, British statistician George Box wrote the famous line, “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (Barroso, 2019). There are several good models in ed tech, including substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (SAMR); technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK); passive, interactive and creative and replacement, amplification, and transformation (PICRAT); and technology integration matrix (TIM), just to name a few. Each model is useful and can help educators think differently about when to integrate ed tech into their teaching, how ed tech might impact the rigor of instruction, and how the learner is involved with the technology. As you might expect, Troy Hicks, Jennifer Parker, and Kate Grunow include hundreds of high-quality apps and websites in this book. They also vetted all the included resources for quality and usefulness. But there is more in Making the Move With Ed Tech than a list of models and applications.

Ed tech models and the research that underlies them are necessary but not sufficient. I have worked with thousands of teachers as a consultant and author of Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works. The question that frequently comes up during these workshops is about implementation. Teachers understand the importance of research-based instruction and using apps and websites to enhance good teaching. However, they also want to know about specific instructional moves

that can lead their students into deeper collaborations, more creative expression, and more substantive inquiry.

This book provides that missing next step by going from models, strategies, and apps to actual implementation. Chapter 2 begins with one of my favorite phrases: purposeful technology integration. Ed tech is most impactful when used purposefully, intentionally, and in an environment conducive to learning. The chapter also introduces six common denominators of the learning environment to help educators think more purposefully about designing the most effective learning environment for their students in either face-to-face, blended, or online classrooms. Educators need to look beyond their physical classroom and consider access and accessibility, digital citizenship, how learning environments can and will vary, the diversity of students’ skills and the support students will need, teachers’ comfort and proficiency with technology, and how the ISTE standards for both students and educators can and should guide their work.

The heart of this wonderful book is the ten moves Hicks, Parker, and Grunow discuss and demonstrate. They write, “Moves are a variety of approaches, sometimes referred to as strategies, scaffolds, Visible Thinking Routines, protocols, and other similar terms.” The ten moves are the following.

These moves will sound familiar and are likely comfortable for many teachers, which is intentional. Enhancing good instruction with technology begins with good instruction. Hicks, Parker, and Grunow divide each move into subsections that bring that move to life in the classroom. These subsections are the following.

• Learning the Move

ϩ Determining When to Make the Move

ϩ Dealing With Challenges and Considering Best Practices

1. Six-Word Story

2. Sort It Out

3. Cubing

4. Chalk Talk

5. Accountable Talk

6. Jigsaw

7. Exit Ticket

8. Barriers or Bridges

9. I See, I Think, I Wonder

10. Gallery Walk

• Putting Groove in the Move With Technology

ϩ Connections to ISTE Standards for Students

ϩ Connections to ISTE Standards for Educators

• Making the Move in Classrooms and Online

ϩ Getting Started

ϩ Scaling Up

ϩ Going Virtual

• Reflecting Before You Get Moving

Particularly helpful are the scenarios the authors provide to give context for each of the moves and allow the reader to imagine the move in real classroom situations. For example, the authors introduce a classroom scenario in the Making the Move in Classrooms and Online sections and show how that scenario will scale up and then go virtual.

In 2012, when Elizabeth R. Hubbell, Matt Kuhn, and myself created the nine categories of technology as part of our book, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works, we recognized that these tools would continue to evolve. We presented nine categories that supported the implementation of technology in the classroom. 1

9

Technology (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012, p 10)

As technology has continued to change, we also see a transformation in the ways that teachers integrate and embed technology in their classrooms. We recognize that our nine categories of technology are evolving, too. With the revisions and updates to our work, Hicks, Parker, and Grunow are contributing to this evolution with their technology categories for purposeful instruction. 1.

4. Visual Learning

5. Extended Learning

6. Gathering and Synthesizing

7. Enhancing the Environment

8. Audio and Video

9. Facilitation

This book supports the reality that ed tech is not an add-on to the work good teachers are doing every day. Ed tech will not and should not replace good teachers. However, good teachers who use ed tech intentionally and appropriately will provide their students with a richer and more expansive education. We need to provide our students with robust learning environments that include ed tech, not just to enhance productivity but also to enable students to create, produce, and engage their curiosity. This book provides a road map to that end.

Howard Pitler, EdD, has taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and served as a building principal for nineteen years in Wichita, Kansas. Following his twenty-nine years in K–12 education, he worked at McREL International, first as Director of Educational Technology and ultimately as the Chief Program Officer. While at McREL, Howard co-authored Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works, First and Second Editions; Classroom Instruction That Works, Second Edition; and A Handbook for Classroom Instruction That Works, Second Edition. He is an associate professor of school leadership at Emporia State University Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas.

INTRODUCTION

As the saying goes, using technology in the classroom isn’t about the tool—it’s about the teaching. However, we see our colleagues struggle to refine their technical skills so that they can fully implement, integrate, or institutionalize technology in their classrooms. Without fluency with the tools, they can’t quite picture what using technology looks like in the classroom, which can lead to their reluctance to learn new technologies. This means they use the same tools over and over.

We suggest educators should think less about specific tools and frameworks and consider making specific moves in their teaching instead. Moves are a variety of approaches, sometimes referred to as strategies, scaffolds, Visible Thinking Routines, protocols, or other similar terms. These moves are flexible across grade levels, subject areas, or phases of a lesson, as well as with other technologies. Rather than trying to decide how a single tool fits into a particular element in a framework, we encourage educators to see the possibilities of a moves-based approach. In this introduction, we want to think about the frameworks that permeate the educational technology (or ed tech) conversation, leading us to a more substantive consideration of why this moves-based approach matters. We’ll also prepare you to be ready to make the move and introduce the specific moves available to you. We conclude by detailing how we’ve organized this book to support your professional learning.

Before jumping into this conversation, and without going into our biographies in detail, we offer just a few key points about our shared experiences in education to provide context about how and why we wrote this book. First, we are deeply committed to teaching and to teachers; the work we do daily is informed by our histories as classroom teachers and honors the professional experience and passion that teachers bring to their craft.

Second, we are equally committed to the idea that teachers can implement educational technologies in creative and intentional ways; however, often, they are not. We are well aware of the ways that ed tech companies, marketing firms, and individual sales reps might position the power and potential of technology as a panacea, yet we know that it is not. The moves that you make in your classroom, each moment of each day, matter more than any particular tool. Yet, returning to our opening point, we cannot ignore the tools, though we want to be thoughtful about how we position them.

As two of the co-creators of the 21things4 Project (21things4.net), Kate Grunow and Jennifer (Jenn) Parker have seen thousands of free or freely available technology tools that target teachers and classrooms. However, few (if any) come with a how-to manual for supporting classroom best practices. As we found when creating 21things4educators.net, where we point teachers to curated digital resources that support digital-age teaching and learning, there is an overwhelming need for a technology integration road map.

To explain a bit more about our involvement with ed tech, Kate and Jenn have curated free digital resources to support digital-age teaching and learning for over a decade. Their projects have earned and maintained the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Seal of Alignment since 2014, recognizing their application of the ISTE Student Standard (2016) and ISTE Educator Standard (2017a) (see the feature box “About ISTE”). The authors of this book are ISTE Certified Educators who have created hundreds of online modules and courses, as well as collaborated on state and national projects. As best practices go, Jenn is an authorized facilitator of “Classroom Instruction That Works” and “Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works,” which often are considered the baseline for integrating technology with best-practice instructional strategies. As educators, we constantly explore peer-reviewed research to improve our professional practices.

Finally, a few data points. Together, we estimate that the three of us have over seventy years of experience as educators, from our first steps in our own classrooms to our current roles. We also estimate that, over the years, the three of us have designed and delivered thousands of hours of professional learning to countless educators at the preK–20 level. We’ve spent well over one hundred hours together writing this book, as well as preparing for and leading sessions at conferences and online. These numbers don’t capture it all, yet we hope that you see how this is the work that we live and breathe every day, and we look forward to sharing our ideas with you in this book.

ABOUT ISTE

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is home to a passionate community of global educators who believe in the power of technology to transform teaching and learning, accelerate innovation, and solve tough problems in education.

ISTE inspires the creation of solutions and connections that improve opportunities for all learners by delivering practical guidance, evidence-based professional learning, virtual networks, thought-provoking events, and the ISTE Standards (International Society for Technology in Education, n.d.). ISTE is also the leading publisher of books focused on technology in education. For more information or to become an ISTE member, visit iste.org. Subscribe to ISTE’s YouTube channel and connect with ISTE on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT THE ISTE STANDARDS

The ISTE Standards provide the competencies for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age, providing a comprehensive roadmap for the effective use of technology in schools worldwide. Grounded in learning science research and based on practitioner experience, the ISTE Standards ensure that using technology for learning can create high-impact, sustainable, scalable, and equitable learning experiences for all learners.

For over twenty years, the standards have been used, researched, and updated to continuously reflect the latest research-based best practices that define success in using technology to learn, teach, lead, and coach. The standards have been adopted in all fifty U.S. states and many countries throughout the world. Aligned to UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals, the standards are available in eight languages. (International Society for Technology in Education, 2021)

ISTE Standards, ©2021, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), iste.org. All rights reserved. Visit https://www.iste.org/iste-standards to read more about the ISTE Standards and to view the Standards in full.

Rethinking Educational Technology

Frameworks and Tools

As a K–12 teacher, you have likely encountered many frameworks that invite all educators to think about how they can use ed tech in almost any classroom, at any level, and with any content. However, these frameworks do not necessarily help us think about the specific instructional moves that lead students into deeper collaborations, more creative expression, or substantive inquiry.

To be clear, we are fans of good frameworks in various forms: overlapping Venn diagrams, ladders, stairs, or matrixes. We like to see where our teaching practices intersect with technology tools. A framework has the potential to ensure that we are on target with classroom goals as we move students toward engaging more deeply with the content and building stronger peer relationships. For that, we are grateful, and you will see the influence of these frameworks throughout this book.

Sometimes these frameworks can overlap with other kinds of teaching frameworks, like Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (McLeod, 2022). We like thinking about these frameworks, and they can help us consider what tools might fit best and make the most difference for students. Table I.1 summarizes the six frameworks we see most often.

Framework

Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK)

Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR)

Brief Description

The technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework builds upon researcher Lee Shulman’s (1986) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) model Developed in 2006 by researchers Punya Mishra and Matthew J Koehler (2006), TPACK takes Shulman’s original ideas of pedagogical and content knowledge to the next level by layering in technological and pedagogical content and knowledge Since the introduction of the TPACK framework, thousands of scholarly publications, blog posts, conference presentations, and more have worked to demonstrate the successful integration by those who teach pedagogy, technology, or within a content area

Ruben R Puentedura (2003, 2006) developed the substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (SAMR) framework in 2006, and it has evolved with additional presentations and resources available on the Hippasus website (http://hippasus com) In SAMR, teachers can reimagine lessons moving from a simple substitution of traditional learning tools and methods to the more nuanced and complex redefinition level, with steps of augmentation and modification in between This model’s developer has not documented it in an academic journal

Table I.1: Six Popular Educational Technology Integration Frameworks

Technology Integration Matrix (TIM)

The Florida Center for Instructional Technology (n d a) at the University of South Florida developed the technology integration matrix (TIM) between 2003 and 2006 and has revised it continually TIM provides a common vocabulary for pedagogically sound technology integration The horizontal axis of the TIM matrix demonstrates levels beginning with entry and moving up through transformation The vertical axis provides five categories of consideration: active, collaborative, constructive, authentic, and goal directed With twenty-five targets for tech integration, the matrix offers educators many additional resources and examples of each

Passive, Interactive and Creative and Replacement, Amplification, and Transformation (PICRAT)

Engage,

Enhance, Extend

(3E or Triple E)

Building on a previous model of the replacement, amplification, and transformation (RAT) model (Hughes, Thomas, & Scharber, 2006), researchers Royce Kimmons, Charles R Graham, and Richard E West (2020) developed the PICRAT framework In addition to the RAT elements, they also include levels of student engagement: passive, interactive, and creative (PIC) By choosing learning tasks they can adapt to different intersections, teachers can use technology for lessons that range from passive replacement up to creative transformation

With this three-part framework based on critical questions that educators can ask about their own uses of technology in a lesson, researcher Liz Kolb (2017) explains this integration is not about the tool but about the teaching Her Engage, Enhance, Extend (Triple E) framework (https://tripleeframework com) provides an opportunity for thoughtful critique on how educators can use technology to engage students, enhance lessons, or extend learning beyond the classroom Her questions and focus on intentional teaching strategies provide a deeper look into how we apply technology to teaching and learning

Nine Categories of Technology

Researchers Howard Pitler, Elizabeth R Hubbell, and Matt Kuhn (2012) shared nine categories of technology to support best practice: (1) word processing, (2) organizing and brainstorming, (3) data collection and analysis, (4) communication and collaboration, (5) instructional media, (6) multimedia creation, (7) instructional interactives, (8) database and research, and (9) kinesthetics

While each of these frameworks offers broad ways of thinking about technology, they sometimes fall short because the specific and transferable practices that should happen in our moment-to-moment instruction remain elusive. Why is this? What challenges do frameworks, alone at least, present to us as educators?

• When thinking in the abstract about how to hit certain levels of tech use, it’s difficult to make immediate connections to classroom practice.

• Frameworks don’t provide the protocols or routines to implement instructional practices, so the use of particular technologies can fall

off track when small technical hiccups occur or there isn’t a guiding purpose for using these tools.

• Frameworks can be off-putting because they are filled with ed tech jargon that might inadvertently alienate many teachers, students, parents and caregivers, and even the administrators who are working to support us.

• The amount of tech any individual teacher or group of students may have access to varies, so it is a challenge to always push our lessons and activities to levels that demand revolutionary change (and, in fact, we know that this radical pedagogical change is not always necessary or advisable). Put another way, sometimes coming at a tried-and-true lesson with a new technological spin to enhance learning can, in and of itself, be substantive; we should not feel bad if we have not completely changed everything, in every lesson, every day.

In this era of instruction, many, though not all, students have broader access to tech tools and high-speed internet, both inside and outside of school, which challenges our students to move beyond the basics. For instance, teachers used word processing for shared note-taking or discussion forums to engage in dialogue, but now they may use new tools to engage students in more creative and innovative ways to communicate their thoughts and ideas. For example, students can create videorecorded responses through tools like Flip or make annotations to a document on a learning platform such as Kami.

New tools provide an opportunity to rethink educators’ understanding and application of technology and consider their purposeful selection to match the technology with the best-practice instructional move. These are good first steps in meeting a new level in a framework and integrating ed tech tools. However, it is not enough. To make a substantive change in teaching, we believe educators must be challenged to move beyond the technology and frameworks and to think about the ways that educators lead students through lessons in a purposeful manner.

Focusing on tools, like a focus on frameworks, seems on its surface as though it could be a useful approach for talking about education. However, we would rather focus on broader categories of tools, as shown in table I.2 and in more detail in chapter 3 (page 35). Also, appendix C (page 197) organizes every tool mentioned in the book under these categories with web links to the tools.

Table I.2: Technology Categories for Purposeful Instruction

Category

Communication

Description

The digital resources used to convey messages across time and space either synchronously or asynchronously

Collaboration

The digital workspaces that allow for the shared ownership of digital content, documents, or files for the purpose of peer feedback, ongoing projects, or group work

Collection and Analysis

Visual Learning

The digital resources that enable the curation of process, perception, progress monitoring, and demographic data

The digital resources used to create a mental picture, characterization, drawing, mind map, graphic image, or visual representation of your information

Extended Learning

The digital resources used to expand learning spaces beyond the school day to provide homework, practice, and interactive learning experiences; these resources are meant to improve student knowledge, understanding, and proficiency

Gathering and Synthesizing

The digital resources used to curate, critically analyze, manipulate, and construct knowledge in meaningful ways, including summarizing and note-taking, design thinking, or computational thinking

Enhancing the Environment

The digital resources used to embrace learner variability, such as assistive technology, as well as lesson elements to support Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018)

Audio and Video

Facilitation

The digital resources used to provide sound and visual experiences through multiple means of representation

The digital resources that empower teaching and learning by improving classroom management, productivity, and the facilitation of learning

Example

Web conferencing

Shared cloud (internet-based) drive space

Formative assessments

Infographics

Homework and practice sites

Social bookmarking sites

Text-to-speech readers

Video streaming or podcasts

Online timers

These tools are a central part of what we will use in our activities and assessments. As we said earlier, tools can be fun to explore and use, and educators can provide students with many options for creating and sharing their ideas. No matter how you choose to think about the use of technology—as a tool integral to teaching, as a resource that is nice to have for enrichment, or, sometimes, even as a nuisance—there is no question that the tools are all around us and they are here to stay. But are educators really embracing those possibilities fully? We don’t want to focus on only one tool, so we ask you to keep the categories in mind, not just the specific tools. Also, specific tools change over time or even disappear. Therefore, we set up the tools in broad categories. If one of your favorites disappears, there are ways to find new ones, including using sites like Common Sense Education’s “Selections for Learning” (Common Sense Education, n.d.a) and comparison sites like AlternativeTo.net and SimilarSites.com.

For instance, let’s examine a ubiquitous tool most educators know (and with which we have composed the bulk of the text in this book): Google Docs (https://docs.google.com). Millions of teachers and students use Google Docs on any single school day. However, based on our own usage patterns and conversations with other educators, our strong suspicion is that few use this tool to its full potential. While many educators might be aware of functions like adding headings and bookmarks, highlighting, inserting tables, hyperlinking, replying to comments and using Suggesting mode, using voice dictation, and implementing citations, how often do they employ these features in real time to help students collaborate and make meaning from interactions with one another? Pushed one step further, how many educators use a tool like Google Docs to construct ongoing lesson plans, with models like HyperDocs as one way to create more inquiry-driven, self-paced opportunities for students? How many educators teach students to use all the features in the sub-menus, to install add-ons, and to integrate citations? Chances are that the answer is not many.

A related idea is that we often hear the phrase “technology is neutral.” As we hope to make clear by building on the work of ed tech critics like Audrey Watters (2021) and Neil Selwyn (2014), technology is anything but neutral, because algorithms in software embed the values of engineers, user experience designers, and executives who create it. Put another way, one of the founders of the Society for the History of Technology in the United States and longtime editor of its journal  Technology and Culture, Melvin Kranzberg (1986), argues that “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” (p. 545). He goes on to state that these tools have “environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves.”

Or, to be blunt, many technologies are deterministic and limited. Despite the best efforts to gamify learning by providing motivation or incentives through badges, or positive reinforcement through high scores and leaderboards, we know many ed tech

tools embody a different ethos than what we want in classrooms. For example, rather than collaboration, they encourage individual competition. Rather than inviting students into the role of creator, they force students to engage in basic skill building. Rather than putting students in situations where they can design compelling solutions to real-world problems, they are simply playing games. In this sense, technologies are not neutral. They embody particular stances about what it means to teach and learn and about what learning actually is, whether understanding a base of facts and procedures or truly engaging in critical and creative thinking, inquiry, and problem solving.

Sometimes, these embedded values are aligned with high-quality teaching practices. For example, word processors can track revisions and allow for peer feedback. Online graphing calculators and mathematics manipulatives can encourage interaction. Simulations of scientific concepts or historical events invite students to see alternative outcomes of experiments or incidents. All these tools offer unique opportunities for students to ask questions, explore ideas, and create their own innovative solutions.

Yet, we also need to remember that technology companies have embedded biases and blind spots and are usually profit driven. It is beyond the scope of our argument to get into a critical analysis of the entire ed tech industry (though starting with Kranzberg [1986], Selwyn [2014], and Watters [2021] or work by teams such as the Human Restoration Project [www.humanrestorationproject.org] or the Civics of Technology [www.civicsoftechnology.org] would be a good entry point for those conversations). Instead, we summarize with this thought: when teachers choose to use a technology, they need to be conscious of the economic, social, and practical matters that these choices entail.

At any rate, tools, and their embedded ideologies, matter. Even if the tools are sometimes offered for free, they are not value-free. We know that in a postpandemic world, teachers need to be even more fluent with technologies and able to use them in intentional ways. Part of their preparation and professional learning needs to interrogate how technology is positioned regarding the teachers themselves and the learners they serve. In other words, we might ask the following questions of any technology (as well as the marketing machine behind it).

• What does this technology assume about learners and the act of learning?

• What does this technology assume about teachers and the act of teaching?

• What are the inherent affordances and constraints of the technology, and for what additional purposes might we imagine that it could be used?

We might ask the same kinds of questions, substituting the word technology for the word framework : what do these frameworks assume about learners and learning,

and about teachers and teaching? What are the affordances and constraints of these frameworks?

With all of this, we aim to ask critical questions of both the frameworks and the tools, while walking a tightrope as we work to create our own position for using a strategy-based model. Because frameworks can sometimes be limiting and technology tools are not neutral, educators need to move away from only using frameworks and tools to adopting a strategy-based approach, which this book describes as moves.

Getting Ready to Make the Move

Through our reading of research literature, work with other educators, and our own teaching practices, we have learned that any given technology needs to be employed with a purposeful, strategic instructional move. What is a move, then? As defined here and discussed in chapter 1 (page 17), a move involves a series of intentional instructional choices that teachers can use in a flexible manner, opening up opportunities for inquiry, dialogue, critical thinking, and creative expression through interpersonal communication and, if needed, technology tools.

As in dancing, this book suggests and demonstrates how discovering and teaching with different moves can follow a similar pattern: learning the move, putting groove into the move with technology, and making the move in the classroom as well as in hybrid or fully online spaces. We detail these moves in chapters 4–13, so we will wait to explore them until a bit later.

From teaching strategies like Jigsaw to the Exit Ticket to I See, I Think, I Wonder, many of the moves in this book will be familiar to you as a classroom teacher or facilitator. This is intentional. On the one hand, you might think we are simply rehashing strategies from your teacher education methods courses or a professional development session. In that sense, you are right. Likely, you’ve seen these before. We wanted to build our ideas on ones that are familiar, as well as flexible, proven protocols for inviting students to think critically and creatively. We also organized the book around these ideas so we could extend them in unique ways, using technology to do so. So, although the names of the moves may look (over)familiar to you, we did that on purpose, and we hope you find ways to adapt and extend these strategies in new ways.

LEARNING THE MOVE

Chapters 4–13 each include a section on learning the move that provides a brief definition and exploration of why, how, and when you might use this move, with tech or without. And, while we know that most students have more access to more devices than ever before, we also offer a few challenges and considerations in conjunction with each move and raise questions about equity and access.

PUTTING GROOVE IN THE MOVE WITH TECHNOLOGY

This chapter section describes the categories of technology tools (as shown in table I.2, page 7, and further elaborated upon in chapter 3, page 35) considered to be most useful for the move. It also shows connections to the ISTE Standards for Educators (ISTE, 2017a) and the ISTE Standards for Students (ISTE, 2016).

MAKING THE MOVE IN THE CLASSROOM AND ONLINE

This chapter section describes a brief scenario that shows a teacher using the move through stages of getting started, scaling up, and going virtual, demonstrating various approaches to using a strategy-based approach to integrating tech. Getting Started describes a low-tech, perhaps even no-tech, implementation of the move, most often in the face-to-face classroom. Scaling Up offers some suggestions for a modest use of technology, inviting students to create and collaborate, most often in the face-to-face classroom. Finally, Going Virtual shares some extensions and adaptations of the move that would make sense in hybrid or fully online environments, both synchronously through real-time interactions in video calls as well as asynchronously, over periods of time, in other platforms such as discussion forums or collaborative documents.

REFLECTING BEFORE YOU GET MOVING

As we wrap up each scenario and you prepare to implement this move, we offer some questions for reflection and discussion with your colleagues. We hope that these points to ponder will help you puzzle through critical and creative ways to bring technology into your classroom as you make plans to implement the move.

DISCOVERING ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Finally, we will offer some connections to online resources, especially from the 21things4educators (n.d.a) website. This resource provides things that are topics related to current trends in educational technology. As co-creators of the 21things4 Project, Kate and Jenn have spent nearly a decade curating digital resources to support digital-age teaching and learning. As a part of a team of instructional technologists, they have found that educators struggle with how to locate, use, and integrate technology. The 21things4 Project has created several websites that curate the tools, training, and resources for implementation aligned to the ISTE Educator and Student Standards. The best part is that it is based on the premise of “free is good.”

With 21things4educators.net as an example, an educator might be looking to integrate digital storytelling into a lesson. On 21things4educators, Thing 15: Digital Storytelling, the educator can learn about the pedagogy, digital tools, lesson

connections, and application of free or freely available resources surrounding this ed tech topic. Moving to the 21things4students site, Thing 18: Digital Storytelling provides the educator with lessons that help implement digital storytelling in the classroom. In pointing you to the 21things4 resources, we are pointing you to connect with things to help make your own moves and use them in your professional practice.

Understanding the Book’s Organization

We want our moves to provide inspiration and become versatile, flexible options for educators to use as they work to integrate technology and support students in substantive thinking. In part 1, we introduce some of the concepts that are behind the moves. In chapter 1, we provide the research base for shifting to a move-based approach. Then, in chapter 2, we expand on some of the common denominators of a digital classroom, like digital citizenship, embracing learner variability, and applying the ISTE Standards. As a final part of our introductory information, in chapter 3 we share more insights on the tools we plan to highlight later in the book, based on the categories listed in table I.2 (page 7). (Remember, if one tool disappears, you can consider alternatives that help you meet the same instructional needs.)

Then as previously discussed, we delve into the ten moves in part 2, chapters 4–13. The moves are Six-Word Story; Sort It Out; Cubing; Chalk Talk; Accountable Talk; Jigsaw; Exit Ticket; Barriers or Bridges; I See, I Think, I Wonder; and Gallery Walk. Each chapter explains how teachers can scaffold each move into deeper, more substantive activities.

The three-part movement that will get you started is (1) learning the move, (2) putting groove in the move, and (3) making the move. To begin our discussion of each one, we encourage you to learn the move. This includes a brief description of the Visible Thinking Routine, protocol, or scaffolding device. And, as much as we enjoy tech, we also share a few thoughts about when it could be helpful to abandon tech altogether and simply go analog with the move when that is best for a given teaching situation.

From there, we will help you put groove in the move. Groove, according to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, as a noun can mean “a pronounced enjoyable rhythm” and, as a verb, can mean “to enjoy oneself intensely” and “to interact harmoniously” (Groove, n.d.). We are talking about grooves and grooving in all these senses of the word. We want you to think about how you can use these moves in different ways, at different times, and with different tools, depending on what you might need to help students learn best at any given moment.

Finally, we will invite you to make the move. In the final part of each move, we want to think about how best to apply the strategy in a number of teaching spaces. It could be an online or hybrid experience, perhaps as an asynchronous, anytime

move, or perhaps during real time, synchronous instruction, maybe in a classroom or a Zoom room. No matter when you are set to make the move, we hope that having a robust understanding of the move itself and the many technologies you can employ will make the process more approachable and, perhaps, even bring enjoyment as the groove settles in.

For instance, the I See, I Think, I Wonder move (discussed in more detail in chapter 12, page 157) is one that many educators are familiar with, and it can be employed at many points of a lesson. Also, as we will show, teachers can do the move without any technology at all. We can have students see, think, and wonder using a variety of tech tools ranging from Google Docs to Padlet to Flip (appendix C, page 197). What we believe is that the specific tech tool is less important (though still not neutral), and the move itself is what leads students to deeper understanding of content, better relationships with peers, and new ways of disciplinary thinking. Finally, we wrap up this book in the epilogue and provide suggestions for carrying these ideas forward in your teaching and learning context. The three appendixes include a brief list of tech resources shared in the book, an annotated version of the list, and a summary of tech moves.

In this book, we share some of what we feel are the key moves that every educator should have, to extend the metaphor, as a part of their dance repertoire. Before choosing any particular move, we encourage educators to ask the following questions.

• What is the move asking my students to do?

• When and how might I use this move in my content area within the lessons and units I have coming up?

• Why and how does this move help students learn the content or process in a deeper, more substantive way?

• What resources can teachers use to implement this move, with or without technology?

• How can teachers use the move across learning environments and modalities? That is, when and how might I use this move in a face-toface classroom, and when and how might I use it online?

Our hope is that in shifting to a mindset where educators can think critically and creatively about the moves that need to happen during instruction, we can see more intentional uses of educational technology across various situations. By focusing on the moves themselves, we are encouraged by the notion that nearly any educator in any teaching context will be able to adapt these ideas for themselves.

So, with that, let’s get moving.

MOVE 1: SIX-WORD STORY

As an adage says, “I would have written something shorter, but I didn’t have the time.” Garson O’Toole (2012) of the Quote Investigator website notes that versions of this idea have been attributed to many people, from Mark Twain to Bill Clinton, but traces the first known version back to the mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1657. No matter who said it first, the idea still resonates: writing short is hard work. The Six-Word Story move forces students to write short, though we allow them some time to do so. This chapter and the subsequent chapters discuss learning the move, putting the groove into the move with technology, making the move in the classroom and online, points to ponder, and additional resources. In addition, this chapter will help you learn to use and put a groove into six-word stories. You’ll find guidance for using them in the classroom and online, as well as insights and additional resources for using them effectively.

Learning the Move

The Six-Word Story move is an exercise in summary and synthesis. It invites students to synthesize their ideas into a concise summary with only half a dozen words that they must choose carefully and creatively. One popular example to introduce

the lesson is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway (NPR, 2010): “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” An easy activity for this strategy is asking students to describe their summer vacation or holiday plans in six words.

Reading specialist Doug Buehl (2017), author of Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning , defines synthesis as the “culmination of comprehension” (p. 6). Buehl (2017) explains that “to synthesize, learners must connect to their knowledge, raise questions, create mental images, make inferences, and determine importance” (p. 6). As a note-taking or summarizing strategy, the Six-Word Story move calls on students to do this higher-level thinking as they transition beyond simple summarization and, through creative condensing of ideas, make meaning of a topic. While the Six-Word Story is a narrative structure that can work for students to create a piece of fiction, we are suggesting a different approach.

This move has the potential to increase engagement in any subject area and topic. For instance, when we look at the kinds of higher-level thinking that might be evident in Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), which is a work that has guided the instructional practices of hundreds of thousands of teachers over many decades, we contend that the Six-Word Story move can move students into the levels of evaluating and creating (Perkins, 2008).

Researcher Norman Webb extended this work from Bloom and his team in the 1990s and 2000s when he introduced the four levels of the Depth of Knowledge (DoK) framework: (1) recall and reproduction, (2) skills and concepts, (3) strategic thinking, and (4) extended thinking (Francis, 2022).

For those who might apply DoK to lesson planning, consider how the Six-Word Story move can stretch across these four levels of knowledge. At the first level, teachers ask students to recall the details of a personal experience or a form of media. Then, at level two, students can apply knowledge by making observations about what they saw or experienced and write a full summary, likely a few sentences or a paragraph. Level three, strategic thinking, occurs as students think critically about word choice and tone and revise to enhance their message, beginning to narrow their focus to the six words. Finally, at level four, extended thinking, students might design an image that creatively represents their six-word story, either creating their own original or adapting a copyright-free image found online. When making this move, we must consider how incorporating the four levels of Webb’s DoK can strategically push students toward deeper learning levels.

To make this move, the teacher selects a piece of media for students to analyze. In a language arts classroom, students might analyze a significant chapter from a novel, a short story, or an essay. In other subjects, students might consider the significance of a primary document or work of art from a particular era in an art or

history classroom. As a reminder, educators can use this move to build community and foster a sense of belonging for all students by asking students to draw on personal experience if it is used for community building as a primary goal (in contrast to content development). Whatever the subject, it is only after careful consideration and a good bit of writing that students articulate their interpretations in just six words.

The Six-Word Story move prompts students with a concept, idea, or vocabulary term. In six words or less, they must define or describe it. For this move, the teacher can help students get to the heart of what they understand about a concept by presenting a piece of media (video, images, and so on) or sharing an article or section from the course textbook. As students view, listen, or read, they can jot notes, ask questions, and annotate the document, so they are critically consuming and beginning to summarize the material.

From there, the Six-Word Story move can take many forms. While one approach may simply ask students to provide six words that capture their learning, other approaches may scale this move up with opportunities for students to work with digital images, use online vocabulary tools to play with word choice, or allow students to choose a platform and process for producing their final product, as we describe in more detail later.

The main idea for the Six-Word Story move is to check for understanding and to be able to retell the main ideas. Teachers can use this move in any content area and across any age band. Students use the vocabulary they have at their fingertips to communicate their learning.

In this move, you can have students economize their own writing down to six words or work to compact something they have read that someone else created. Different content areas have different needs. For example, an ELA teacher has different motives for using this move than a social studies teacher. The ELA teacher may look at the writing skills, whereas the social studies teacher may look at the students’ summarizing abilities.

DETERMINING WHEN TO MAKE THE MOVE

At the beginning of a new school year, this move can become a greeting activity, leaning more into the narrative format and drawing on a personal story. Ask students to draw on an experience that shaped who they are, which will help begin building community and preparing them to work cooperatively. In the middle of a learning cycle, whether a single lesson or an entire unit, you can use the Six-Word Story to formatively assess student progress toward the learning objectives. When using the SixWord Story as a formative assessment tool, the insights that students offer in these concise responses can help you make small, timely adjustments to your teaching

based on the needs of your students. The Six-Word Story move also can function as a summative assessment at the end of a learning cycle. While some might argue that writing just six words can hardly show mastery of a concept, remember that writing short is hard work. For students to summarize with skill and make inferences, there needs to be a great deal of thought condensed into just six words. In this sense, teachers may present the Six-Word Story as a choice among several options for students to choose from to demonstrate competency.

DEALING WITH CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERING BEST PRACTICES

The Six-Word Story lesson itself and the words that students choose can be as quick and focused or as nuanced and complex as the educator wants to make it. How deep do you want your students to go? What is the depth you are looking for in their reflection? Consider the age levels of your students and their knowledge of the topic. The beauty of the Six-Word Story is that no matter how dense the information is, you are asking students to synthesize the key ideas into a limited space. By economizing their words, students tap into higher-order thinking skills.

For embedding technology in classroom routines, teachers need to ensure that students understand the expectations of how to engage, submit work, and ask questions. Peer-to-peer interaction may get challenging in a classroom full of students, and headsets or earbuds may be helpful with this move. Another option is to use a single laptop per group in the live classroom to minimize the feedback.

Putting Groove in the Move With Technology

For this move, the purposeful use of technology shifts from a teacher-driven introduction to a student-driven opportunity for content creation, where both stakeholders engage in the process of creating a six-word story, using technology in different ways to achieve the result of a clear, insightful, and perhaps even humorous summary.

The Six-Word Story move helps meet the expectations of purposeful technology instruction in the following categories.

• Communication: Here, we focus on how the teacher conveys the information for the students to summarize. This move finds the teacher sharing a video to set up the learning or providing a resource like a database article or image for student consideration. Students might also select their own texts or topics.

• Collaboration: This move will look different in a face-to-face, hyflex, or hybrid classroom. However, the outcome is the same: encouraging students to share their synthesis. This activity could easily shift to a collaborative activity by asking students to use collaborative platforms to share their ideas, provide each other with feedback, or engage in conversations around their interpretations. Examples of this might include sending students to breakout rooms to discuss the work or asking students to use Accountable Talk stems (see page 111) to provide positive and constructive feedback in a discussion board within the LMS.

• Gathering and Synthesizing: This category speaks to the work that students do in this move and the methods used to convey the story. Students gather ideas in the Google Doc template (described in detail later). They might also use a photo-editing tool to creatively wrap their story by altering a copyright-free image to make a visual metaphor, as shown in figure 4.1.

Summer waves wash away the blues.

Students also could use a tool like Canva or Adobe Express to create a square image to mimic a social media–style post like they might find on Instagram. To make it more conducive for students to see one another’s work, teachers could ask them to share their image on a whole-class slide deck, verbalize their stories as an audio response in a discussion board, or post a video such as those found in Flip.

Source: Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash.

Figure 4.1: Example of making a story into a visual metaphor

CONNECTIONS TO ISTE STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS

The Six-Word Story move supports many of the ISTE Standards for Students, in particular the Creative Communicator and Global Collaborator. For example, connections might include Creative Communicator performance indicator 1.6.c, where “Students communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models or simulations” (ISTE, 2016). In this case, the visualization would be the altered images or social media-style posts that communicate the story.

In Creative Communicator, performance indicator 1.6.d may also apply: “Students publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences” (ISTE, 2016). With this performance indicator, we ask students to carefully consider their message and the audience they are addressing. As noted earlier, writing something short (and with inferences) requires a good deal of preplanning.

Finally, we suggest the Global Collaborator standard, where performance indicator 1.7.b has “Students use collaborative technologies to work with others, including peers, experts or community members, to examine issues and problems from multiple viewpoints” (ISTE, 2016). Here, we consider the authentic audience of classmates who— especially if the teacher is collaborating with other classrooms of peers outside of their own school—will review, comment, and provide feedback about the story.

To scale up the Six-Word Story, the assignment might move beyond six words to six objects or artifacts that tell a story, such as a collage or collection. In this case, we see connections to the Knowledge Constructor standard and especially performance indicator 1.3.c: “curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions” (ISTE, 2016).

CONNECTIONS TO ISTE STANDARDS FOR EDUCATORS

Moving from students to teachers, we see how the Six-Word Story move supports many of the ISTE Standards for Educators, especially Designer. Here we see that with performance indicator 2.5.b teachers “design authentic learning activities that align with content area standards and use digital tools and resources to maximize active, deep learning” (ISTE, 2017a). With this strategy, instructors create opportunities for students to use technology to meet content area standards and leverage digital tools to create authentic products, like the kinds of clear summaries and visual metaphors described earlier. The Six-Word Story also supports performance indicator 2.5.c: “explore and apply instructional design principles to create innovative digital learning environments that engage and support learning” (ISTE, 2017a). With this strategy, instructors will work to help students write meaningful, concise

pieces and share their visual thinking, whether in a face-to-face, hybrid, or fully online environment.

Making the Move in the Classroom and Online

For the Six-Word Story move, we will imagine a scenario in Ms. Garcia’s eighthgrade ELA classroom. As a quick reminder, we will move from getting started with relatively little use of technology, to scaling up with a more intentional integration of technology, to finally going virtual, where students in the classroom as well as online (via video-conferencing systems) engage in shared work through hybrid, concurrent class sessions.

GETTING STARTED

Ms. Garcia is lesson planning for the first week of school. She is looking forward to getting to know her students and wants to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses in writing. With this in mind, she opens a word processing document and creates an advanced organizer that she will use to guide students through the process of writing a six-word story. At the top of the document, she briefly describes the assignment. This short link, https://bit.ly/3O55zcN, provides a view-only version of this template in Google Docs. You can save this copy to your own Google Drive and revise it in ways that make sense for your teaching and learning context.

In addition to the concise story students are creating (challenging them to tell the story of their summer in exactly six words), they will creatively wrap their six-word story with an original picture or a copyright-free image. Ms. Garcia will arrange the illustrated Six-Word Stories on the classroom wall like an Instagram feed. At the beginning of the year, she wants to teach students the protocol for creating a SixWord Story so that later they can use the same format to more deeply explore the content that they will be learning (for example, during a character analysis or when comparing and contrasting two works of literature).

As shown in the template in figure 4.2 (pages 64 and 65), Ms. Garcia begins by framing the advance organizer with the steps in the writing process. She inserts a table cell and types the first step in the writing process: prewriting. In this section, students will create a list or map of their summer vacation that retells what they did, where they went, and who they saw. Students will then reread their list or map and circle the most significant part. Finally, students will draw on the moment they circled to write a retelling. The initial retelling should include six to eight sentences and use descriptive words and phrases.

Six-Word Story

The story of your summer in exactly six words

Assignment: Tell the story of your summer in exactly six words

Creatively wrap your six-word story into an original or copyright-free image Make a copy of this document to get started

MAKE A COPY

Prewriting

1. Create a list or visual map of your summer vacation that retells what you did, where you went, and who you saw To create a visual map, you might insert a Google drawing As an alternative, you could use a concept- mapping tool like Bubbl us to create a map and insert a screenshot of your final product in the space below

2. Reread your list or map Which part meant the most to you?

Drafting

3. Write a paragraph about the part that meant the most to you Use descriptive words and phrases to retell the story

4. Highlight the descriptive words and phrases you included

5. Reduce your paragraph to exactly six words Tell the story of your summer in the space provided Choose your words and punctuation carefully

Revising and Editing

6. Use a thesaurus or the handouts provided to change one or two of your words

7. Change the order of your words

Publishing

8. Creatively wrap your story into an original image using a publishing tool of your choice

Publishing Tools

http://tinyurl com/photoeditingtools

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/technology for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Figure 4.2: Six-Word Story template

Ms. Garcia continues adding new rows to the table for each step in the writing process.

• Drafting: At this stage in the writing process, students will step away from the computer to handwrite a paragraph about the most memorable moment from their prewriting. They will then work to reduce their paragraph to exactly six words to tell the story of their summer.

• Revising and Editing: Students will think critically about word choice and use a thesaurus to make intentional changes to their six-word story by carefully choosing words based on their precise meaning. At this stage, students will consider how sentence structure influences meaning; to do so, they will play with the order of the clauses in their six-word story.

• Publishing: Finally, students will creatively wrap their six-word story into either an original illustration or remixed with a copyright-friendly image. Students should use colored pencils or markers to create their final illustration or work to find an appropriate image they can crop, filter, or otherwise edit to illustrate their story. In the end, all illustrated six-word stories should be polished and appealing to the eye, with the image working to metaphorically enhance the story itself.

Ms. Garcia has also created a slide deck that she will use to outline the expectations for the assignment and her plans for assessing the learning. On the first day of class, Ms. Garcia uses her classroom projector to display the slide deck to students. After her presentation, she provides each student with a copy of the advance organizer, accessible on their class LMS. She also displays the template using the classroom projector to review the assignment’s expectations. Next, students have access to a classroom set of laptops, and they begin to draft their six-word story using Google Docs. As students are just getting started, Ms. Garcia is not expecting all of her students to use technology at this time, so she has a few printed copies of the template to share. As a reminder, she also asks them to be aware of the stage in the writing process where they will step away from the computer and handwrite their first draft.

SCALING UP

Ms. Garcia is excited to start another new school year. Her school is in the second year of a one-to-one initiative. While lesson planning for the first week of school, she decides a Six-Word Story is the perfect move to assess her students’ basic technology proficiency and writing skills. For this reason, Ms. Garcia thinks about key places in

her Six-Word Story activity where technology will enhance the learning goals for her students, scaling up the activity at each stage in the writing process.

Ms. Garcia’s students are more comfortable using their one-to-one devices this year. Ms. Garcia needs to establish routines for her students to engage in the lesson, and with her as the teacher and with peers when using a hybrid learning option. She knows that her students have experience making a copy of a document, so she plans to have each of them make a copy of the Six-Word Story template she created. Ms. Garcia recently learned how to change the website link to a Google Doc so that it forces students to make a copy. She copies the shared website link to the template, pastes the link in her online classroom, and changes the word edit to copy. A Google Doc version of this template is available at https://bit.ly/3O55zcN and at go.SolutionTree.com/technology.

Since each student will be working on their own copy of the document, Ms. Garcia has made several modifications to the directions for each stage in the writing process, as shown in figure 4.2 (pages 64 and 65). The following describes the stages of the writing process.

• Prewriting: At this stage, students will create a list or visual map of their summer vacation that retells what they did, where they went, and whom they saw. To create a visual map, Ms. Garcia suggests that students might insert a Google drawing. As an alternative, she mentions that students could create a concept map using a tool like Bubbl.us and insert a screenshot of their map in the space provided. In the example in figure 4.3 (page 68), a student has used a secondary mind-mapping tool to create their initial prewriting, though students could also embed a Google drawing or type their ideas directly in the Google Doc.

• Drafting: Ms. Garcia asks students to first type a paragraph about the most memorable moment from their summer. Next, students will reduce their paragraph to exactly six words using a summarization tool like Text Compactor or SummarizeThis. As a final step at this stage, students will enter their story in the six table cells provided, as shown in figure 4.2 (pages 64 and 65).

• Revising and Editing: At this stage, students will still think critically about word choice and use a thesaurus to make intentional changes to their story by carefully choosing words based on their precise meaning. As a modification, Ms. Garcia recommends that students use online dictionary tools like Wordsmyth’s Premier Educational DictionaryThesaurus (https://wordsmyth.net).

Six-Word Story

The story of your summer in exactly six words

Assignment: Tell the story of your summer in exactly six words

Creatively wrap your six-word story into an original or copyright-free image Make a copy of this document to get started

MAKE A COPY

Prewriting

1. Create a list or visual map of your summer vacation that retells what you did, where you went, and whom you saw To create a visual map, you might insert a Google drawing As an alternative, you could use a concept- mapping tool like Bubbl us to create a map and insert a screenshot of your final product in the space below

2. Reread your list or map Which part meant the most to you?

I had a great summer with friends and family so it’s difficult for me to just pick just one event Because I have such great memories from my camping trip with my cousins, I think that particular event meant the most to me

Figure 4.3: Example of student brainstorming in a mind-mapping tool in the Six-Word Story template

• Publishing: Finally, students will creatively wrap their story into an original image or a copyright-free photo using a publishing tool of their choice. Ms. Garcia includes a link to a photo-editing collection she created using a social bookmarking tool. The collection includes bookmarks to websites where students can search for copyrightfree images and graphics (such as Pexels, Unsplash, and Wikimedia Commons) as well as bookmarks to mobile and online photo editing applications (such as Photoshop Express or Pixlr) that students can use to create their final product.

GOING VIRTUAL

Ms. Garcia moves into the next semester with a new group of students and a hyflex classroom. The students in her classroom are face-to-face, while students at home are coming in via video-conferencing tools. Ms. Garcia is broadcasting her project to the live classroom while also sharing her screen to the virtual classroom space. There are designated times when Ms. Garcia is teaching the lesson and others when students have on-their-own work time.

She wants to use the Six-Word Story move and hopes to achieve the same results she did with students in the face-to-face classroom. She begins by posting the template she created in her LMS. Students in the classroom use their laptops to log into the LMS, whereas the students who are virtual do the same in a second tab, leaving their webinar window open to see what is happening live in the classroom. Ms. Garcia takes questions from face-to-face and virtual students during the first few minutes of class, then directs them to access the learning materials in the LMS.

For lingering questions, she directs students to use the discussion board, where face-to-face and virtual students can work together to answer each other’s questions. While they are working, she checks in with online students and then takes a quick look at the discussion board. She also is available at her desk for students who want to walk up with questions. As the class period winds down, Ms. Garcia reminds all students that they should submit a link to their work in the Google Doc and a screenshot of their visual metaphor via the LMS. She finishes by directing them to post any lingering questions to the discussion board. Finally, she spends her evening reviewing student work and picking out a few to share the next day with her hybrid class.

The next day, Ms. Garcia has her video conference running and directs all students, including the face-to-face students, to join her in the online webinar. She has preassigned them into breakouts of four to five students and directs them to share

their stories and debrief. Next, she directs the group to one story that they agree resonates the most with all group members. She then asks them to choose a reporter to return to the main room and share the story chosen from the group and present it to the entire class.

Throughout each stage, you can see how Ms. Garcia has scaled up her use of the Six-Word Story.

Reflecting Before You Get Moving

As you implement this move and reflect on your instruction, we offer a few specific questions for you to reflect on here, as a supplement to the guiding questions for all the moves outlined in chapter 3 (page 35).

• What activities have you tried that are similar to the Six-Word Story in asking students to synthesize, summarize, and share? Knowing that summarization is a challenging skill to teach and master, in what ways were these activities successful? Where might these previous activities have fallen short?

• As you think about adding a visual wrapper for the Six-Word Story, what other kinds of activities could benefit from having students search for and integrate an image from the web to support their ideas? When you teach students to use these images and cite their sources, what additional questions do you have about copyright, fair use, the public domain, and Creative Commons materials, as well as how to use and credit them?

• Considering the many ways students could share their six-word stories, what platforms and services do you already have access to that your students are familiar with for sharing? How might you invite students to create virtual galleries, slideshows, or brief videos highlighting their stories?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

For more tools and resources to support this move, consider the following resources categorized by topic (things). Things are popular educational technology topics that the authors feel every educator should know about.

FOR EDUCATORS

THING 3: Audio and Visual Learning

(https://21things4educators.net/03_Visual_Learning /index.html; 21things4educators, n.d.c)

THING 13: Digital Images

(https://21things4educators.net/13_Digital_Images /index.html; 21things4educators, n.d.h)

THING 14: Creative Communication

(https://21things4educators.net/14_Creative_Communication /index.html; 21things4educators, n.d.e)

THING 15: Digital Storytelling

(https://21things4educators.net/15_Digital_Storytelling /index.html; 21things4educators, n.d.i)

FOR STUDENTS

THING 2: Visual Learning

(www.remc.org/21Things4Students/21 /2-visual-learning; 21things4students, n.d.j)

THING 10: Digital Images

(www.remc.org/21Things4Students/21 /10-digital-images; 21things4students, n.d.e)

THING 17: Creative Communications

(www.remc.org/21Things4Students/21 /creativecommunications; 21things4students, n.d.b)

THING 18: Digital Storytelling

(www.remc.org/21Things4Students/21 /18-digital-storytelling; 21things4educators, n.d.i)

MAKING THE MOVE WITH ED TECH

10 Strategies to Scale Up Your IN-PERSON, HYBRID, and REMOTE Learning

Discover how to integrate technology in your classroom by adapting ten strategies that facilitate creativity and critical thinking and increase student engagement. In Making the Move With Ed Tech: Ten Strategies to Scale Up Your In-Person, Hybrid, and Remote Learning, authors Troy Hicks, Jennifer Parker, and Kate Grunow cut through ed tech jargon and frameworks to help K–12 teachers employ ed tech tools strategically. This practical, research‑based resource provides inspiration and guidance to intentionally apply ed tech and strengthen your teaching practice.

“This book is the perfect resource for teachers who want to learn how to use technology to support, enhance, and enrich learning in and across different environments, including in-person, online, and remote settings. The authors present instructional moves that, when combined with technology, can transform the way learning happens in any subject and grade level.”

Torrey Trust , Associate Professor of Learning Technology, University of Massachusetts Amherst

READERS WILL:

ϩ Improve their understanding of ed tech tools and frameworks

ϩ Explore both familiar and new instructional strategies, or moves

ϩ Learn to employ ed tech tools in the service of instructional strategies

ϩ Connect instructional strategies with new tools and with International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards

ϩ Flexibly apply strategies and tools across learning modalities

“This book does a great job grounding readers in the research and concepts of ed tech while providing real-world strategies educators can apply right away. You can feel the authors speaking to you, not at you, in this thoughtful guide to how technology tools are applied in the modern classroom.”

Matt Kuhn , Chief Technology Officer, Volusia County Schools, Florida

“In this book, Troy Hicks, Jennifer Parker, and Kate Grunow take the mystique out of how to engage students in meaningful learning opportunities utilizing research-based strategies and layering the tools of the digital age over them. Their expertise helps educators understand how to make the most of the moves in the classroom.”

Bill Bass , Innovation Coordinator,

ISBN 978-1-954631-71-7

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Parkway School District, Missouri