PBI Report - Student Bloggers Reflecting on Moral Decisions During War Times

ECI 546 (New Literacies and Media)

North Carolina State University

By

Kisha Carmichael

Kenneth Collishaw

Vineetha Govindasamy

December 2016

Video:

https://youtu.be/tjKRXxDSVek
 The video linked offers insight to innovative ways to incorporate digital literacy into the

classroom, while not losing the aspect of collaboration and interaction. The video elaborates on

the assignment the students completed, offers a glimpse at some of the work examples, and

analyzes the successes of the assignment. Ultimately, the five minute clip seeks to give those not

in the classroom the opportunity to experience the lesson.

Introduction

There is a shift that is taking place in education right now and the integration of

technology is a core component of this change. Technology helps children learn better by

building a deeper understanding of content in a more engaging way. Yes, it does come with its

own challenges, however, we cannot not consider its implications for education. As Zhao (2009)

states, for centuries, schools have been preparing children for an industrial economy, but the

challenge our schools must face is to begin teaching the skills and knowledge needed for the
virtual economy (p.131), as the virtual world is as real as the physical world, (p.128). Each of

these worlds have a considerable effect on the other and therefore integrating new literacies in

our schools and helping our children develop fluency and proficiency with the tools of

technology is key for them to thrive in both these environments.

In this PBI, we will examine the research question, How do collaborative blogs enhance

and extend students understanding of countries making moral decisions in times of war? The

technology tool used in this project is blogs published on Weebly.

This project is grounded in Revised Blooms taxonomy, TPACK and Vygotskys social

theory of learning. These theories help us structure our research design, develop patterns in our

findings and analyse the research topic with a systemic methodology provided by these

underpinning theories.

Lesson Rationale

We decided to use collaborative blogs as our new literacies tool, as they are a great way

to share written ideas with people, sometimes supplementing with visual content to make it

engaging for the readers. A great feature of a blog is that the content creator is able to create a

community of readers who share their thoughts, give feedback and interact with the others in

order to expand on their learning (Snyder, 2012). In this PBI, we will use these features of the

blog to engage students in historical empathy as they reflect and contextualize the decisions

made during times of war.

Critical reading is one of the new literacy skills and blogging is an effective strategy to

teach critical reading as students connect the content to their lives and then accurately respond

to what they have read and blogs give students an opportunity to read, think and respond in

writing to events and issues that are important for them to understand as citizens of democracy.
(Miners & Pascopella, 2007). Blogs are an easy (and mostly, free) publishing tool and there is

not much technical knowledge required, as many of the blog softwares such as Weebly, allows

drag and drop features with many pre-designed templates to give a classy look to the blog. This

allows students to really focus on the content, as the design is almost auto generated.

In this particular class, there are students who typically do not participate in discussions

and debates. Therefore, blogging is a wonderful tool to provide an opportunity for those students

to voice their argument (and interact with others) without the fear of public speaking. They are

able to add visuals and structure their writing on the blog in order to help them sell their

argument.

The TPACK framework helped us to structure our instruction so that it facilitates

effective teaching with technology (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). According to TPACK, technology

is not an isolated form of knowledge to teach the students, rather an integration of technology,

pedagogy and content knowledge must take place in order to create effective learning

experiences for students (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). By applying the TPACK framework to our

research question, we were able to explore the technological, pedagogical and content area

choices that best fit our teaching objectives:

Technological Knowledge (TK) is the identifying of and applying technological tools and

resources and to know if those assist or impede the achievement of a goal (Koehler & Mishra,

2009). By choosing the blogs on Weebly, we have identified a reliable tool to promote a deeper

understanding of the lesson.

Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) is teachers knowledge about teaching and how students

learn, lesson planning and assessment (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). We have designed our lessons,
 and planned our assessments to match the learning needs of the students in the classroom. The

teacher applied appropriate scaffolding strategies to ensure learning is optimized.

Content Knowledge (CK) is teachers knowledge of the subject matter and the

understanding of the specific concepts that need to be taught to the students (Koehler & Mishra,

2009). These concepts stemmed from the Common Core Standards and NC Essential Standards

for 11th grade History:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9

Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent

understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

AH2.H.1 Apply the four interconnected dimensions of historical thinking to the American

History Essential Standards in order to understand the creation and development of the United

States over time. .

AH2.H.2 Analyze key political, economic and social turning points in American History

using historical thinking.

AH2.H.6 Understand how and why the role of the United States in the world has changed

over time.

AH2.H.7.2 Explain the impact of wars on the American economy since Reconstruction.

Revised Blooms Taxonomy is such a valuable resource to help design a thoughtful

lesson process that helps attain learning goals on many levels. There are six learning domains in

the Revised Blooms Taxonomy and includes both lower-order and higher-order thinking skills.

1. Remembering - Recalling past learning about war and American History

social theory of learning. Vygotsky emphasised the important role social factors play in learning

and we have employed two of his most important principles in our project: More Knowledgeable

Other (MKO) and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky lives, n.d.). ZPD is the

difference between what the child can achieve on his/her own and what one can achieve with

guidance or support. MKO is having another person (in this case, the teacher) who is more

knowledgeable than the child, help him/her by scaffolding appropriately, in order to achieve

specific learning goals. Also, while working on the collaborative blogs, students worked in

groups of two or three and these teams were formed with a combination of advanced peers with

peers who are less advanced in this content area. This allows the MKO to help the less advanced

peers who may be in the ZPD to advance and succeed.

Lesson Implementation

The entire lesson took two blocks, with each block lasting 90 minutes. The students are 16-17

years old and this is the 11th grade American History II class. Kenneth Collishaw is the teacher

for this class. Students have their own personal website in which they are able to showcase their

work from this class as well as others. These are referred to as their digital portfolios. Students

used their Weebly accounts to publish and comment on each others blogs. In addition to Weebly,

they also had their primary source documents detailing the effects of the atomic bomb. The

students found Weebly to be very user-friendly and they found the blogging part to be quite easy.

The layout and the design of the blog seemed to be more time-consuming.

Timeline of the lesson parts:

Task Duration
Introduction of topic and watch footage from 30 minutes

Japanese Perspective

Overview of blogging/writing requirements 10 minutes

Read given resources and start on the 50 minutes

writing/blogging

Complete blog layout & design (finish 30 minutes

writing)

Comment on each others blog 30 minutes

Assessment 30 minutes

Assessment

We believe the students were successful with the learning goals that were set due to the

enthusiasm for the work and the closely monitored conversations. The assessments were

measured informally as well as via a rubric for the blog posts.

Yes we feel our assessment was reliable, as it set in as a scaffold assignment, which

makes for gathering student understanding clearly. Scaffolding is the support given during the

learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the

student achieve his/her learning goals. (Sawyer, 2006). The students were given bits of

information over the two class periods that increased in complexity to achieve the ultimate

learning goal. Kahoot results reflected content mastery, 85% of the students were aware of the

main arguments both for and against dropping the atomic bomb as well as the content.

The group who did the hand written assignment missed out on the additional of visuals to

supplement the blog posts. Many included pictures that gave context to their blogs and were able
to make their written piece visually appealing. Students were more engaged in reading the blogs

and could comment on each others much more easily than a piece of paper being passed around

the class.

Reflection

Many students, after seeing both perspectives of the argument, changed their original opinion of

whether the atomic bomb should be dropped or not. Some students struggled with the logistics of

the blog more than others, but eventually got the hang of it after trial and error.

In the beginning we were challenged in finding an appropriate topic and lesson plan that

would work for our PBI assignment. Only one of our group members were in the classroom and

his area was history. Once Kenny chimed in about his idea that might work for the PBI

assignment we were on our way to a successful project.

The written report has been a challenge due to logistics as well as disseminating roles and

information between three individuals with very different schedules, and job types. Again with

only one member of the group working in the classroom, there was a different type of burden on

that individual versus the the other two group members.

In public schools parents have to sign a waiver for their children to be videoed or

photographed. Since our project was not for the purpose of the public school in which our group

mate is a teacher we had to have the parents give permission. Not all students turned their release

forms in and that proved to be a challenge in video recording the participants. The actual

videoing during class time proved to be a challenge due to our teammate having to record

himself without assistance of anyone else.

Student understanding varies from student to student and it is sometimes a good thing to

make students argue for something they disagree with, as they can gain a better understanding of
perspective. Students have very little original understanding of civil disagreement, and assigning

them an opinion originally helped students learn how to discuss sensitive material peacefully.

Our group was comprised of three working professionals with various commitments

outside of this course. The biggest challenge was lining up specific times that we are all

available. We used Google Docs to comment out ideas, questions and to collaborate on the

written portion of the project. This seemed to work well for the group since we were able to

chime in when we found time in our schedules.

Communication outside of the Google Doc for the final project paper took place via the

Whats App. This messaging app allowed us to have conversations during business hours and

evenings all while keeping everyone in the loop. Not everyone was an active participant in each

burst of conversation but as a group everyone received the same information. This proves to be

invaluable when working with individuals in various locations. There was only once when there

was a break down in the communication and it was due to the app being updated but there was

not a huge deterrent or deviation from getting things done or communicated in a timely fashion.

If we were to start all over we would do more pre planning. Making sure that group

members were given specific responsibilities. Another thing would be to make deadlines and due

dates at the beginning of the project. There were a number of things that could have gone a lot

smoother if we would have taken the time and done the work before instead of jumping in feet

first.

Learning more about the integration of TPACK, Vygotsky & Revised Blooms into this

project and how these theories tie in with new literacies has been very helpful. This project also

helped us to realize that new literacies can reshape what we do in the classroom to produce

small, but meaningful changes. As we saw in this project, students' engagement increased while
working on blogs (technology tool) as opposed to writing the traditional way. Tools such as these

provide additional skills and strategies for both the students and the teachers to make learning

and teaching more fun and engaging.

From the perspective of the teacher there was a need for the students to have more time to

read the other blogs. Allowing there to be a deeper understanding and exposure to other

perspectives and ideas. The students seemed to love the activity and were intrinsically motivated

because of the topic, historical empathy and partially to technology.

Categories 15-20 points 10-14 points 5-9 points 0 points

Use of Class Students were all Students finished Students were Students did little
Time on task and used the assignment, but rarely on task, to no work
class time became distracted product was
productively. at times incomplete

Self Evaluation Final product Product followed Product was Product did not
(Your score is followed all most directions, but incomplete, but follow directions
20% of your directions, all had room for followed most and was
grade) students improvement. Was directions. Little to incomplete.
contributed a team not a team effort no teamwork
Score:
effort
___/20

Peer Evaluation Peer evaluations Most peer Peer evaluations Peer evaluations
were completed for evaluations were were incomplete were not turned in.
Score: each groups completed, but were and vague.
___/20 product and were vague.
accurate in
description

Organization of Blog was complete Blog was mostly Blog was mostly Blog was not
Blog and followed all complete, missing incomplete, submitted or
directions. some details. missing major complete.
___/20 Information was Information was not details and
organized organized well. directions. There
efficiently. was no
organization.

Written Analysis Written analysis Written analysis Written analysis Written analysis
and reflection are mostly complete, mostly incomplete was not turned in
___/20 complete and but lacks detail. and does not offer or was not
provide detail and detail. attempted.
insight to your
poster.
 Appendix B

Blog responses
Reference
 Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The New Literacies. Retrieved November 29, 2016,

from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/new-literacies

Sawyer, R. Keith. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2006

Snyder, B. (2012). How to start a home-based blogging business.

Vygotsky lives. (n.d.). Retrieved December 01, 2016, from

https://www.teachingtimes.com/kb/71/vygotsky-lives.htm

Zhao, Y. (2009). Catching up or leading the way: American education in the age of

globalization. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.