One Best Thing Review:
One best thing is a collection of iBooks from Apple Distinguished Educators that aim to increase the use of Apple resources and technologies in the classroom. Each book features a teacher and a certain lesson practice they find successful and want to share with other educators. I like this idea because it allows teachers to gain resources for their classrooms and also get inspiration.
The iBook I chose was titled Student Authored Textbooks: A Student's Perspective on History. I picked this title because I will be a history teacher and I am always looking for ideas for lessons that are more student based and less lecture. The author of this iBook is Isaac Pineda (@Kairosedtech on twitter) who is a technology Integration coach in Monterrey, Mexico. He works as an educator at a K-9 school called Colegio Ingles. He is an advocate for education and technology and posts about this on his blog Kairos EdTech .
The iBook I chose was titled Student Authored Textbooks: A Student's Perspective on History. I picked this title because I will be a history teacher and I am always looking for ideas for lessons that are more student based and less lecture. The author of this iBook is Isaac Pineda (@Kairosedtech on twitter) who is a technology Integration coach in Monterrey, Mexico. He works as an educator at a K-9 school called Colegio Ingles. He is an advocate for education and technology and posts about this on his blog Kairos EdTech .
Pineda noticed his eighth graders were accustomed to the traditional classroom environment and he wanted to switch things up to get his students more engaged and involved in their learning. He devised a plan to help students take ownership of their learning by developing a student centered classroom. To do this Pineda had students pretend they were publishers and authors while making their own history textbooks. He did this by using Apple's Multi Touch textbooks so that students could use technology and creativity for this project. This was an eight-week project that involved students facing the challenges of writing and publishing their work. To do this, students had to first extensively research their topic and then perform their "job" with the publishing company. Jobs included directors, editors, researchers, designers, and more. I like the publishing company jobs because it gave students more autonomy and choice in their learning which Pineda agrees, sparked motivation. Because this is a very large project compared to many other that are typical in most schools, this required a process of small goals to reach the bigger goal of publishing their own history book to share with classmates and even a larger audience of Apple users. I like that Pineda planned a "publishing workflow" to keep this task less overwhelming for students. At the end of the project, Pineda's students created four books on the French Revolution that have been download 1,000 times from people all over the globe. One of Pineda's favorite outcome of this project that makes it his one Best Thing is that student's are engaging in meaningful learning and taking ownership of their creation. I also think this project is good for late middle school and early high school students because it gets them thinking about these types of jobs that exist in the real world. This increases students motivation and content knowledge. However, I think eight weeks is a long time time to spend on one project and only one topic when there are so many other standards to cover. I could still definitely see myself using a modified version of this project in my future history class. I would give my students each a different topic in one larger unit such as the Civil War and have students research a particular event or battle relating to the topic. Then students would make their own textbooks for their assigned topic and finally present them to the class. This would be a student based learning activity where they can take more ownership in their learning process and grow in certain skills.