Teaching and Learning in "Real Time" - the Document Camera in English

This is a reflection I wrote today for an action research project regarding the use of the document camera in English:

For this action research, I posited the question: “How does the use of the document camera affect student learning in the research paper process?” Throughout the study, I focused on scaffolding the students' learning with direct instruction, handouts, and especially through students modeling using the document camera. Last year, I had introduced the use of School Fusion slide shows and document posting on School Fusion to assist my students in the process of mastering MLA bibliographic formatting. While the students viewed the use of this web tool favorably, the slide show format on School Fusion visually displayed in a less clear ways than simply posting the slide show in PDF format. The students saw the blogging feature regarding topic commenting and sharing as primarily neutral. Again, the study was useful and informative to me as a teacher, but it lacked a dynamic quality in my view. Enter the classroom technology installation this fall! Immediately, I wanted to use the new presentation technology in a more dynamic and student-centered way. The document camera proved to be that dynamic tool that would allow my instructional style to meet its full potential.

When I design instruction, scaffolding the learning is my top priority. I will teach or review the learning in question with direct instruction including background knowledge, I will model or show past student models of the learning, and then students will do the assignment required. Later, I would photocopy a few student examples onto a transparency and show them to the students so we could use current, in-process work as models. When the document camera was installed in my room, I immediately saw how the document camera would replace my overhead projector - in fact, we could review student work in real-time, right on the spot. This gives immediacy to the work we do in class which was not present before. When it came to sharing topic brainstorms, for instance, students came up front, plopped their Writer's Notebooks down, and began to write in suggestions from their fellow students on their topical brainstorm webs. Most students were enthusiastic about getting the help, especially if they were at a standstill with ideas. Very few students refused to place their work up. Several students who didn't have the opportunity on a given day, even asked, "Can I be first tomorrow?" Surprisingly, several students who had turned in almost no work all year became engaged enough to place their work on the document camera. Clearly this was an opportunity for students to glean an accurate perception of themselves and others. I believe this allowed students who don't typically perform in class to see visually - "hey, I can do that," and lead to a 100% paper turn-in rate for the spring paper. Other factors are at play, of course, but I think seeing the ongoing development and models encouraged the low performing students to develop self-efficacy about completing the project while at the same time motivating all learners to "up their game" as they saw the work unfolding.

Before I started using the document camera, I visualized that students, with my guidance, would offer each other instant feedback, and that is what did happen. But another, more important outcome emerged: the students took over the feedback sessions. I stood or sat at the back of the room and participated, but frequently, the person at the doc camera ran his or her own feedback session. It didn't happen in every session, but I often was completely unnecessary except as a facilitator or moderator. This is when I realized the enormous potential of the document camera to build community in my classroom via peer interaction and learning. Yes, the document camera is an important tool for providing instant teacher feedback, but its potential to allow learners to take ownership and to provide feedback to each other is even more powerful. My scaffolding of the instruction is important and lays the groundwork for student academic success, but the students actually have a role in instructional scaffolding that I hadn't explored before.
In my doctoral work, I am researching motivation as it applies to situational learning factors, instructional factors, and student interest/engagement factors in the English Language Arts. Involving students in the learning process is a key factor in academic motivation and the document camera allows me to do that on an ongoing basis. Another aspect of motivation that is almost impossible for overloaded teachers to deliver is efficient feedback. No more waiting to find out if the students understand the learning - we simply stop and pop a few student models up on the doc camera, discuss, and immediately apply the feedback. In the coming years as I continue to teach with the document camera, I am going to include the "process check" model more fully so that students can get maximum feedback from me and my peers during the learning. To make this process more explicit, I am will integrate self-regulating exercises/feedback questions so that the students can learn to better monitor their work as they learn from each other. Students who engage in a self-regulated learning process in content-specific domains develop the meta-cognitive skills that contribute academic achievement. The document camera offers a huge potential to me as a teacher who wants her students to grow individually and as a community.

In closing, the document camera allows me to make English more a class of "doing" than "learning about." While it is somewhat clichéd, I continually work toward having my students "do English" to become proficient in reading, writing, and speaking, just as players "play basketball" to become proficient in playing basketball. In future action research studies, I may focus specifically on ways to promote peer engagement and immediate feedback during specific learning as opposed to "the effect of the document camera" -- that is, I plan to focus more on what and how the students and I are learning using the document camera as opposed to studying the effect of the document camera as a tool.

New Classroom Technologies

This year, to change up the research paper presentations, I asked my action research partner Fran Prather to prepare a lesson introducing critical media literacy skills, especially with visual information,  as she introduced the concept of digital storytelling to my English IV classes. First, we administered  a survey to find out what experience our students have had with Powerpoint, PhotoStory, or Windows Movie Maker (or any other movie program). Then, Fran and the class discussed the good, bad, and the ugly about Powerpoint presentations, and launched a video featuring a comic ripping on bad Powerpoints. Hilarious! Then this outstanding lesson continued as Fran  displayed an image and discussed the elements of the image (in this case, a picture of a Hatian woman in despair).  In the key part of the lesson, Fran presented the use of digital storytellng as a means of presenting their research topics to their peers. We both noticed that the video storytelling clips immediately engaged the students' attention. In one class, a presentation about tobacco companies' global marketing strategies was mis-interpreted to be a message to "stop smoking". NOWHERE in the presentation did this message occur! W believed that those students had a schema for PSA's about tobacco that truncated their ability to critically review. Later in the day, both of the other classes completely "got" the message of the clip. Interesting. The second clip, about Cesar Chavez didn't have voice overs that directed the viewers' attention. We expected students to not understand the video because of their lack of background knowledge. A few thought the protests and speeches featured were taking place in Mexico, and many were unfamiliar with Chavez's farm strikes and the issues around it. To gauge the quality and effectiveness of these presentations, Fran had an assessment for the clips on back of the survey. Animated discussion ensued as we walked through the  students' assessments of the presentations. 

Fran taught the first two senior English classes, and then I tried the lesson myself with another class. The lesson was so well crafted and demonstrated, that I found it easy (and fun!) to teach. Fran had organized the lesson and the clips through an attractive and professional-looking SMART Notebook 10 presentation. Fran's instructional design and choice of content structured the lesson to move learners from what they know (how to read an image) to the new learning - creating and evaluating a digital story.

Fran's lesson and use of our new classroom technologies inspired me. On the day following her presentation, I taught myself Notebook 10 in order to create a presentation for a staff development session I was giving on Wednesday on precis writing.  I then downloaded and inserted video clips from Discovery Education and linked web sites and documents.