Innovative Ideas for Using Cell Phones to Summarize and Take Notes

Editor's note: This is part two in series of posts focused on the nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas from the book Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock.

Summarizing and note taking promote greater comprehension by asking students to analyze a subject and determine what is most important and share that information in a new way that makes sense given the task at hand. According to research, this requires substituting, deleting, and keeping some information while having an awareness of the basic structure of the information presented. To do this students must be able to analyze information at a deep level. Here are some ideas for ways that strategies to summarize and take notes can be enriched with cell phones.

Classroom Practice in Summarizing: The "Rule-Based" Strategy

The rule-based strategy is a summarizing technique developed by Brown, Campione, and Day (1981) and follows theses simple rules: 1) Delete trivial material unnecessary to understanding 2) delete redundant material, 3) Substitute superordinate terms, and 4) Select or create a topic sentence.

• Subject: Social Studies
• Topic: Current Events
• Lesson Overview: The teacher will introduce a current topic in the news and ask students to find out more about it from a recent news story using print or digital newspaper, video, or magazine. The teacher will show students how to find the Twitter tag related to this current event. The teacher will ask the students to use the rule-based strategy to create an engaging tweet that summarizes the current event and to also reply to someone else's current event-related tweet using information they have learned in their studies. The teacher will model this activity for the class showing how the rule-based strategy can be implemented around a trending topic on Twitter. Ideally in the modeled lesson, the teacher will tweet a summary that leads to replies and retweets as part of an authentic global conversation.
• How technology enriches the lesson:
• Students gain an important 21st century skill necessary for success in the world of social media which is how to have a global conversation about current issues. Twitter instantly opens the door to others interested in common topic and enables thinkers and learners to connect.
• Summarizing in this way instantly provides students with an authentic purpose for summarizing.
  

Classroom Practice in Summarizing: Summary Frames

Research on summarizing indicates that being aware of the explicit structure of information is an aid to summarizing information. Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock suggest summary frames as an effective summarizing strategy. With summary frames the teacher provides students with a series of questions designed to highlight critical elements for specific types of information. The 6 types of summary frames they identify are 1) The Narative Frame 2) The Topic-Restriction-Illustration Frame 3) The Definition Frame 4) The Argumentation Frame 5) The Problem/Solution Frame 6) The Conversation Frame.

• Subject: Literacy
• Topic: Summarizing books
• Lesson Overview: In this lesson the teacher is working with students to develop summaries of their school library's fairy tale collection. The teacher will select a summary frame to use with the students to walk them through the process of summarizing their selected fairy tale. The teacher will begin by modeling this as a class activity to summarize a previously read book. While at school each student will pick a fairy tale to summarize using a summary frame. For homework each student will call the teacher's Google Voice number to record their book summary. Note: All summaries should follow a standard format such as: name of book, summary, name of student (first name only). These will be placed on the "Fairy Tales" page of library area of the school's website. When visitors come to this page they'll see book covers with the Google Voice summary recording underneath. This will help other students in the school select books that might be of interest to them when visiting the library.
• How technology enriches the lesson:
• Using Google Voice to capture students summaries provides students with a real reason for summarizing a book. The work they do will be added to the class website and shared with other students to help them make book choices. The use of cell phones implicitly answers the question, "Why do we need to learn this?" This is a skill that is not only useful for students in school, it's also an activity that they can use for their home libraries. In fact kids in a neighborhood or apartment building may even work collaboratively to share summaries of each child's home library to encourage book trading and swapping.
• Capturing the audio of a summary enables students to hear their writing. Listening to your writing read back to you is helpful in checking if it is clear and makes sense.

Classroom Practice in Note Taking

While note taking is commonly thought of as a school activity, the reality is that in life people take notes all the time. Perhaps you're having a conversation with someone and they mention a book you should read, perhaps you're enjoying a delicious meal with a friend and she shares the recipe, maybe you find yourself lucky enough to run into a pro athlete who plays a sport you are involved in and she gives you tips. These are all great times to take notes. In Classrooms Instruction that Works the authors share the following research on note taking. 1) Verbatim note taking is, perhaps, the least effective way to take notes. 2) Notes should be considered a work in progress. 3) Notes should be used as study guides for tests. 4) The more notes that are taken, the better. While traditionally in school students are taught techniques for taking notes in class on paper, more and more students are using their cell phones for taking notes. Even basic cell phones these days have a note or memo feature and using this to take notes provides a number of advantages over traditional paper and pen.

• Subject: Any subject
• Topic: Any topic
• Lesson Overview: More and more digital immigrants share that they prefer texting on the cell phone to typing or handwriting stating that the closeness of the keys makes it a fast and easy way to create a message or idea. Educators who embrace this preference that many students have can support students by letting them take class notes on their phone. Doing so allows students to take notes in a medium many prefer.
• How technology enriches the lesson:
• Notes on a cell phone are searchable. Just go to your cell phone memo or notes application and start typing in the name of your notes. They instantly pop up.
• Notes on a cell phone are available on demand, anytime/anywhere. Students take notes about concepts that are important for their learning. By taking notes on a cell phone they are instantly accessible anytime, anywhere you need them.
• On many cell phones notes can be shared. This could be helpful for a student who is absent or for study groups that want to compare notes.
  

Cell phones are powerful tools to enrich learning for students who are summarizing and note taking. Stay tuned for my next post focusing on how cell phones can support students in reinforcing effort and providing recognition.

Innovative Ways to Engage Learners with Cell Phones Using Research-Based Strategies

There are a variety of free and easy ways to enrich instruction and engage learners using cell phones, but because the idea of using a cell phone as a learning rather than a social tool is so new, teachers often need justification to support incorporating such tools into the classroom. Sharing ways cell phones can be used to enrich instruction and engage learners using research-based instructional strategies is a great way to convince administration, parents and guardians that incorporating cell phones into instruction makes sense. The book Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock outlines nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade levels. The strategies are:

1. Identifying similarities and differences
2. Summarizing and note taking
3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
4. Homework and practice
5. Nonlinguistic representations
6. Cooperative learning
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback
8. Generating and testing hypotheses
9. Cues, questions, and advance organizers

In this first of a series of posts focused on each strategy you will be introduced to some ways cell phones can enrich instruction and engage learners in the first strategy.

Innovative Classroom Practices Using Cell Phones to Identify Similarities and Differences
Looking at the similar and dissimilar characteristics of a concept or idea enhances a students understanding of and ability to use knowledge. Teachers can directly present similarities and differences, accompanied by deep discussion and inquiry, or ask students to identify similarities and differences on their own. Teacher-directed activities focus on identifying specific items. Student-directed activities encourage variation and broaden understanding. Graphic organizers provide one good way to represent similarities and differences but don't easily lend themselves to enhancement with cell phones. Here are some ideas for ways that strategies to identify similarities and differences can be enriched with cell phones.

• Comparing: Teacher-directed example
  In teacher-directed comparing the teacher identifies for students the items they are to compare and the characteristics on which they are to base the comparison. This provides focus for the type of conclusions students will reach.
  

• Subject: Social Studies
  
• Topic: Women in History
• Lesson Overview: The social studies teacher will increase students understanding in women's role in history with a study of women in politics such as Shirley Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, Condelisa Rice,and Hilary Clinton. The teacher will share a video documentary to give students a common platform of knowledge and information about these historical figures. The teacher will ask students to take notice of the similarities and differences between each politician on characteristics such as background, major responsibilities, and notable achievements. Students will be asked to review their notes and use Poll Everywhere to select one reflection to text about each characteristic to each of the three polls set up. One for background, another for major responsibilties and the third for notable achievements. The teacher will demonstrate a model for each characteristic in class. When the students come together the next day, the teacher will project responses for students to review and then discuss what the reflections mean.
  
• How technology enriches the lesson:
  
• Students can get to the thinking faster because class time is not spent on calling on select students to read heir answers. All answers are already collected before class begins and class time can move to the making of meaning.
  
• All student voices are heard. This gives every student an opportunity to contribute and participate as every student's input is collected.
  
• Teachers can know in advance if students have grasped the key concepts and relevant points and adjust instruction accordingly before, not after the lesson since feedback is collected before class begins.

• Comparing: Student-directed example
  In student-directed comparing the students identifies the items they are to compare and/or the characteristics on which they are to base the comparison.
  
• Subject: Literacy
• Topic: Elements of literature
• Lesson Overview: Students are engaged in a unit of study the major elements of literature (i.e. universal theme, point of view). Students are asked to select two stories they've read in the selected genre and to compare them on the literary elements. Students will describe what they learned about the stories' literary characteristics using Voki.com. The teacher will create a page on her website or wiki where student work will be shared. Each student will create a Voki that provides a verbal telling of the literary elements of their story. Once the Voki's are all placed all the page a site is now set up for all class members to learn from one another by clicking on the various Vokis. Students and families should be encouraged to listen to multiple Vokis and even comment back.
• How technology enriches the lesson:
• All student work is published so that it is shared with other students in the class as well as families. As a result students can learn from each other.
• The Voki format promotes conversation. Students can listen to their classmates and provide thoughtful responses on the topics of interest to them.
• Creating a class Voki page is an excellent way to bring student's families into the conversation and a great way to encourage their participation.
  

• Classifying: Teacher-directed
  In teacher-directed classifying students are given the elements to classify and categories into which elements should be classified. The focus ins on uderstanding why items belong in the categories in which they are placed.
  
• Subject: Physical Education
  
• Topic: Knowledge of Sports
  
• Lesson Overview: Students watch the olympics and asked to classify various events in categories of those that require mainly strength, those that require mainly precision and accuracy and those that require about an equal amount of each. In class students describe how they categorized events and defend why they put them in specific categories. The teacher will set up polls on Polleverywhere listing all the Olympic sports allowing students to text one of the three answers: strength, agility, strength and agility. As students watch each sport and record their answers, the poll is instantly tabulated graphically for class review. The charts can be embedded into a webpage or wiki and ready for class discussion.
  
• How technology enriches the lesson:
  
• Student responses are not collected in isolation. They become part of the collective whole. Once a student responds they can see how their answer compared with the answer of others and the entire class response can be seen instantly upon arrival to class.
• All graphs can be shared on one wiki or web page making an easy-to-understand visual representation of results.
• Discussions can be richer when a collective intelligence is shared, rather than "just" one student's opinion.
• Narratives, collaborative Google documents, or the recorded discussion of each item can be shared on the web page or wiki to give life to each poll.
  

Cell phones are powerful tools to enrich learning for students identifying similarities and differences. Stay tuned for my next post focusing on how cell phoes can support students in the research-based strategy of summarizing and note taking.

Imagine That…

By Jacob Gutnicki

Let me share with you something wild
Imagine a school for the whole child

From academics to social success to well being
Imagine a school that fosters a love of reading

Laptops, Cell Phones, Web 2.0 Applications, oh how cool
Imagine all the children always being motivated in school

Boring Lectures, Over-testing, Skill and Drill no more
Imagine children understanding what they are learning for

Sorry it was just a dream
April Fool’s Day, know what I mean

10 Ideas for Innovative Math Instruction

Innovative educators know that math doesn't have to be boring or abstract. There are several innovative ideas for spicing up your math class. My favorite idea for educating innovatively in math is mathcasting which is fabulous, free, and easy. The first three articles below touch on the concept. The fourth article introduces two really interesting math resources that innovative math educators may find of interest. One is a site that has great ideas for relating math to real life and another is a bank of videos that students stuck on a concept can refer to when necessary. The fifth, sixth, and seventh article highlight some software programs that math educators might find of interest for remediation, though they're more geared toward elementary. The eighth article has some inspirational lectures to inspire math students, and the ninth article looks at an innovative math program piloted in New York City. The last is a link to Teachers.tv which is fabulously cool and free. From algebra to vectors - and everything in between - the site enables you to explore ways to get the message across and bring math to life.

1. Kids Teach Kids with Mathcasting
2. There is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch: 8 Free and Easy Ways to Begin Educating Innovatively
3. 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It!
4. Innovative Ideas That Make Sense for Those Hungry for Math Instruction
5. Free Math, Language Arts, and Geography Games
6. Timez Attack Helps Kids Have Fun Tackling Math Times Tables
7. Game-Based Learning Site for Innovative Math Educators
8. 100 Incredible Open Lectures for Math Geeks
9. 5 Innovative Ways to Differentiate Instruction as Witnessed During My Visit to the School of One
10. Teacher's TV - Math

If you find any of these ideas useful, please share your thoughts in a comment or even a guest post on The Innovative Educator.

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Update:
Here's another great resource:
"Science of NFL Football" is a 10-part video series funded by the National Science Foundation and produced in partnership with the National Football League. Lessonopoly has created student activities and lesson plans to support the video series which will help students learn concepts like nutrition, kinematics, and projectile motion. Each video is complemented with lesson plans which include fun classroom activities.

What Happens When you Give a 3, 4, 8-Year-Old an iTouch?

When asked what an appropriate age is to integrate cell phones into the classroom, I recommend doing so at the time they exist for most outside of the classroom. According to Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project today that means around 12-years-old for cell phones. However, it is at a much earlier age that children become intrigued with iTouches, often commandeering one of a parent, family member or friend when possible. Conversely adults have found that putting one of these devices into the hands of a young child can keep them entertained for quite some time. The beauty of these devices for educational use is that they are functional without cell phone service operating wherever there is an internet connection.

For educators interested in integrating technology into the lower grade classrooms, iTouches might be a tool to explore. Below are a few ways that 3, 4, and 8 year olds have been using iTouches. Each of them addresses different ways in which iTouches have become an engaging tool for students. They all make strong cases about the power of providing tech to students. You'll notice with each of them the appeal of the tactile experience that digital technology provides. When I hear folks reminisce about the "feel of the book" I think about how much richer the experience could be digitally. This first video does a great job of conveying this.

Why an iPhone could actually be good for your 3-year-old


Should a 4-year-old have an iPhone?
Marc Prensky shares how his four-year-old uses his iTouch for reading, writing, drawing and more.

What happens when you give a class of 8 year old children an iPod touch each?

In this video you see students using iTouches devices like it's second nature just like they do outside the classroom. They use the devices for reading, writing research and more using applications that are either free or much less expensive than the traditional textbook.

iPod Touches in our Pre-K Classroom

This video features a Pre-K student who explains how she is using an iPod touch to help her learn to spell better.

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Finding apps to use with your students

These are just a few ideas for using iTouches with early elementary students. The best way for educators to determine what's right for their students is to start with learning goals and then partner with students and parents/guardians to determine ways various technologies can help meet them.

Appolicious
A terrific resource for teachers and students engaging in this work is www.appolicious.com, a site where users can find and share the mobile apps they love listed by categories like "kids" and "education." Not only is this a great resource, but encouraging students and their parents to share and review apps for the world is also a powerful learning experience.

The iPhone Mom
Another terrific resource for finding iTouch Apps is www.theiphonemom.com. This site is maintained by the mother of four iPhone/iTouch using kids. This is a great way to bring families into the conversation. Have your student explore apps with their families. Remember, not all students need to use the same apps to accomplish a learning goal. Share with your student's parents/guardians what you're trying to help their children learn and ask them to visit this resource for ideas. Encourage your student's parents to begin establishing their digital footprint by commenting on the blog with feedback they have from using the apps with their children and teachers can do the same with class reviews of apps they find useful.

Engage Learners with A "Do Something" Curriculum

By Michael Staton
Cross posted at edumorphology.com

The Innovative Educator's popular post "Fix Boring Schools, Not Kids Who Are Bored" struck a cord with many readers. Add me to the list of bored, restless, and misbehaved children that fit in the educational system like a square peg in a round hole. In second grade, my school tried to hold me back for not being “developed” enough after consistent misbehavior. As a result my mom took me to get some tests done and I tested into fourth grade. Weary of putting a scrawny ADHD dork into rooms full of boys three years larger my mom opted not to go this route. By High School, I set a school record, but not the kind that makes a mother proud. By that time I wasn’t buying the whole scene. I got into punk rock and my record was for the most detentions served. I was never engaged in school. My success as an adult, occurred despite, rather than because of my education. If not for reckless ambition following the onset of testosterone and political activism involved in the positive side of the punk rock subculture, I might have never reapplied myself.

The most irritating aspect about school for me was the focus on remembering fleeting knowledge. The curriculum was content driven, and though there were some skills that came along the way - writing, mathematical, and analytical, - the daily practice of schools was in the “do homework/take the test,” kind of vein. I wanted dramatically to learn TO DO SOMETHING.

Even then, when the internet was still in its infancy, it was clear to me that content knowledge was almost always something you could look up and master quickly when needed, but that to learn to "do something" – to learn to produce good work, from scratch and of economic and social value – was what would be relevant in the world.

Today, I run an education focused start-up called Inigral in San Francisco. Being an entrepreneur means having to immediately learn (and hire and support others in learning) a range of skills and procedures. I need people on board that can do things and/or throw themselves into something and learn full competency quickly. Contract law, finance, design, product development, engineering, etc. The world of work makes it painfully obvious that the school curriculum is not aligned to the world outside school.

Some people are fortunate to find programs where they can pick up these kind of skills in college, and there’s some validity that the core curriculum in part sets the basic platform for later economic contribution. But, mainly, I see that people figure this out how to "do something" DESPITE the schooling system rather than because of it. For example, in my own company our Chief Technology Officer taught himself software engineering in high school, and an intern I hired taught himself video production.

School can effectively prepare students if they don’t focus on “procedural knowledge” – the act of mastering and employing a skill to attain value. School must start teaching that life is a series of new processes and skills you will have to master, therefore the operation of acquiring new skills is perhaps the most important skill of all.

Just as important is the ability to anticipate what kind of skills will be relevant, to adapt, and to proactively learn from them. After all, the necessary skill set in the workforce transforms rapidly.

This is not a new idea. We have seen trade-based courses and non-core electives that focus on skills. We have also seen the rise of Project-Based Learning and other models of instruction. However, I have yet to see a "do something" curriculum or school design. Somehow the American conversation on education actually devalues approaches without a singular focus on core content. It's that strange obsession that, I feel, has us barking up the wrong tree altogether.