Tech Goals with Miss Andrews

I wanted to embed my super great video right onto my post, but I haven’t gotten quite that savvy yet. Instead, I’m going to ask you to click this link here in order to view my directorial debut.

I thought Dvolver was actually a super cute little tool. I’d never played around with animation, even in that very simple form, so it was a new adventure for me, overall. That being said, I don’t think that my animation, cute though it may be, conveys the idea that I’m serious about my goals, so I want to take a moment to elaborate.

Goal 1 – I want to develop an understanding for technology in the classroom that benefits my students with IEPs and 504 plans. I got to do a little of this when I was a long-term substitute, as I tried to integrate ways for students who had difficulties writing things down by hand to work digitally alongside their classmates. The tools I created to aid this process ended up as valuable resources for a wide variety of my students. I want to keep cultivating my set of tools for students with varied learning needs

Goal 2 – Relevance! I know this is such a ‘no duh’ one to include in my goals, but it’s real! I want to make sure the technology I’m using is relevant. I don’t want to be the kind of teacher who uses technology just because I can and to meet some expectation. I want to pick and choose technology that reflects greater themes in my classroom. Students can smell crap from a mile away, so I want to keep my use of technology useful and genuine.

Goal 3 – This is more of a goal for myself over this class. I want to make sure to catalog and try out lots of different technology! I want to get past my worries about technology and my fear of trying something I might suck at the first time. I want to move through a dozen different means of tech without fear! I sound like I’m about to embark on a survivor-esque competition, but the drama comes from a place of anxiety.

So that being said, it’s time for a few thoughts on Dvolver. I didn’t spend quite as much time with the application as I would have liked, but I found it fun & easy to use! Some of the options were a little limited, but I think that’s understandable from a free service. It’s a little goofy, or at least, it makes it easy for someone like me (who is inclined to be goofy) to create a goofy product.

I think that as a classroom tool, Dvolver could be a really interesting way to allow students to interact with the texts they typically regard as inaccessible. You could ask students to break down a scene from a Shakespeare play, for example, and put it into their own language. Students might think Romeo and Juliet is a little more interesting, after all, if they can think of the Nurse as a bear and Romeo as a talking skeleton. Because the scenes that Dvolver allows a user to create are all dialogue-based, it could actually be a fascinating way to get students to think like playwrights. How might they convey a complicated interaction in a short snippet of dialogue, for example?

Overall, I had fun making the product, and I think if I had spent a little more time experimenting with Dvolver, I could have created the kind of product I would be thrilled to see from my own students. My only concern would be keeping students engaged with the task. I’m sure they’d have fun with Dvolver, but would it be difficult to convey importance or a serious scene through a silly video? Am I being a stick in the mud to even worry about that?