Guaranteeing the 'A' in STEAM Through English Language Arts Technology Integration

Purpose & objective

English language arts (ELA) classrooms usually operate by focusing, rightfully, only on two basic skills: reading and writing. However, with the advent of pervasive technology and the STEAM movement, adding technology and design methodologies to reading and writing has opened new avenues for teachers to explore alternative projects, project based learning, and technology infused classroom instruction and project. However, often ELA teachers are limited by one or all of several factors: funding issues, knowledge, skill sets, mindset, ties to traditional curricular models, or departmental/district goals. This presentation seeks to give ELA teacher or curriculum coaches avenues and methodologies for adding technologically enabled lessons with design thinking components.

Attendees will experience and build three different types of ELA lesson types that will help to enable teachers to take the first step:
- Teaching storytelling / communal storytelling through Role Playing Game (RPG) play in a low technology, medium technology, and high technology version of game play.
- Using whiteboard tables and dry erase markers (any other medium could fill the creative aspect of the approach) students leave creative feedback for student writing in the form of written feedback or drawn feedback
- How to create Augmented Reality Pop Up books using TinkerCAD or Sketchup and Merge Cubes.

Each lesson has been taught by our presenters and we will walk our attendees through the process of making and developing the lesson plan within the session. Each attendee will also receive a collection of lesson plans on how to integrate technology and design thinking into the ELA classroom.

Outline

This presentation will follow this structure:
- Introductions (2 min)
- Overview of the session including an outline of all activities (5 min)
- Break into Role Playing Groups and play the game (25 min)
- Discuss the different game variant and answer any questions (5 min)
- Give teachers a minute to run through the crazy eights design thinking project (10 min)
- Discuss an overview of Graffiti Peer Feedback (3 min)
- Engage in Graffiti Peer Feedback (5 min)
- Unpack as a group how Graffiti Peer Feedback can help students share feedback quickly (5 min)
- Share and discuss an Augmented Reality Pop Up Book (5 min)
- Help teachers log in to either TinkerCAD or Sketchup and walk through how to create a .stl object with an attached story. (20 min)
- Final questions and feedback (5 min)

Supporting research

Recently many books have espoused a maker mentality in the classroom and has pushed teachers to develop new lesson plans that encourage 21st skills, or soft skills, including collaboration, creativity, communication, global empathy, and critical thinking. One of the key texts, "Intention" by Amy Burvall and Dan Ryder, explores the depths creativity can plumb when properly encouraged and engaged in the classroom. Using simple processes like color, shape, fonts, and design, claim Burvall and Ryder, can change how we understand our students and how our students understand our curricular materials. Also with recent changes due to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), particularly the development of "Portrait of a Graduate" documents, skills that develop creativity in the ELA, like empathy, collaboration, design, etc., are considered desirable for employers. Furthermore, when we employ technology educators can create innovative spaces for students to take classic pedagogical and curricular devices and turn them into 21st Century skill based learning tools.