Using Deeply-Digital Curricula To Connect With Today’s Alpha Generation Learners

Purpose & objective

The goal of the session is to better understand the educational needs of the Alpha Generation students (children born after 2010) and how those needs can be effectively addressed using the deeply-digital curricula hosted by the Collabrify Roadmap Platform. A focus

The Collabrify Roadmap Platform (Collabrify) supports teachers as they engage with their Alpha Generation students. Collabrify is free, browser- based, device-agnostic and works well with Google Classroom. Collabrify was developed by the Center for Digital Curricula at the University of Michigan (College of Engineering), with funding from George Lucas Education Research and the NSF. At the heart of the process is the Roadmap – a digital representation of a lesson. Structured like a concept map, each “node” in the Roadmap is a learning activity, e.g., interact with a simulation, read a PDF, watch a video, create an animation, answer specific review questions, etc. The Roadmap can contain virtually any URL from the Internet. Importantly, the Roadmap directs students to use apps, e.g., Google Apps for Education, or a host of apps that the Center has constructed, e.g., Collabrify Map (concept mapping), Collabrify Flipbook (drawing and animating), Collabrify KWL (brainstorming), Collabrify MultiMediaWriter (enable students to use audio, video, etc., to express themselves), Collabrify Chart (spreadsheeting), Collabrify PDFPal (PDF markup). Those apps were expressly designed to support young, GenAlphas, e.g, PDFPay is usable to write on, draw on, record their voice on, worksheets. All the apps make student-student (student-teacher, teacher-teacher) very easy to initiate and to carry on. In effect, PDFpal turns a paper-based curricular material in to an interactive, collaborative learning activity.

Collabrify is not text-heavy, text-centric; Collabrify tries to make it as easy to use audio as it is to use text. Now, we have a ways to go, but that is the goal! A child might well understand the science of a water wheel, but expressing herself/himself in text is a problem. MultimediaWriter enables that student to use audio or video to express their understanding so the teacher can better understand what a student does or does not understand. GenAlphas are not GenZ’ers – and GenAlphas – and GenBetas – are not going back to paper!

Outline

-Discuss how GenZ’ers are different than GenAlphas, and discuss the educational impact of those differences. 5
-Explain how Collabrify Roadmaps work & benefits of using Roadmaps – 5 minutes
-Share example Roadmaps from various content areas and grade levels & describe the different ways educators are using Roadmaps in their classrooms – 15 minutes
-Question and Answer Conversation: 10 minutes

Supporting research

Pollack, S., (2023) Mastering Marketing Strategies For Generation Alpha, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2023/02/13/mastering-marketing-strategies-for-generation-alpha/?sh=52477be7741c
Jong, S., Song, Y., Norris, C. A., & Soloway, E. M. (Eds.). (2021). Teacher Professional Development in STEM Education. In S. Jong, Y. Song, C. A. Norris, & E. M. Soloway (Eds.), Educational Technology & Society: Vol. 24 (4th ed., pp. 81–84). International Forum of Educational Technology & Society. https://www.j-ets.net/
Norris, C., Soloway, E., Tapp, A. (2021) The Digital Transformation Happened Overnight in K-12: Implications for Teacher Education, What teacher educators should have learned from 2020. Ferdig, R.E., & Pytash, K. (Eds.) Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/p/219088/

Norris, C., Soloway (06/16/20) The Lesson of COVID-19: Learning at School and Learning at Home Must Be Seamless https://thejournal.com/articles/2020/06/16/seamless.aspx

Norris, C. Soloway, E. (03/06/19) OER 3.0: K-12 Teachers in Michigan Are
Creating and Using Deeply-Digital, OER Curricula, https://thejournal.com/articles/2019/03/06/oer 3.0.aspx