Creating Deeply-Digital Curricula for GenAlpha Learners: Using the Collabrify Roadmap Platform

Purpose & objective

The goals of the session are 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. And, how to create and use deeply-digital curricula, using the Collabrify Roadmap Platform, to address those unique needs of GenAlphas.

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. Students can work together in these tools even when they are not co located! Students - and teachers - can use the "phone" function to talk through the computer to each other.

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!

There are five major activities that a teacher must perform in a 1-to-1, digital curricula-based, classroom: create an assignment, distribute that assignment (differentiating where necessary, and creating collaborative groups when appropriate), monitor the enactment of the lesson (moving between group work and whole class instruction, seamlessly), assess student artifacts, post-enactment (including the use of learning analytics collected during enactment), share Roadmaps with other educators.

In our hands-on workshop, attendees will learn how to use the Collabrify Roadmap Platform to carry out the above five major activities. Inasmuch as Collabrify is itself collabrified, teachers can work together, synchronously, in real-time, to create OER-based lessons (Open Education Resources).

Importantly, attendees can talk with fellow teachers who have created and used Roadmaps in their classrooms. We are purposely bringing a contingent of Roadmap-using teachers to provide support during the workshop. Informal conversations will spring up and attendees will be able to tap into the classroom experiences of the presenters.

At the end of our session, teachers will know how to (1) create differentiated, (if desired) digital lesson “Roadmaps” with multiple learning activities (reading/viewing multiple media, collaboratively constructing artifacts, etc.) that use OER (Open Education Resources) from OER marketplaces, and that address the unique educational needs of GenAlpha learners; (2) distribute a lesson Roadmap with pre-made collaborative workgroups; (3) monitor enactment of a lesson Roadmap, displaying and discussing the work of different student groups to the whole class using a projector, and tweaking collaborative workgroup membership in real-time due to absences, etc.; (4) and post- enactment, assess and provide feedback by easily visiting each student’s files as the files are all in one place; (5) use – or not – Google Classroom with Collabrify; (6) access, use, and share/contribute lesson Roadmaps from/to Collabrify’s online Roadmap repository.

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 with a focus on impact on GenAlphas- 5 minutes
-Share Roadmap Tutorial with participants to help them learn to navigate a Roadmap & work with tools in Collabrify -15 minutes
-Provide time for participants to create/modify a Roadmap - 20 minutes
-Reflect on next steps & share resources for continued support with Roadmaps - 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