EEND 676B: Artifact #2 Reflection

Another artifact that I created for this class is my State Advantages and Disadvantages Project using Google. I created this lesson for Module 4:Google Tools. I chose this lesson for a few reasons. One reason I chose this lesson is the variety of Google Tools that are required for students to use. Students need to use Google Slides, Google Forms and Google Sheets to complete this assignment. I think that it is important for my students to have more experiences with all of these tools. At this point in the year my students have used each of these tools at least once in my classroom. However, this lesson requires them to not just use the document, but to create their own forms and graphs using these tools. I would like to incorporate more of these kinds of learning opportunities for my students. Another reason I chose this lesson is the content. The idea of advantages and disadvantages of the different geographical regions is something that my class has struggled with. When I implement this lesson at the end of the school year, my students will have spent more time exploring these comments. I believe this lesson will allow them to show off how their understanding has increased through the school year. 

I found the creation of this lesson to be very challenging. The idea that I needed to use three different Google tools in one lesson seemed a little overwhelming when I got started. I knew I wanted to create a lesson based upon our Social Studies curriculum. This is an area that my students would really benefit from. Additionally, the curriculum is much older than the other curriculum and could benefit from some updated lessons. However, I struggled to find a way that students could use multiple google tools while still staying focused on a social studies task. However, after debating a few different options, I thought that it would be beneficial for students to be able to reflect upon their peers' reactions to their slides. Hopefully the Google Form and the collected data on the Google Sheet will help students to reflect and understand why one advantage and disadvantage was viewed the best by his/her peers. 

My goal is to use this lesson towards the end of the school year. At that point students will have learned about the 5 different geographical regions and will have spent more time developing an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the regions. Currently they struggle with providing evidence to support their thoughts about advantages and disadvantages. At the end of the year students are also assigned a state to give a presentation about. I feel that this lesson would be a great supplement to the State Project. Finally, I feel that this lesson really shows how my understanding of collaborative web tools have improved through this class. Google is such a wonderful resource with so many options. I feel that prior to learning in Module 4, my students worked almost solely on Google Docs. This lesson shows how I have learned ways to incorporate different Google elements into my lesson. Similarly, in the past I had only used Google Forms as a way to gather information about students. This lesson, however, allows students to create their own Google Forms and collect and analyze that data using Google Sheets. This class has truly inspired me to expand my use of Google in the classroom.