IT+Reflection+Journal+Prompt+3

Description: One of the assignments I give regularly to my freshmen students is a vocabulary assignment. When we start a new chapter, I introduce the chapter with a description, learning objectives and tools. I then assign the vocabulary from the specific chapter. At the beginning of each section in the book, usually four or five per chapter, there are vocabulary words. My goal is to get the students into the book at least once as I'm sure many of them are not doing there reading. The obvious easy way to get credit for this assignment is to copy the vocabulary definitions directly from the book or the back of the book, however, I made it clear to my students that they will get no points for those definitions. The students must tell me in their own words what the word means. I tell them to describe the word to me like I have no idea what it means. About half of the students do it the right way. So I thought it was time to use some technology and shake things up with this assignment. I asked the students who had a smartphone, Ipad, laptop with them. All but about ten percent in each class did. The ones that didn't were to use their books or do the assignment when they had access to technology. We have nothing in the classrooms and one of the problems with our computer lab is that you can't be spontaneous because its usually booked weeks in advance. Some teachers schedule their labs for the entire year in the first week of school. This is good planning I suppose but often backs up the labs for weeks. Anyway, I told the students to research the vocabulary words online and complete their assignments that way.

Impact: Immediately fun, some students made a race out of it, others obviously enjoyed using their tools instead of the book. Their was a little more buzz in the room than usual with this assignment. Their were some interesting questions and I think the students will have a much better understanding of the words. There was however, a few students that took the opportunity to surf as opposed to ding the work but that happens even when just using the book. I will be interested in the results of the vocabulary quiz this week to see if the grades are higher than usual.

Intent: My intent was to improve the students understanding of the content using the technology that was available. I was also trying to get the students more interested in the assignment. Informally, I gathered that the change was successful, however, the testing will be the ultimate judge of the assignments effectiveness. I should add that in the past, if the students had issues with understanding the words from the book only, I encouraged them to seek outside sources to gain a better understanding. I am aware by the answers that a few students were doing this. One positive aspect that I didn't anticipate was that the students had fun with the assignment.