Thus far in my student teaching, I have used technology to help me grow as a teacher, but I have had a hard time incorporating it into my classroom. Aside from the research trips to the library, I have not been able to incorporate it into a lesson. However, one night as I was drifting off to sleep stressing about how I needed to create a lesson about Paulo Coehlo, the author of The Alchemist. I already knew the students were hating the fact that they were going to be reading a book to finish off their senior year and that was on my mind because I was new to the class and wanted to win them over to make everyone's life easier for the last 6 weeks of school. So I picked up my phone and started searching "Alchemist" when it hit me, when don't I have my students do this during class?! YES! So I wrote a lesson plan using student inquiry and phones to research and learn about Paulo Coehlo.
The next day in class I asked students to get into groups of 4 to 6 and make sure they had at least 1 smart phone in the group. When I said that, students started buzzing, asking questions and wanting to know why they needed their phones. After giving, directions and making it a competition to find the most facts students were immediately engaged. I gave them 5 minutes to find as many facts as possible, what they didn't know is after the inquiry they were going to read off their facts and have to cross off any repeats. Then they would earn points by how many facts they had in the end. The inquiry part went well and almost every group was fully engaged in researching the author and the book, other groups were checking Facebook and Instagram. I tried to get them back on track a couple of times, but knew that if they weren't focused they wouldn't get points so I didn't stress much about those groups because I gave all students a chance to switch groups halfway through the activity.
Overall it was a fun and easy way to use technology and successful in getting students to talk with one another and hear the information a few times before moving on. The reading off of the facts was an added bonus because it kept groups engaged with the material and listening to what other groups had to say because they had to double check if they had the same facts. I also liked it because in the end, students who worked hard and were fully engaged and focused got full credit and those that slacked off and used their time to update their status did not. It was a balance between content, technology and student engagement as well as a fair way to grade students on their participation.
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