Beyond the Classroom Walls

Misunderstood. A wonderful title for the winter 2013 Apple advertisement. My eyes filled with tears when I first saw this holiday commercial. Certainly, the family theme tugged at my heart. But the true joy was the ad's revelation of what our teens are capable of doing when given the time, freedom, technology and understanding. 

Empowering students to use their technology to think critically, collaborate, create, communicate will ultimately empower them to learn.

What Do Parents Think About Mobile Learning? | Edutopia suggests that many parents support the use of personal mobile devices for learning. 

Many parents agree completely or somewhat that mobile devices and apps can build creative and life skills, as well as help children learn academic content and skills.

Reading this article and the results from the study completed by The Learning First Alliance and Grunwald Associates in spring of 2013 sparked my personal goal to increase the use of student owned devices for digital learning projects at Westford Academy. Informal surveys of students in German classes indicated that 75% of students owned a mobile device capable of capturing images and video. But were they using them for academic purposes?

During the 2013-2014 school year, I am working particularly with a group of German Honors students as they expand their language use "outside the classroom walls". Students are assigned projects that require speaking German in the school halls, in their homes and in their community. Increasing the target language use outside the classroom supports the World Language curriculum goal:

Increase target language use at the beginner and college prep levels.  

Students are assigned theme based video projects of speaking German in their world using mobile devices. Video making on the devices is simple and clean. Students are encouraged to record themselves and their surroundings to build a story based on the assigned theme. 

Six iPod Touch devices were purchased for student loan providing an equitable learning experience for all project participants.  A practice session was presented during class using school ipads and iMovie. Students were assigned their first project and were off and recording.

To date, students have completed three videos. Completed projects were uploaded to a private class YouTube channel. Speaking assessments have been completed using the Westford Academy World Language Speaking Rubric. The latest project was assessed using the Westford Academy Digital Media Presentation Rubric (DRAFT). We have identified areas for video making improvement and will be targeting different elements of the video making using mobile devices thoughout the year.

Throughout the year, completed projects (with student's permission) will be posted here with feedback from teachers and students.