- As with many things in education, these discussions can go on forever. These are my takes on the points and I would love to hear what others have to say. Reach out through twitter if you want to engage in discussions – @NewTeacherIdeas
- I will try my best to make more posts on Social Media, Video Games as Tools and Classroom Culture.
Restarting this blog after ten years couldn’t happen without discussing student engagement post virtual learning. One of the most frequent points that comes up when talking with colleagues, or even family and friends that are parents, is the lack of student engagement. This may not be the case in every school across Canada, but there are many parts of the country, and the US, where student engagement has dropped significantly. We need to try and better understand the possible reasons for the current lack of engagement in order to try and find answers to what is becoming a major issue in education. Mainly, we need to find answers for students that are controlled by the media they consume in a world where parents have less and less time to spend with their kids because they are all being pulled in so many different directions.
Although I’m sure that we would all like to forget our days during virtual learning, it is important to start this discussion with the way that education was handled during the pandemic. Ontario students spent an extended time outside of classrooms while teachers had to do the best they could with very little support from the government and school boards. At one time, in Ontario, our Minister of Education very specifically said that it did not matter if students did not attend class, or submit work. Although I fully understand the equity and access issues involving technology and the space or time to complete work, it is incredibly difficult to engage students who have been specifically told that it doesn’t matter. We could have all done our best and let the professional educators use their professional judgment to accurately assess students, we didn’t need to announce, through mass media, especially to high school students, that engagement was optional. One of the main issues with telling students, who are stuck at home, that academic engagement is optional, is that they will now be spending their time on other things. In most cases, unsupervised on social media or video games.
Recently I have had less time for video games, but I would still consider myself an avid gamer. I have a gaming computer and have the most recent consoles and VR headset too! The issue here is that, as mentioned, I have managed my time when needed. As my workload has increased, my gaming time has decreased. I’ve spent many more hours trying to create and implement engaging activities in my classroom, which has meant less time for gaming. The sentiment isn’t mutual. Many students are absolutely flabbergasted when they may have something to do at home that would take away from their gaming or TikTok time. How can you blame them when engagement was optional for two years? How do you re-engage students that were told, by some leaders, that it was okay to not participate in their education? I teach 12 year olds, and they are acting exactly as I would in this case. I don’t blame them at all, but I still need to find solutions. Not assigning homework, or giving more time to work in class is great in theory, but it doesn’t work when kids come to class exhausted because they went to bed at 3am after playing video games all night. Many students aren’t able to focus on the in-class activities because of the choices they have made the night before. The main problem here is that educators cannot possibly compete with billion dollar gaming companies and all-knowing social media entities. Support from families and funding from the governments would be a huge first step.
Many educators believe they are fighting a losing battle. I empathize with that, but that doesn’t mean that we can stop trying. The funding for education is becoming an afterthought in most of North America. Funding education appropriately for long term success is being overlooked for short term band-aids. I’d love to introduce 3D printing to my students, and would gladly volunteer to spend recess and lunch doing lessons for other classes. Of course, getting access to a 3D printer is almost impossible for most schools. Signing up for a printer purchased by the school board is a great start, but you may have access for a couple of weeks a year. The Ontario government has, rightfully so, added more STEM and coding focuses in both of the Science and Math curriculum, however there isn’t enough funding specifically for that for classroom teachers. How are we teaching coding without devices? We can be creative, for sure, but eventually students need to code on actual devices. Again, we are at a point where many educators are trying to compete with state of the art video games while teaching coding using YouTube or pencil and paper activities due to lack of funding or access to tech. As always, creativity and determination will be the friend of any “New Teacher” and there is definitely still hope!
All of the above may seem like an insurmountable mountain range of obstacles between educators and student success, but nothing is impossible. If you’ve made it this far, both in the education system and this article, then the top of one of the mountains may only be a few steps away. I’ve spent years reaching out to various companies and testing a lot of different physical and virtual resources. I never pretend to be an expert, but I fully believe in sharing everything I’ve discovered in the hopes of helping others. First, every school and classroom is a different environment and culture. Some of the things that I share may not work with your class, but you can always try them next year. Second, a lot of the resources may take an investment of time to learn and even input lessons or data, but they have all been well worth the investment for me. Finally, I have tried to, mostly, use free resources because I know how much money most educators already spend on their students.
For Math I have seen a massive increase in engagement using Blooket and sometimes Knowledgehook. Blooket works much like Kahoot! but has a lot of other features involved. You do need to add your own questions and answers, but there are some pretty great ones that are already created. This year my class has really only focused on basic math facts and skills. Instead of handing out a multiplication practice sheet that won’t get filled out we do a Blooket that is the exact same thing, but online and with fun characters. Students absolutely love it! I will also randomly join the games and challenge the students to beat me. Blooket is a great tool because the games don’t only focus on correct answers. Some games involve answering quicker or choosing the right power up at the right time. This means that some students may get answers wrong, but still get more points. For example, I have never once lost against my students in terms of getting the most answers correct, but they have beat me a few times because they play the games at home so much that they know some “hacks” to get more points even with answering less questions. The good thing about this is that they are excited to beat me, but they only beat me because they spent hours at home practicing their multiplication tables! Blooket is free, but does have more features as a paid subscription. If you email them for a trial they are usually very good with giving a month or so for free. Knowledgehook is a more well known site that a few boards have paid access too. It has premade questions for curriculum and you can add your own. It is a more straightforward assessment of knowledge.
I know Canva has been mentioned a lot, but it really is a fantastic option to use absolutely free for educators. The process to sign up and get verified was a little tricky but the person who was helping me through it was very prompt with replies. I’ve only recently signed up for it with the full feature list, but the options are endless. Canva can definitely be used for every subject area and is a great way to increase engagement. In a world that is essentially run by social media it is important to let our students know that they have the power to create content that can have positive and uplifting messages. Canva is an excellent tool to use to break down various forms of media, or create your own, when discussing media literacy. Choice boards can also receive huge boosts from the use of Canva for multimedia options.
Although I mentioned that videogames can be the cause for some students to become disengaged in classrooms, they can also be the solution to that same problem. Many people get mixed up with this discussion and think that using actual videogames is a bad idea and educators need to stick to “educational” games. The reality is that many games do have educational qualities to them, and those can be leveraged to increase engagement. Using Minecraft to create virtual ecosystems has been much more engaging then the traditional shoe box version. I’ve even had students record videos for health assignments by using their Fortnite characters and essentially acting out a play in the game (no guns or shooting involved). These are usually students that would not submit work, or would do very minimal work, because they wanted to “be done” and play video games. Another great part about some video games is that they encourage students to read. I have played some Role Playing Games (RPG) that, if you read all of the notes and lore, have more words then The Lord of The Rings or all of Shakespeare. These games do take eighty or more hours to complete, but it will be eighty hours of engagement with the text that the students are reading. Many of these games also have companion novels to go with them and students may read those after playing the games. I’m going to make a much more detailed series of posts about this later, and will add the link here.
Giving students a voice is also a great way to engage them in their learning. Many times students feel that they are talked at and not listened to. We can easily change this, especially using tech and media, by allowing our students to express themselves through venues like podcasts or recording audiobook versions of stories they’ve written (with sound effects and different voices per character). There are many different programs to use for this, but ones that I had a great experience with are SoundTrap (run by Spotify, and again great with giving free trials to educators) and WeVideo. SoundTrap is audio based, but WeVideo can be used to record things such as spoken word poems which students absolutely love to do.
Before moving on to the final point, please make sure that you are following all of the correct safety guidelines from your school board if you use any apps or websites with your students.
Finally, no discussion of student engagement is ever complete, or can even be truly started, without both a positive learning environment and relationship between the members in that environment. Nothing else matters unless students feel comfortable and safe while attempting the tasks at hand. We all went through a once in a lifetime event that may have changed the educational landscape for good, but in the end we are all still humans. Allowing our students the ability to have a safe space where they can truly be themselves is the first step to solving any issue with engagement. It may be a huge time investment, and seem unsuccessful at first, but it will always pay off in the end. Not every student will buy in right away, or as fully, but that’s okay too. There are so many things we can do to promote positive learning environments but one of the easiest, and quickest, ways is to be authentic and inclusive. Students have to know that they can trust their educators and that we have their best interests in mind. I think that that personal connection between educators and students was what was lost the most during virtual learning, and that is what takes the longest to rebuild. Students need to see their teachers engaged in the school community and having fun in the building through sports or clubs and then transfering that fun to lessons and learning. We need to, as always, lead by example. Even with frustrations towards government funding or board policy, we need to be able to show our students that we are there to support them on their learning journey.
The New Teachers 