CES: Using the GROUPS feature for Discussion Boards

Joe Pullia, 5th grade teacher at CES, conducted a unit of study with his students on the Newbery Award. He chose to use the Discussion Board tool in Blackboard as a way to motivate students to have "conversations" about five books that received the Newbery Medal. Utilizing the Manage Groups feature in Blackboard [Control Panel/User management/Manage Groups], student groups were created.
The 5 groups were set up to include their own discussion board with specific students enrolled in each group. When a new button was set up for the groups a Tool Link was added, with the tool type being Groups.
Mr. Pullia noted that the discussion boards have motivated students to write more, share more, and go deeper into various issues and characters in the book. He said that that one huge advantage of the groups feature is the ability to differentiate instruction, since a group can be created for even a single student. Janna Bell, assistant principal, has been included as part of the discussion groups and often responds to posts and asks questions to promote dialog.

Here is a sample section of one books discussion with student names erased (click on image for larger view):
One student said that she really enjoys using discussion boards and especially the Newbery discussion board because she can "talk" with her classmates even when she is home. She said that she gets some ideas about the book that she didn't even think about, and she gives other kids new ideas about the book too!

The GROUPS tool adds another way to manage discussion boards and provides a system for supporting differentiated instruction.

ISTE Webinar Today on Differentiated Instruction with Technology

Today's ISTE Webinar, scheduled for BMS from 4-5:00, was still attended by 6 teachers from their homes. Although we had purchased a one-location viewing, due to the fact that school was closed, we were allowed to access the webinar from multiple locations. The webinar was lead by Grace Smith and Stephanie Throne, authors of the book Differentiating Instruction with Technology in K-5 Classsrooms. They focused on 4 technology strategies with which to build on students' individual interests and needs: Webquests, i-Search, R.A.F.T.T., and Jigsaw. I was least familiar with R.A.F.T.T. a reading strategy to scaffold students' interactions with text. Students are asked to create a new product that demonstrates their depth of understanding of the text by looking at a Role, the Audience, the best Format, the Topic, and what Technology to utilize. Many sample projects and websites were presented to cover each of the topics in the 8 categories below.


I was also reminded of the ITL Summer Institute 2007 with David Loertscher as our presenter and coach. His book, Ban Those Bird Units written with Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan, was used to teach us the Jigsaw model as a teaching strategy to motivate higher level thinking in students.

Today's webinar also showed us a great differentiated instruction wiki, called Dare to Differentiate, with many valuable resources. The authors also have their own site on differentiated instruction. We were also shown two free sites: My Brochure Maker, used to create online brochures or flyers and Realebooks, used to create small "really books" that can be turned into ebooks.

We have ONE more scheduled ISTE Webinar on March 18th at SES from 4-5:00 pm called Introduction to Project Based Learning. You can register online at: http://pd.westport.k12.ct.us.