Show Your Love For Google This February with Google Drawings

Loving Google Drawings in ELA 
It's the month of February and most teachers are just trying to make it past the Valentine's Day sugar rush and heightened feelings of love and heartbreak (especially those middle and high school

teachers). February is the perfect time, therefore, to show some love to some new ideas that will integrate technology into the classroom and engage students in something other than their crush. Google Drawings is an excellent resource that is easy to integrate into a variety of lesson topics. Eve Heaton's education blog, Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology, includes excellent resources that

Image from Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology Blog

can help teachers (and students) fall in love with technology. In one of her more recent posts, she highlights using Google Drawings to create Digital Sensory Figure Posters about influential African-Americans. These posters are created by taking an image online and removing the background, and then creating what looks like speech bubbles around the person to descibe his or her thoughts and feelings. This way of mapping a real person's thoughts and feelings in a digital way would also be excellent to use with any fictional story to analyze character traits. If you think it's a great fit for your ELA classroom, then go the blog post for detailed instructions and a great tutorial video. Check out this month's newsletter below for a brief overview of this technology tool and its uses.  

Why Should I Check Out This Blog? 

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology blog is created by a former teacher and current technology integration coach from South Carolina. Eve Henton began the blog as a science teacher focusing on interactive notebooks; however, her blog has since evolved into a technology blog that is relevant to all subject areas. The posts show mostly elementary student work; however, the resources could easily be used and adapted for middle and high school classrooms. Her posts showcase a variety of subjects since she works with all subject-area teachers, but most of the resources she shares can seamlessly integrate with ELA content. However, the more important reason to peruse the blog is greater than one lesson on digital sensory figure posters, it is rather to begin or to elevate your teaching and student learning through technology. 

Why Should I Love Technology Integration in my Classroom? 

As a teacher, I often become caught up in preparation: preparing my lessons, gathering materials for my students, being ready for meetings, and making sure my student data is up-to-date. Preparation is a major part of being a teacher, but sometimes we can get lost in our own preparedness and forget that we are also preparing our students to be ready for life after graduation. Yes, we must prepare them for state testing and for the next grade, but we NEED to prepare them for a technology-driven, media-consumed, information-rich world outside of the school walls. A major part of that entails technology use that goes beyond using a computer for e-mail, social-media, and/or gaming. Students need to use technology in creative ways that allow them to create and innovate, and teachers are on the frontlines in preparing them. As Melissa Johnston (2012a), a professor and researcher, points out, “technology is transforming not only access to information, but also the skills students need to interact with and utilize it as well” (Johnston, p. 20). The ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) standards are one guide educators can use to help students hone the technology skills that are missing in content-area standards. The ISTE standards for students, “describe the skills and knowledge [students] need to thrive, grow and contribute in a global, interconnected and constantly changing society” (International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2020). Looking at and implementing another set of standards might seem too time consuming or overwhelming, but so is preparing lesson plans each week and inputting student data. If we want to prepare students, we as educators need to know what skills students need in order to be successful beyond our classroom, and standards like the ISTE standards are crucial in this endeavor. 

Giving students opportunities to use a variety of digital tools and allowing them to communicate in digital formats are two areas addressed in the ISTE standards for students that also align with this week’s featured technology tool of using Google Drawings for digital sensory figure posters (ISTE, 2020). Since most students and teachers are already familiar with Google products, Google Drawings is an excellent place to begin in showing students how they can communicate in a digital way that also allows for creativity. Additionally, the lesson shows them ways to take digital content and display it in a new way that they have likely not experienced previously. Like many new uses of technology in the classroom, there may be a learning curve for both teachers and students. As Johnston notes “students cannot be expected to benefit from technology if their teachers are neither familiar nor comfortable with it” (Johnston, 2012, p.4). In my own classroom, I am often worried about trying a new method of technology integration for fear it will fail. However, blogs posts from colleagues and technology savvy people like Eve Hanton, as well as support from those within my building who are implementing new technology, give me the confidence to move forward. We are the role-models for our students, and trying new things WITH them shows them how to problem-solve and take good risks. They need to learn problem-solving skills with technology, and we can help them if only we are also willing to problem-solve and try something new. Hanton’s blog post on digital sensory figure posters gives students a clear tutorial that can guide them as they work; in addition, to showing teachers examples they can use and share. 

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Resources like the Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology blog can give you the confidence to integrate technology into your classroom in a way that is simple, but effective in engaging learners, teaching them new skills, and exciting them about their learning. Teachers often spend hours of their lives in preparation mode; allot a few of those minutes learning a new technology tool that will better prepare students for their 21st century future. You’ll LOVE the results!! 

References 

Heaton, Eve. (2020, January 31). Black history sensory project part II: The game plan and graphic organizer.Blogger. https://sciencenotebooking.blogspot.com/2020/01/black-history-sensory-project-part-ii.html?fbclid=IwAR1AHymsYpa5H2ShV4kszX6KyFnf7mnVkaiJD9HUODJoMQY01EOeO8fN7qY&view=classic

International Society for Technology in Education. (2020). ISTE standards. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards

Johnson, M.P. (2012a). School librarians as technology integration leaders: Enablers and barriers to leadership enactment. School Library Research, 15, 1-33.

Johnston, M.P. (2012b). Connecting teacher librarians for technology integration leadership. School Libraries Worldwide, 18(1), 18-33.