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Digital Natives: Fifth-Grade Students' Authentic and Ritualistic Engagement with Technology (Dietrich, Balli, 2014) is a study I have been reading were fifth graders are interviewed about classroom learning and technology. The results indicated that students were engaged in classroom learning when using technology, particularly when they had control of the technology. This came as no surprise to me and to you as well I assume. What got my attention was that they are not just looking at engagement they are also interested in finding out if the engagement was authentic. They question to what extent does engagement with a digital tool translate into engagement with learning? This question directly correlates with my driving question. My research will measure student engagement with TumbleBooks an online reading website to encourage students to actively participate during SSR. I want my students to want to learn to become better readers and have interest in reading. I'm hoping that this digital tool will help them see the importance of reading by enjoying the time they spend on TumbleBooks. In the study the majority of the students recognized that using technology was generally an engaging way to learn. They used different types of technology but I focused on the students' interest on using a computer. One of the students expressed why learning with computer support was important to him, "Because sometimes you can't picture stuff in the book...or picture stuff in the mind. But when yo go on the computer, you can actually see it for yourself with your own eyes." This is the type of information I was looking for. I have many students that have trouble writing a summary of what they read because they have trouble visualizing the parts of the story. I am hopeful that by using TumbleBooks they will have an easier time responding to questions about what they read because an image has imprinted in their brain as they follow a read along or watch an interactive book come to life and in the process become better writers as well.
The study also states, student interviews also confirmed that technology in the classroom grabs attention because it offers novelty and variety compared to lessons taught in a traditional manner. Impact of Smartphone Based Activities on EFL Students' Engagement (Sarhandi, Bajnaid, Elyas, 2017) is a mixed method quasi experimental study examining whether two groups completing identical activities, were one group uses their smartphones, to see if they would have a difference in their engagement with the given activities. Their results indicated a significant difference in the initiation times and distraction between experimental and control settings. The experiment group started their smartphone task immediately while the control group took between 10 and 20 seconds to start the same exact task. The study also noted that the students in the experiment group were not distracted while doing the task on their smartphone but the control group students were distracted by factors outside of the task 16 times out of the 19 treatment sessions. Because becoming distracted is a concern with fourth graders as it is with all students, it is important for me to take this into consideration. SSR as I have been trained to do in the classroom lends students to become easily distracted. I have seen my students interested in many things that happen around the classroom, including me working with another student, instead of reading their book. I am looking for the technology tool that will help keep my students engaged in the task. The teacher's comments from the study was that initially there was a learning curve but by the end of the second week the time spent working out the kinks payed of in increased student motivation and engagement. (Table1.) Furthermore in the study it was noted that no negative emotions regarding smartphone tasks were recorded compared to 6 mentioned for the paper-based activities. (Table 3.) In this study the student were learning a different language other than English, in my classroom I have English learners as well and am familiar with students frustrations when learning a new language. Finding a tool for them to be successful is just as important. This study helps me see that students that were using their smartphone to learn a new language had a positive experience rather than using paper-based activities were negative emotions were expressed. In the study, Collaborative group engagement in a computer-supported inquiry learning environment (Sinha, Rogat, Adams-Wiggins, Hmelo-Silver, 2015), they conceptualize engagement as multi-faceted including behavioral, social, cognitive and conceptual-to-consequential forms, dynamic, contextualized and collective. With this developed observation measure they examine the variation of engagement quality for ten middle school groups. Although this study measured students' engagement in a group activity during a inquiry-based lesson, engagement is evidence of technology supporting the learning process and that is what I am attempting to accomplish with TumbleBooks. Their results show that conceptual-to-consequential dimension is especially important in computer-supported inquiry learning because it is supported and is a combined effort of behavioral, social, and cognitive engagement dimensions. When they examined the interrelations it indicated that behavioral and social engagement fostered high quality cognitive engagement, which then facilitated consequential engagement. They believe that studying engagement as multi-faceted has implications for designing technologies that scaffold high quality cognitive and conceptual-to-consequential engagement in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment. I want my students to make progress in their CC engagement by using TumbleBooks to support their progress in solving meaningful problems and help them make connections to their learning. TumbleBooks will help support all my students by having a wide variety of text levels and content providing rich opportunities to assist in conceptualizing.
1 Comment
Maria Dowling
11/26/2017 05:06:13 pm
Thank you for sharing your article about the 5th grade digital natives and engagement. It is relevant to my study and I hope you don't mind me also using it in my journal review. I like that it looks for authentic engagement.
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Marisabel OlguinNVLA 4th Grade Dual Immersion Teacher at Napa Valley Language Academy Archives
June 2018
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