My students call me Chef Carrie because I came with 25 years experience in the hospitality field and I am a Certified Executive Pastry Chef. I wear my chef clothes as a uniform to school to model industry for my students. They like having a chef as a teacher. I earned both a bachelors and masters in education and became National Board Certified because just as excellence and certification is important in industry, it is important to understand the science of teaching to be the most effective teacher. I teach Family and Consumer Science to 8-12th grade students at an inner city school. Our student population demographics include 92% free and reduced meals, 52% Special Ed and, 20% ESL. I love teaching learners of all ages because I want to see others feel success. I had my own cafe and other business ventures and I look at my classroom as a business. I want to see gross profit = student success. My dad was an engineer, so it is no surprise that I love the application of technology to create my own artifacts, learning experiences and student artifacts. Application is everything, otherwise what is the point? My Friday 5 is Engaging the Millennial Learner. This will help other educators with tools to spark student interest and provide unique assessment of learning experiences.
1. Adobe Spark is a free website or mobile app used to create social graphics, web stories, and animated videos. I taught my students about self belief, self talk and self fulfilling prophecies. This included a video from Stuart Smalley and the Olympian Carlin Isles. Students were able to view examples of how real and imaginary people gave themselves vision. My students use Adobe Spark to create a social media poster to inspire themselves. Millennial learners tend to be self involved and this is a great way for them to create something motivational and all about them.
2.Tackk is a free website or mobile app used to create sites for blogs, about me, school projects, chats, small business, instagram or a blank canvas. I have created short lessons like Communication-The Selfie. This can be used for student eportfolios, entrepreneurship projects, blogs - endless possibilities to create artifacts about them and provide evidence of understanding.
3.Sketchpad is a free website to create original works of art. It helps engage students multiple intelligences: language, spacial, logic, kinesthetic, social and self. There are tools to write, paint, insert text and images to help generate a unique work of art that can be downloaded and included in eportfolios, traditional portfolios and class displays.
4.Thinglink is a free website and mobile app to generate an interactive photo. You load a photo and then click on the photo to add links to content. I use this to include in lessons for a fun, colorful and engaging way to use technology for a scavenger hunt of sorts. This Thinglink Unique U was included in a lesson about self image and bullying. Students can construct their own Thinglinks to represent their learning or create their own presentation for the class that can be posted to Edmodo classrooms for peer reviews.
5.Read Write Think has 58 interactive ways to engage students in reading, writing and thinking. One of my favorite is the Timeline resource. Students can use this to organize and sequence timelines about their lives and classroom knowledge. Text and photos are used to put events in chronological order. Artifacts can be saved and completed on another day or downloaded to include in portfolios. The timelines can also be turned in digitally for paperless classrooms.
Perhaps you noticed engaging words like create, generate, original - words from the higher level learning in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Technology by itself does not increase student learning. Teachers have been using pencil and paper for a long time. However, the application of technology can help students develop problem solving skills, inspire creativity, provide evidence of learning and engage students so that they will be enlightened, empowered and effective members of society. I believe these resources are very powerful for engaging the millennial learner by making learning all about them and providing experiences using multiple intelligences in and outside the 21st century classroom.
