CLICK HERE -> https://quizizz.com/embed/presentation/668440b5bc879d4aca429c
One of the things I love most about being an educator is tapping into my creativity. There are many benefits to mode changing or approaching something differently. One that stands out is how it allows you to engage your learner. I recently attended a conference where the speaker, Michele Deck, discussed creative ways to teach diverse learners. In this lecture, she acknowledged that, to prevent “spillover” of information, you need to do one of two things:
- Stop and let students digest the information.
- Change something you are doing OR something they are doing.
By changing the semiotic mode of my first task, I was able to influence the learner differently and increase engagement. The New London Group identifies two key factors influencing literacy pedagogy: our culturally and linguistically diverse societies and the variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies (The New London Group, 1996). These researchers recognized the importance of representation beyond language and making new use of old materials. This activity allowed me to use old materials and redesign an already created assignment.
To do so, I first examined the assignment’s learning outcomes, which were as follows:
- introduce myself
- explore the duality of how people characterize public and private content
- reflect on items you use every day and why you chose to use them
Next, I reflected on how to revamp the activity to enhance learner engagement. I chose to do a game as it provided visual, audible, and tactile modes of knowledge acquisition. Despite these benefits, there were challenges, the most significant being the time commitment. As I was new to the Quizizz website, I had to invest time in learning the application before creating content. After creating the quiz, I played the game myself. Many question formats required the answers to be placed in a specific order. After experimenting for over 30 minutes, I reverted to a multiple-choice option that allowed for more than one correct answer. The upside is that using this in the future will be less time-consuming and is a technique I can incorporate into my teaching pedagogy.
Deck, Michele, (2024, April 8). Creative ways to teach the diverse learner: It’s all about engagement [Conference session]. NEI 2024 – New Graduate Transition into Successful Practice, Branson, MO, United States.
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.