To Sum It All Up

    I have gained so much knowledge about how to become a terrific teacher throughout this course. It's crazy to think about all of the things that I've learned about within just a couple of months. Before taking this class, I didn't even know what direct, inquiry, and cooperative lessons were. Now I know that direct lessons are where you repeat the information over and over until the students get it and provide guided practice activities along the way to help them remember the information. Inquiry lessons are where students follow a similar process to the scientific method and research the topic their learning about or do some kind of activity that requires them to think more. Cooperative lessons allow students to work in groups on some kind of project or activity, while following the 5 PIGS (Positive interdependence, Individual accountability, Group processing, Social skills, and Face-to-face interaction). I've experiences a lot of success throughout this class; I can't recall many times where I think I failed because I really tried my best on every assignment and I received a lot of positive feedback.
    I would love to incorporate all three types of lessons into my social studies lessons, especially because social studies can get boring at times, so it's important to keep the students engaged by doing various interactive activities. I completely understand how to implement all three types and have experience with the various types, so I'm confident that I could plan effective and engaging lessons. I really like inquiry-based lessons because it requires the students to really think about what they've learned as opposed to just reciting facts, so it would make the material much more memorable. Another thing that I learned are the five key elements of Social Studies: making it meaningful, active, value-based, integrative, and challenging. These are all very important to keep in mind when planning any lesson. Not only have I learned so much, but I  have had the opportunity to apply that knowledge by teaching both my peers and a second grade class. I can honestly say that I have gained so much from this class and I genuinely think that I will be a better teacher because of it.

I made comments on the following blogs:
Sam's blog
Emily's blog
Bryanna's blog

Mock Interview

    Today we conducted a mock interview in class where four of my classmates pretended to be administrators and interview us to become a teacher at their school. The whole experience was nerve-wracking, but it was also very fun and helpful. I think that it has made me feel more prepared for an actual interview because I felt confident in answering all of the questions. There was one question about flip-teaching that took me a minute to realize what it was, but the rest weren't that bad. I think that the question that made me think the most was what animal I think of when I think of direct instruction because there are so many animals, so it was extremely difficult to think of the perfect one on the spot. Overall, I think the interview went really well and I enjoyed having this experience. I'm really glad that we did this!
    I was actually picked as the best candidate in my group! Each "administrator" picked a person from each group and I was the one that they chose for my group! I didn't realize how much I've learned throughout this course, until this experience. It was crazy to see how much information I knew and all of the questions I was able to answer on the spot that I definitely wouldn't have been able to answer at all before taking this class. The class was a lot of work and very overwhelming at times, but it was a terrific learning experience that I'm really glad I was able to have.

Mystery Artifacts

   I created an artifact bag with objects that pertained to the unit plan I taught in the second grade classroom, so my artifacts were all things that are related to "How the Colonies Became Free". My bag included 2 soldiers (one blue and one red for the Patriots vs. the Loyalists), a picture of George Washington, and a picture of a map of France and Spain. The soldiers were used to show the two different sides of the war, George Washington was a general in the war, and France and Spain helped us in the war. The students were supposed to look at those items and realize that they all describe the American Revolution. My artifact bag was geared towards second grade for the topic of "How the Colonies Became Free", and following the Social Studies standards under "Time, Continuity, and Change" and "People, Places, and Environments". The book I chose is The Pop Up Book of the American Revolution; I chose this book because it's appropriate for a second grade class. The students would love to look at a pop up book, but it also has a lot of important information within a few short pages. I chose this website because I think it's a great resource that we could explore as a class if they want to find out some more information. If I was doing this lesson with the second graders, then I would have read the book with the students after the activity and explored the website a little to show them some of the interesting things they could find on it.
   Fuhler, Farris, and Nelson (2006) emphasize the importance of teacher modeling because it's one of the most effective ways to increase students' higher level thinking and comprehension skills. I didn't necessarily model during this mini-lesson because there wasn't that much time, but I did model with a bag of my own during y fieldwork experience when we used artifact bags and I saw how much it helped the students. My powerpoint goes through the step by step process of how the students were supposed to go through the bag, so I had my peers do each step as I went through the slides. Even though I didn't model with another bag, I slowly went through all of the steps that I expected them to follow. Fuhler et al. (2006) also mention the importance of displaying the steps that you want the children to follow, which is what I did, but because I did my lesson in a small group, I went through one step at a time, instead of putting up a list. They wrapped some of their artifacts, which was something that I found interesting and I saw some classmates do, so I would definitely like to do that the next time that I use artifact bags. This is a great website to use when finding artifacts, which I will use in the future. I found this website on eclass and it gives you ways to find primary sources; students would love to see primary sources because it makes everything seem more realistic. I also found this source  from eclass to be helpful because it gives you ideas of how to go about finding and/or using primary resources for each grade.
   I absolutely love the concept of using artifact bags within the classroom because it hits all 5 of the elements of powerful social studies teaching: integrative, active, value-based, meaningful, and challenging. It's such an interesting and engaging way to reinforce a topic that you've already taught or maybe even to introduce a new topic. It's integrative because it can incorporate different core subjects and skills since the students have to really think about each object and the connection between them. Artifact bags are active because the students get to move around and physically touch the items, then discuss their thoughts about each one with their classmates. They're value-based in the sense that it shows you other cultures or parts of history and demonstrates that even though something may not be valuable to you, it can be valuable to someone else, so they have to be careful and respectful when touching the artifacts. Artifact bags should be challenging for the students; it should require them to genuinely think about their conclusion, not guess it right away. By incorporating all of these elements, the activity also becomes meaningful to the students. When an activity is engaging, hands-on, and just fun overall, then the students are much more likely to remember it because you've created a meaningful/memorable experience for them. This lesson could be adapted to work for any grade level, especially if you use the tips from the last source I provided because it really breaks down the different ways that you should implement primary sources and artifact bags throughout the different grade levels.




Here is the link to my PowerPoint I used to show my classmates my artifact bag!

Women Making History

    Another one of our assignments was to conduct a Current Events lesson and my group chose to base our lesson off of Women Making History. We assigned our classmates groups of four and each group was assigned to read an article from Newsela before class and to familiarize themselves with Tagul, which is a website where you can create a word cloud. In class, we reviewed some of the important women throughout history and explained what the 5 W's are (Who, What, Where, When, and Why). Once everyone was familiar with the concept, we ask the students to create a word cloud in their groups based off of the article that they read and they were required to include the 5 W's. Everyone was given a couple of minutes to create their word cloud and pick a shape that they thought summed up their article as well. We provided a picture of our own word cloud for the article that we read to share as an example:

After everyone finished, we asked the students to share what shape they picked and some of the words that they chose to include. The conclusion of the lesson consisted of the class participating in a Plickers questionnaire, which was a hit! Here is a picture of some Plickers cards in case you aren't familiar with the tool:

Here is the thinglink that we used to teach our lesson:

Overall, I think the lesson went really well because we were all very well prepared and enthusiastic about our lesson. The entire class seemed to be having fun throughout the entire lesson (including Dr. Smirnova)! It met all 5 of the powerful SS elements: active, integrative, challenging, value-based, and meaningful, which we have learned about throughout multiple course readings. This lesson incorporated multiple standards; one being that the students expressed the information in media forms. I also enjoyed my classmates' current event projects because everyone did something creative, such as including linoit, glogster, and kahoot.

If this lesson was taught in first grade, then I think the student would need more time and assistance and probably easier articles, unless I read the articles to them. If this was a sixth grade lesson, then I don't think anything would really need to be changed because nothing was too difficult about this lesson. I enjoyed using Newsels; I think that's it's a great tool! The articles are typically very brief, but packed with useful information, so students don't feel overwhelmed or bored with the article. One feature that I think is really cool and useful is that you can highlight parts of the article because that definitely came in handy when I had to read articles for the other groups' lessons. I also like that it was the little quizzes at the end, so you can see if your students actually read/understood the article. 

The Lakota Tribe

    This week we did another group project! The whole week was focused on learning about geography, so we were assigned tribes to study in groups and find out all of the general information, such as: where they live, what they eat, special traditions, what their houses were made of, and other similar information. Then at the end we had to make generalizations about our tribe and say how geography influenced them in particular. My tribe was a nomadic tribe, so geography heavily influenced them since it was the cause of why they kept moving. They typically followed the buffalo because it was a huge source for food, shelter, and clothing. This project was fun; I got to learn a lot about the Lakota tribes, but I also learned about the ones that my classmates did. For my group's project, we created a thinglink to present to everyone else; here is the link to our thinglink. Thinglink is a great tool that I've used for multiple projects since I've learned about it in this course. Here's a picture of our thinglink too:

I highly suggest looking at this thinglink because I think it came out really well; it contains a lot of interesting information and even some videos! Before we created the thinglink, we made a powerpoint, so if you feel more comfortable looking at that, then here is the link to our powerpoint. 

My group worked really well together and I felt comfortable presenting the information to my classmates. I think this was an interesting project to have us do and it would be very easy to do in any grade because students do research projects in every grade and having them make the generalizations about geography at the end is a great way to make sure they really interpreted everything they learned about their tribe.

103 Ways to Teach Geography

I found this presentation to be very interesting; I gained a lot of new, creative ways to teach geography that I can't wait to implement in my own classroom. One of the idea that I really liked was "Go Local" where the students can walk around their neighborhood and take pictures to bring in and share with the class. I think that would be a fun assignment and the students would be able to explore the area around their homes a little bit more. I also like the concept of having students create a 60 second film because little kids love doing things like that where they can be creative and pretend like they're making their own movie. It also develops their ability to summarize a topic because they only have 60 seconds to mention everything that they think is important. The Bingo game seems like a lot of fun too; I remember doing similar activities throughout my elementary school years. The definition would be read by the teacher and the students have to cover the word that goes with that definition. There are numerous other activities in the presentation that I would definitely incorporate within my classroom, but those are 3 of my favorites that I would personally love to do if a teacher assigned these tasks. We also discussed some of our favorite ideas from the presentation with the class and passed around a little Earth while we shared our thoughts.

Reflection Part 2

   I really cannot emphasize enough how much I learned from the fieldwork experience in this class. There were so many little details that I didn't realize were so crucial. My group had a timeline as one of our guided practice activities and I didn't realize that it was important to introduce the timeline during the actual lesson and create one for them to refer to when they make it later on. We created a note sheet for the students to use to follow along while we taught the direct lesson and we added a timeline on to the bottom of the page for students to write down the important events that we wrote on the board, then we had the students refer to that timeline while we filled out the one for the guided practice activity. That was such a minor detail that I didn't think would effect the lesson, but it ended up being extremely useful to have that.
   My group also should've broken up our direct instruction more because there was way too much time spent on lecturing, so the students were getting bored and had a hard time focusing. Overall, our three lessons went pretty well; it's impossible to be perfect, but we did a great job. I think that every group did well, including the first group even though they did make a lot of minor mistakes that all of the other groups were able to learn from and make sure to prevent. There were also good parts to every lessons which helped the group that followed. For example, the first group did artifact bags, but they helped the students too much, gave everyone the same bag, and didn't model the process, so when my group went, we didn't provide as much guidance, gave each student different items, and modeled with another bag. Then group two went and they used different ways to check for understanding and incorporated a note sheet, so my group also took those things into consideration. This fieldwork experience was very informative and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to partake in this experience.

Reflection Time

   I enjoyed our whole fieldwork experience; I learned a lot throughout this process. I've never had to design an inquiry-based or cooperative lesson before, so both of those alone were entirely new experiences that have taught me so much. I learned that inquiry lessons follow a process that's similar to the scientific method. I like this lesson plan because it allows students to really think about the information they just learned in a way that helps them apply it to their task, instead of having them just memorize facts. I find inquiry lessons fun because the students have to solve some sort of puzzle and I've always loved puzzles. I also like cooperative lessons because it allows the students to work together, which they typically find to be a lot more fun. It teaches students how to work as a team and take responsibility for at least one part of the activity. Both of these lessons are also very engaging and student-centered, which is another thing that I really like about them.
   I've learned so much more from our fieldwork experience that I couldn't possibly list everything. I've learned a lot about teaching in general, especially because this was my first time teaching in front of a whole class. One thing that I didn't realize was such a big deal was to always have some way to check that every student knows the answer to a question. For example, when you call on one student, thereat of the class should have to give a thumbs up or thumbs down if they agree or disagree. My teachers never did that when I was in elementary school, so it didn't occur to me that it was such a crucial part of the lesson. I think all of the groups did a great job teaching their lessons, particularly when you take into consideration that very few of us have ever done anything like this before. It was definitely a great learning experience for everyone and I think we all gained a lot of useful information from it.

Group 4

   I genuinely enjoyed group four's lesson; I think that it was extremely engaging and fun for all of the students. They used the same technique that group two used in their direct lesson where the had symbols appear on the board when the students had to write something down. It's a good way to let the students know, as well as a good reminder for the teachers to remember when the students had to write something down. I think that my group should have done that since a couple of the group members kept forgetting to refer to our notes sheet. I also like that the teachers used a booklet instead of just a note sheet because it just makes it look like more fun. The students had many opportunities to participate in the lesson and the teachers had the students actually vote on which ice cream flavor they like better, so they can see how voting works. I think that it was a great way to show the students how what they're learning could be applied to their everyday lives. I also liked their use of vokis to demonstrate what an active and inactive citizen is, but the inactive citizen's dialogue seemed a little too obvious and unnecessary. The vokis should've also been open and ready to go before the students show up since they had a little trouble getting it started. Some of the checks for understanding were a little too much too; at one point, they had the students spin if they agreed with what was being said and some students fell.
   The inquiry lesson started out a little rocky; the students weren't understanding what the teacher was asking, so I think the questions could've been asked differently or the teacher should've figured out a way to make it clearer once she saw that the students weren't understanding it. Besides that, I loved the inquiry lesson! Having the students vote on who would be the best principal and actually ask the candidates questions that they found important was excellent! It showed them how a real election works, especially because they had to go in a voting booth. Some students actually asked who their friends voted for and they wouldn't tell each other because they understood how voting works. One recommendation that I have is that the teachers should have had the candidates' answers typed into the chart, so the students didn't have to spend so much time writing it.
   The cooperative lesson was very short; the students had to create a poster for the candidate that they thought was the best. I think that this wasn't the best idea since not everyone in the group voted for the same person, so there were arguments over who the poster should be based on. There was also no modeling of what was expected of the students. The students seemed to have fun and create great posters though, so I guess the lesson ended up having a good outcome.

Wrapping Up

   We had to create a post-test for the students, which was the same as the pre-test, but we were asked to change two of the questions. I left three questions that I found to be crucial to the information that my group taught. Then I added a multiple choice question about who wrote the Declaration of Independence and a true/false question that asked if Patriots were the people who wanted freedom. I added those two questions because we focused a lot of those two concepts, so I'm hoping those are things that they remembered and took away from our lesson. Pre and post-tests are extremely important to units because you need to assess what students knew before you started teaching, so you can figure out which items you need to spend more time on during the direct lesson. The post-test is a great way to check whether or not the students fully comprehended everything that was taught or if they still only know what they knew before the lesson. I met up with some of my group members and we created our pre-test questions together. I did the post-test questions on my own since we just had to slightly alter it and I asked the other members to look over it and make sure that they approved of the questions. The hardest part about choosing these questions was just figuring out what the most important parts are since we couldn't ask questions about every little thing we taught. It's also tricky sometimes to find the perfect wording for each question in order to avoid any confusion when the students have to take the tests. I used the results of the assessments and lessons to edit my lesson plans in a way that I thought would improve it in the future.

Third Times the Charm

   This week was finally my group's turn to go! Our direct lesson went pretty smoothly, but we ended up running out of time for our independent practice. When we practiced our lesson the night before, we ended up having so much extra time each time we practices, so we tried to go through everything slower when we were actually teaching and I guess we went too slow! Our powerpoint definitely lasted too long and started to bore some of the kids because we were just talking to them for 30-40 minutes. We had checks for understanding after every couple of slides, so the students would have time to participate, but it wasn't enough. We also should have circulated the room more to make sure that the students were staying on track. Some of the teachers also kept forgetting to have the students write words down on their note sheets, so we had to keep going back which wasted some time and made the lesson seem a little disorganized. I think our direct lesson was successful overall, even though we had a few minor mistakes.
   We were the first group to successfully get through both lessons including our independent practices!! Time management is definitely one of the hardest parts about teaching the 2 lessons in one day, but we did it! We also modeled both of the activities well, which was evident when the students clearly understood what they had to do. I think some of our artifact bags were too easy, while some of them may have been too hard. My students guessed the correct event just by looking at the picture on the outside. We originally planned for the timeline to be up on the board while the students were looking through their bags so they could see the different options to help them pick the event on the timeline that their bag went with. My group finished about 2 minutes early and for the cooperative activity, my group finished in about 5 minutes so we had too much extra time. All of the groups seemed to finish early, so we should've moved onto the independent practice sooner. It's so great to finally say that I'm done and all of the long hours I put into working on these lesson plans had actually paid off!

Round Two

   The second group's lessons kept getting post-pined due to the school's 2-hour delays. Despite all of the confusion with the delays, group 2 did an amazing job! They really kept the theme going about the students being explorers. They did a great job keeping all of the students engaged throughout the entire lesson by circling the room and having them put on their "explorer hats." The symbols the teachers put on the board to warn them that they'll have to write something down or put their explorer hats back on was creative and effective. Overall, there weren't really any parts of the lesson that I think I would change. There was one part towards the end where the teacher told the students to fill out an exit ticket in order to "get off the boat," which didn't really make sense because they never mentioned a boat prior to that. It was a cute idea, but it wasn't executed properly!
   The group's second day also went really well! The teachers gave a lot of rules and instructions for the students to follow throughout the inquiry lesson, which was a web quest that the students seemed to like. The introduction was definitely way too long for the inquiry lesson; I think some of the information could've either been left out or pushed over to the cooperative introduction. Their inquiry and cooperative lessons were linked; the students were required to create a poster about what they learned from their web quest. I think it was a great way to make the lessons seem like they were blended together and really only one, so the students weren't being asked to do two unrelated tasks. It's definitely tricky to teach two separate lessons within the one hour timeframe we have, but I think that group 2 did a good job getting the important parts of the lesson done, even though they didn't get to independent practice either!

Day Two

Group One did their inquiry and cooperative lessons, which went really well! The teachers were definitely more relaxed this time and they had fun activities planned that the students loved. Their cooperative project involved the students making teepees, which I thought was very creative and extremely engaging. Their artifact bags could have been executed a little bit better, but the kids still seemed to have fun with it. The time management was not done very well; the group didn't even get to explain what their independent practices were. I'm getting more and more anxious for when it's my groups turn to teach!!

Articles, Articles, Articles, and More Articles

   One article from eclass explains why the social studies standards were created and it taught me that social studies has two main characteristics: to "promote civic competence" and that it's integrative. The article also claims that social studies basically helps construct every students' understanding of the world and therefore determines how they will view reality. It breaks down all of the key topics covered within social studies and briefly explains what each one is, which is helpful. The main idea that is being stressed over and over again is that social studies is the only subject that incorporates discipline-based knowledge, processes, and attitudes. It also recognizes that social studies takes into account the fact that things change over time and we continuously have to find ways to fix the current problems in the world. I found this article very informative; I learned a lot of new things.

Day One

   Group one presented their direct lesson today and of course the smart board shutdown on them! I think they did a wonderful job and recovered quickly and efficiently to their technological problems. The kids seemed to gain a lot of knowledge from their lesson and had fun while doing it. I liked their idea of creating little cards with one red side and one green side to have the students hold up to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a classmate's answer to a question. I also like how one time they had the kids stand up if they agree because it let them move around a little and it was something different from the cards. Overall, I think the lesson went pretty well, especially considering it was their first time ever being up in front of a class. After seeing them go, I'm calmer about certain aspects of having to teach a lesson, but the smart board going out and the comments that were made about what went wrong made me even more nervous for when it's my group's turn!

Some Things I've Learned

   I learned many things from the Powerpoint that we were given to look through. Right in the beginning, it says that Social Studies has a greater instructional variety than any other subject, which I've never learned before. I think that's interesting, but I feel like you can also do many different methods during science as well because it's easy to incorporate readings, experiments/projects, and all sorts of fun activities. I found the pyramid that shows how much information students retain from various learning methods to be extremely interesting and displayed very well. I think the sample of the lesson helps to really demonstrate Bloom's taxonomy. I also like the slide that explains the different things that can be assessed to show us that it's not always for academic purposes; you can even use assessments to figure out what students are interested in.
   The way the three different forms of assessment are described in the powerpoint helped me comprehend what each one is even more. I like how Pre-assessment is described as "Finding Out", Formative Assessment is "Keeping Track & Checking-Up", and Summative Assessment is "Making Sure". It puts them each into simple, memorable phrases that will help me distinguish the different types. The powerpoint as a whole was very informative; I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge from it.

About Me Projects

   Today we had to present our "About Me" Projects. I wasn't aware that we would be presenting, so I'm glad I dressed up a little that day. I was extremely impressed with some of the projects that my classmates created! I enjoyed watching everyone's presentations and being introduced to all of the different types of tools that I can utilize in my future classroom either for teaching purposes or for my students to do projects. I wish my presentation sou;d have gone a little smoother, but the first time I present in front of a new class is usually a little nerve-wracking.
   The last half hour of class was spent working in our groups on our lesson plans. My group hadn't started yet, since we still have a couple weeks, so it was nice to have time to finally set up our lesson plans. We even met up after class for a couple of hours to get started on what we're actually going to be doing. There's still so much more work to be put into our three lessons, but I'm glad we started and actually started thinking about possible activities to do.

And So It Begins...

   We went in for our first day of fieldwork and it was amazing! The students were very well-behaved and we all had so much fun finally meeting the kids and getting to know a little bit about them. I love having my sister as our cooperating teacher! We've both been excited for me to meet all of her students and it's officially happened; the students were just as excited as the two of us were. She set their desks up into groups of six and the groups of college students rotated around to each group. We didn't get much time to get to know our first group, but we were able to spend about 10-15 minutes with the rest of them, which was great! We really got a chance to get to know the kids and have them feel more comfortable around us. I think it was a great idea to go in early to meet the kids, find out some of their interests, and have them become comfortable with us because it will definitely make everything go more smoothly when we start teaching them.

Clearing Up

   We spent the second day of class just going over some of our upcoming assignments because everyone in the class was very confused about what expectations we were supposed to meet. There are still many things that the class as a whole is confused about, but we're hoping it will get easier as the class continues. We were also given our official groups that we will be teaching in during fieldwork, as well as what we are doing on Tuesday when we go in to meet the students. The teacher is my sister, so I'm very excited to get started and meet all of her students. I'm hoping that everything goes well and the kids like us. My group has picked out a book to look at with the students; we won't be reading the book, but the kids will be looking at the pictures while we ask them some basic questions about the topic we will be teaching them about in a couple of weeks. These questions will serve as a type of pre-test for us to understand where the students are intellectually. It's important for us to learn what prior knowledge the students have before we try to build off of it. We're going tomorrow so hopefully everything goes as planned and everyone has a good time; I'll keep you updated!

Powtoon

   Dr. Smirnova created a powerpoint presentation on google docs where the whole class had to go on and select a slide to put their name on and make their own. Many of them had different pictures as backgrounds, but I chose a blank one and created my own background. I added a picture of flowers, wrote my name in a different font, and wrote a little paragraph about me.
   We also had to complete an "about me" project that we selected from a list of 20 different options on the first day of class. I chose to use Powtoon for my project because I have seen other people create presentations on it during my previous classes and I thought it seemed interesting. I created a couple of slides that contained some important information that I thought was necessary to know about me. I enjoyed making the presentation and I really like the way it came out. I think it's a good tool to utilize during class for students to create projects or possibly to present new information to them in an interesting way. It's also good for shy students who have to give a presentation because they don't necessarily have to talk; the video could just play.

Overwhelmed

   We started out the first day of class by creating name tags for ourselves and answering four question: who our favorite teacher was, 3 characteristics of a good teacher, what we think social studies is focused on, and what we would like to learn from this class. We did this because Dr. Smirnova wanted to know what we already know about social studies and the traits that we think good teachers have so we can become those kinds of teachers. Then we were given a letter to read and respond to on a forum. We all used different colored fonts in our responses to make it more fun. Dr. Smirnova quickly moved on to the next thing where we all had to rush to sign up for an about me activity because only one person could do each one, so that was a little stressful. I picked two different options and someone else had chosen them before I could say I wanted them, so I ended up waiting until after class to sign up for one that was left. Then Dr. Smirnova introduced us to a bunch of new online things quickly and all of us felt overwhelmed and confused about what was going on; it was a lot to take in, but Dr. Smirnova told us not to get too worried and that it'll get easier.

   Dr. Smirnova suggested that we watch the following video:

 
   This video made me realize how important it is to not only incorporate technology within your lessons, but to allow students to be able to use it to complete activities or projects. I think they made their message even stronger by using kids of all ages; there were lower elementary level students and high school students who all felt the same way about the subject. They're growing up in a world where they're constantly surrounded by technology, so we should be using it in our lessons and assignments as well.