DNA - Digitized Noted Articles
As a teacher, wouldn't you like to know what your students were thinking while they were reading your assignment? That's the idea behind DNA - Digitized Noted Articles. The process involves collecting printed articles that were assigned to students, taking digital pictures of those articles after students have read and made margin notes, underlinings, etc. on the article while they were reading it, and then making those digital images available to the assigning teacher.
The main impetus here is to help teachers formulate better questions to ask during follow-up class discussions on these readings. Also, teachers should gain a better understanding as to what students are getting out of the readings, where they are possibly missing the point, and whether or not it would be useful, at least from a student's point of view, to assign this article again in the future.
A sample article from ECI 526 - Theory and Research in Teaching and Learning Social Studies - is posted below.
The main impetus here is to help teachers formulate better questions to ask during follow-up class discussions on these readings. Also, teachers should gain a better understanding as to what students are getting out of the readings, where they are possibly missing the point, and whether or not it would be useful, at least from a student's point of view, to assign this article again in the future.
A sample article from ECI 526 - Theory and Research in Teaching and Learning Social Studies - is posted below.
There is definite room for improvement on the quality of the images here, but hopefully you get the idea. A student is assigned an article; he prints it out and reads it, underlining what he feels is important and making notes along the way.
If a teacher had access to these articles, she would have valuable insights into what students were thinking while reading the articles and thus be able to mold more effective questions and class discussions.
For example, from this first paragraph, we can see that this student is obviously concerned about end-of-course testing (EOCs), with his 'skull & crossbones' underneath the words "high-stakes testing." There is also a reference to 'Study Island' and an arrow pointing to "high-stakes testing." A follow-up question to the class could simply be, not to miss or ignore this indicator, "How concerned are you about end-of-course or end-of-grade testing?"
Here the student has highlighted an important point of the writer but then added their own reflection on this quote. The writer said, "Teachers cannot teach what they do not know," and the student added in the margin, " but also 'students will not know what their teachers know but cannot teach.' - cn"
If the professor had seen this, it might have triggered her/him to ask the class, "What do you think of this quote, 'Teachers cannot teach what they do not know'?" Perhaps a discussion would follow on the idea of how no teaching takes place unless it's accompanied by learning.
One thought that just came to mind on this is to have a student who arrives early take digital images of volunteers' articles as the students bring them to class, before class starts or perhaps during the first 5-10 mins while the students respond to a writing prompt. The assisting student could then quickly juggle them into order (all the page 1's together, page 2's, etc.), load to a drive which the instructor could then easily pull up and display on a projector. The prof could say, "Well, let's see what the 'peanut gallery' is thinking" or "...what you were thinking while reading this" - whatever works for that teacher's personality and instructional purpose. The prof might respond to students' comments as they ask the instructor to find their page 3 to show the class. If the students knew this was the weekly process, they might be more likely to read the articles in the first place, and/or to read them more thoroughly, and to add their thoughts about the article right on the article at that point where the thought was triggered. Students might also make their own digital images in advance and bring those to class on a flash drive or otherwise load them up on, say, a wiki site before class.
The benefits:
- class would become more visually engaging
- discussions would be more lively
- more students would read, actually read, the articles
- more students would contribute to class discussions
- students would learn more
- professor's current teaching would become more strategic and individualized
and future teaching would become more refined
- professor would gain greater insights into what students are thinking
The benefits:
- class would become more visually engaging
- discussions would be more lively
- more students would read, actually read, the articles
- more students would contribute to class discussions
- students would learn more
- professor's current teaching would become more strategic and individualized
and future teaching would become more refined
- professor would gain greater insights into what students are thinking