Hello! This is the writeup for my Twitter lesson plan. It was designed to help students think about the causes of the Russian Revolution. I hope you enjoy it!
Lesson Plan:
The lesson that I chose to do for
my action research was designed to use Twitter to have students decipher the
events of the Paris Peace Conference and make predictions concerning the future
of Europe after the conference. Due to time constraints during this portion of
my course, I was forced to use this same lesson design during a different
portion of my course. I was able to use this
lesson during my unit on the events within Russia that led up to the Bolshevik
Revolution.
My original draft asked students to
analyze events as they occurred through time and predict how they would
eventually lead to problems in the future. This updated lesson used the same
ideals to decipher events in Russian history like the Russo-Japanese war and
the Russian Revolution of 1905. Students were assigned roles of individual
political groups within Russia at the time and asked to interpret the events
through the lens of their group. They were supposed to use Twitter to tweet
about the events while referencing other tweets, websites, and images that they
found online. However, when it came time to actually complete this lesson, our
school firewall would not allow students to access Twitter. In order to
complete the activity, I created a Google Doc that students edited and
referenced throughout the class period.
Implementation of
Lesson:
The class that I used to complete
this lesson was an 11th grade IB1 History course. Students came into
my classroom and were given the guiding question, “How do political parties
create change within a country?” They wrote on this question, and then were put
into groups of two or three. Each group received an iPad and were assigned a
political party or movement in late 19th century Russia. We worked
through various events during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Students were
asked to “tweet” about each from the perspective of their political party.
Ultimately, students were asked to create an outline for a five paragraph essay
that answers this question, “How did the events of the late 1800s and early
1900s in Russia, and the interpretations made by political groups of the time,
cause the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917?”
My students were receptive to this
type of lesson and seemed to enjoy becoming the leader of a political
organization. Despite the Twitter problem, this lesson seemed to work fairly
well. The students were engaged throughout the entire lesson. When reflecting
on their summative writing piece, students gained a fairly solid understanding
of the content.
Analysis of Lesson:
Connection to Larger
Course Goals-
This lesson was designed to
supplement the content in my classroom. I believe that knowledge is constructed
with the guidance of the teacher. This lesson used new technology to help
further this ideal. The content that this lesson covers is a central part of my
curriculum.
When looking at this lesson, other
teachers must know that this teaching style requires that teachers facilitate
learning in a way that does not lead to a fixed piece of information. Students
must explore the content and be willing to have successes and failures.
Teachers must be willing and able to guide students through this frustrating
process. It is assumed that students will have basic knowledge and that the
teacher must focus them towards a constructed understanding. The teacher must
assess the students throughout the process by asking questions and making sure
that students are being pushed towards a complete understanding of the topic.
During this lesson I did this formative assessment throughout the lesson and I
completed a summative assessment by asking students to create an essay outline
that included a thesis statement and supports for their argument. The work that
they did during the lesson was monitored and graded based upon the quality of
the work and their summative assessment was graded and then discussed with each
individual group.
Students learned that differing
groups within Russia had very different interpretations of events leading up to
the Bolshevik Revolution. I wanted students to be able to analyze how and why
the Revolution was rooted in the events leading up to October of 1917. I
believe that knowledge is constructed and the format of this lesson was designed
to utilize this ideal. Each group was asked to use different types of media in
their posts. In doing so, the hope was that students who internalize
information differently would be given an opportunity to have visual and
auditory cues to help them with the content. Students socially constructed the
knowledge that they received. They were tasked to work together to research
topics and ask questions that led to an understanding of their political
party’s view of each event. I acted as a facilitator and guided them by asking
questions as I walked around the room. There was, however, a predefined set of
knowledge that students were attempting to acquire. In attempting to scaffold
this lesson, I provided them with certain readings and websites that would give
them the “right” answer. While students constructed the knowledge, I did
utilize some portion of the behaviorist learning theory. This constraint did
not allow students to explore the topics as effectively as I had hoped. They
learned the information through exploration, but the limited information that I
provided held them back.
Educational Use of
Technology-
The technology that I used for this
lesson allowed students to research their information and socially construct an
understanding of many political groups in Russia at the time. Using the iPads
and Google Docs (or Twitter) gives students ample time to compare and contrast
the views of other political groups. Students put themselves in the shoes of a
group and must figure out how their own group would view the thoughts or
actions of another faction. Using iPads in this lesson was a powerful tool, but
I found them to be hard to type on and the Google Docs often took longer than I
would have wanted to update between clients. Despite this, students seemed to
enjoy using them to uncover the material and they enjoyed bantering with other
groups.
Prior to implementing this lesson,
I expected that the students would enjoy using the iPads in this manner.
Without the iPads and Google Docs it would have been much harder for students
to discuss with all of the students in the classroom. The learning would have
been more limited and they would have gotten much less out of the lesson. This
lesson was designed with the idea of social constructivism and the use of iPads
and Google Docs allowed students to construct their knowledge in an extremely
beneficial manner. They took information from other students and applied what
they knew to create informative and thought provoking posts. I believe that
this lesson was a success and I plan on using it again in the future.
