"Legit" Learning with Zoom

As teachers, we are often more excited about our ideas for our projects than our students will ever be.  We spend hours scavenging Pinterest and scrolling through Twitter in search of the next great lesson.  With the best of intentions, we craft the "perfect" lesson and then prepare to pitch it to our students.  We go before the class and share our "exciting" idea only to be met with whining, complaining, and often times blank stares.  At the heart of it, we all know students learn best when they are engaged and they have buy in.  So the million-dollar question becomes.... How can we make that happen? 

Engagement has been heavy on my mind this year.  As I plan units, I have tried to integrate high interest projects students will actually be excited to complete.  While there is no secret ingredient to engagement, I do think I have discovered one essential attribute.  This realization came only recently while I was doing my typical project pitch and a student raised his hand and responded, "So wait, this project is actually legit?"  You can imagine my surprise by his statement!  The project required students to identify a rule or guideline in our school or community that needed to be changed and then write a policy speech proposing a solution.  Now this assignment alone isn’t noteworthy, however when you add in the final step, the project becomes “legit.”  In the final task, students were matched with the appropriate audience, school administrator or community leader, based on their topic.  Students then used Zoom to deliver their policy speech.  Zoom allowed students to have a real time conversation with someone they viewed as important. 

When students were placed before an authentic audience, they suddenly felt like their project had a purpose.  The assignment took them beyond the walls of our classroom and gave them a purpose much greater than a grade.  What Zach was trying to tell me when he said this project was ‘legit,” was that it had meaning to him.  Through this assignment, many of my students discovered that they do have a voice and their opinion does matter. 

Lessons this teacher learned today...

1. Providing students with authentic audiences will increase engagement and create a purpose for learning.
2. Students MUST be able to see how what we learn in class connects to the world outside our classroom.

If you haven't tried Zoom, I highly encourage you to check it out!  With budget constraints it can be challenging to take students on a field trip, this free conferencing tool allows teachers to bring the expert into their classroom in an interactive way.  The application even allows participants to share their screen with the audience and take notes.  Sessions can be recorded and saved.  I can not say enough good things about Zoom!  Be sure to leave a comment about how you plan to use Zoom with your students.