This week we are exploring the use of HyperDocs as a Web 2.0 tool. The nice touch from the start of this assignment is the adventure is couched in a HyperDoc based in Wakelet (unfortunately not shareable at this time). As I worked my way through this assignment, I came to realize I appreciate the overarching lesson design that creates a flow the student can work through, stepwise, asynchronously, at an individual pace. Each step creates a new level of engagement and exploration with an additional activity to drive deeper learning .and sharing.
The very first exercises are to Explore and Share by creating and posting two tweets on Twitter based on the initial exploration of HyperDoc's (see images below). The cleverness of this approach is that the exercise requires one to explore the material, reflect on its
significance, distill its meaning, create an exhibit, and share that exhibit with other students, all while being engaging. The genius of using Twitter as the Web 2.0 tool for this is not only its social sharing nature, but the 280-character limit presents an interesting challenge to refine down to the very essence of the student's newly constructed knowledge.
The next exercise is to Find templates and examples of HyperDoc's related to my discipline - science - and generate three discussion posts to engage in conversations with my peers. As I approached this exercise, I have to admit I had heard of HyperDoc’s, but had not really drilled down into the details. To some degree this may have been due to my bias for “hands-on” activities as a constructivist science teacher. This is interesting in retrospect as I often use Web 2.0 tools, especially simulation based applications, to help my students visualize science phenomena or science representations in conjunction with “hands on” activities. I can now see that HyperDoc’s can integrate Web 2.0 tools in an enhanced manner to help my students develop conceptual understanding while constructing new knowledge. Further, the use of HyperDoc’s can do so by facilitating collaborative engagement in a socially situated environment mediated through the web.
My first case in point is the 5-E’s Template – Respiration and PhotoSynthesis example (see webpage below). . Of course, the 5-E’s framework is a very familiar lesson structure that
dovetails nicely into constructivist pedagogies. One thing I particularly like about this example is the activating of prior knowledge in the Engage phase. This is followed by a media text format providing multiple sources of information to build on that prior knowledge in the Explore phase. Next, some additional information is provided as fodder supporting use of Padlet to collect “class notes” in a socially driven collaborative Explain phase. Then, student choice is given to work using Educreation either to collaborate in a group or to individually create a multimedia lesson for others (this fits well with my “watch one, do one, teach one” cycle philosophy I often employ with my students) during the Elaborate phase. Finally, Google Forms is use to facilitate self-reflection and peer-reflection during the Evaluate phase. Although this example is directed at educators, the format and approach are easily adaptable to an audience like my high school science students. Moreover, this is an engaging, self-paced approach to what I would be seeking to do in class anyway, but in a student-centered manner that allows me to spend my time personalizing and differentiating the material on an individual or group basis as needed.
My second exploration of HyperDoc’s is with the Hero’s Journey Template- Solar Energy Around the World: Solutions in Electricity example (see webpage below). When I look at
this example, I notice that this HyperDoc is light on collaboration, the collaborative aspect is not clearly evident, or both; however, this is easily fixed. What I like is the idea of constructing new knowledge in science through the perspective of a “hero’s journey”. My final project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFgO-dzy8CE) for ETEC 528 – Storytelling Across the Curriculum was a biopic of Albert Einstein as a scientist pursuing a “hero’s journey”. I had considered several approaches to how I could incorporate my personal views on Einstein and the nobility of scientific pursuits, but a HyperDoc has jumped to the top of the list. The other aspect of the example I like is that the Transformation phase integrates one of my preferred “hands-on” activities in the HyperDoc. This is a simple but powerful idea, there is no need to rope off boundaries in a lesson between the web-world and the physical world. After all, the “authentic” experience of our everyday lives is a blending of these worlds. Further, being able to move back and forth between differing perspectives and multiple representations is a key tenet of my Instructional Modeling pedagogy.
My third exploration of HyperDoc’s is the VSEPR HyperDoc three-day lesson on VSEPR Theory (see webpage below). While this is another example of a modified 5-E lesson
framework, that is not the remarkable part. When I looked through the information media sources and the student activities, I quickly realized these are the exact same materials that I have weaved into my own lessons on VSEPR. How much more elegant is this HyperDoc’s approach to allowing the students to walk through this information and activities in a way that allows me to focus in with individuals or small groups to personalize and differentiate the often challenging concepts of the VSEPR model. I would likely still supplement the example with physical models to facilitate better student understanding of the fairly complicated spatial relationships, but that is but icing on the cake. I particularly like the student choice offered in the Apply phase, which is so aligned with the approach I currently use that it is a bit scary. In short, I now have a HyperDoc’s lesson that I can practically drop into my Chemistry II as is, which is great since classes start in less than a week.
The last exercise is to Play and Reflect. The Play leads me other a wide range of HyperDoc's resources and tools, some of which I am now following and/or have invested in, most notably Wakelet.com and Hyperdocs.co.. My reason for doing this is rooted in my reflection that HyperDoc's is not a compromise of or a substitution for my current pedagogical practices. HyperDoc's is, when implemented effectively, an enhancement that creates an engaging, socially-situated, constructivist environment which leverages Web 2.0 tools to present meaningful, structured lessons to support my students' knowledge construction and learning. Most importantly, HyperDoc's does this in a manner that takes me as the teacher out of the center of classroom activity and empowers the students to take control of and responsibility for their own self-directed learning. An important benefit, as noted above, to this last point is that this frees me as the teacher to use my classroom activity time for individual and group personalization and differentiation for those students who need this scaffolding.
Well this all sounds like goodness and light, so where is the hitch. The hitch is where it usually is for a teacher, where does one get the time to generate HyperDoc's to support their students' learning in and out of the classroom? The answer as usual for the teacher is the time primarily comes from outside of the normal school day, perhaps at PLC meetings or during planning periods (if your school does not constantly snatch them away from you with other duties). The good news is, with the HyperDoc's tools available and the libraries of templates and lessons, much of the "turning-the-crank" work of creating HyperDocs is done for the teacher. What remains is finding curated resources to populate the HyperDoc content. Fortunately, if one has been teaching for a while, many of the curated resources may already be at one's fingertips (see VSEPR example above). Unfortunately, many of those resources may not be in HyperDoc's friendly educational technology applications, but not all resources used have to be. Also, I have found that, with a little searching, and a little help from peers, the discovery of relevant resources flows pretty readily and tends to stimulate more fresh thinking about how to present engaging and challenging material to students. Of course, time constraints aside, a fired up PLC can create or customize some engaging web-based source material of their own.
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