Why Use AwesomeStories? - Technology Rich and Integration Poor

Our educational system has devoted much effort, time and money to make our schools technology-prepared. We have:

• concentrated on making sure our Wi-Fi is reliable and devices are available for students;
• provided online storage and communication assets; and
• evaluated teachers on their use of the new technologies to ensure that students are actually using the devices.

But many schools have failed to actually integrate that technology, to scaffold and unleash student potential to create, evaluate and synthesize the wealth of information available to them. Many teachers assign tasks for students that do not make use of the ultimate power the Internet holds. Adequate evaluation of the quality of student use of technology is often lacking or non-existent.

Teachers may not realize the significant impact student assignments can have with slight-but-significant redesign.  Technology allows for the creation of learning tasks that were previously inconceivable. Now we can move away from traditional content mastery to student-centered, higher-order, tech-integrated learning.

As the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model demonstrates, most of us are presently integrating the technology at the lowest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and not accessing the true power of the higher levels.

AwesomeStories AssigmentMaker has the power to make student assignments that lead to critical thinking, analysis and synthesis of information while giving students the stage in AwesomeStories StoryMaker to express their original thoughts, concerns, arguments or criticisms of the facts they uncover using the AwesomeStories Archive of Primary Sources.

Using the tools of AwesomeStories, to redesign traditional assignments, propels students to:

• think “out of the box"
• ask questions about the facts they uncover
• learn about the “story behind the story"
• have the freedom to express their original thoughts

That is the very definition of 21^st Century learning.