One book I am very passionate about teaching (and that I know is often included in high school curriculum) is Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. This is an awesome graphic novel that depicts the identity conflict that many first-generation Americans go through in heart-wrenchingly poignant ways. One way to use technology to redefine a lesson for this class would certainly be Skyping Mr. Yang, but I want to push myself even farther to find uses of technology that really feel like they'd go well with this book.
I started researching Gene Luen Yang more, and I learned that he is not just an author--he is/was also a CS teacher and is passionate about tech and education. He has a variety of websites and has just started publishing a tech-centered graphic novel series with Mike Holmes called Secret Coders. This series has a ton of extension activities for teachers online and was written with the Common Core State Standards in mind. In the COETAIL video finals we watched, I was interested by how two of the teachers, Lindsay Lyon and Miriam Morningstar, had their students create context websites for Persepolis. This made me think--what if I had my students do something similar, but reached out to Mr. Yang for collaboration? He has already created a background site for one of American Born Chinese's major characters--perhaps there is another project he might allow my students to collaborate on? (For example: to round out the background sites he has created, perhaps my students could create a website that talks more about Chinese immigration to the United States or explores the high school comedy show format he utilizes in the graphic novel.) If he were interested, he could indicate areas that might be useful for context, and the students could research and design these website for him. Conversely, perhaps my students could create an extension website concerning their favorite aspects/takeaways from the novel, and then share that content with Mr. Yang and potentially get feedback from him as an author and a CS teacher. If I were a student, I think it would be so cool to be able to not just speak to an author, but share a product with him. Mr. Yang would have to be up for it, of course, but he seems so passionate about education that I think there might be a chance he would be interested. This would certainly redefine my subject, as creating content for an author or with the author as part of the audience would allow the students to engage at a level and with a purpose that just isn't possible in old-school education. If Mr. Yang couldn't spare the time, even just creating a context website is a great way to modify instruction, because students will be able to use links and create content for a wider audience, which increases motivation and the depth of information they can use/call on. While they could do the cognitive tasks of compiling context and making it presentable without technology, adding the technology makes the task more meaningful and more complex.
While trying to think outside the box--which is what thinking about redefining education through technology is, by definition--was hard (and took quite a while!) I'm super excited by this idea and am sad my classroom and American Born Chinese unit are, at the moment, fictional. This has really helped me see how pushing through an hour of brainstorming could lead to something really amazing for my students. When I am teaching in the near future, I will need to remind myself to push through and think creatively. As I've seen today, it's worth the time, and it certainly will pay dividends.
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