Phillip Schlechty identifies qualities that affect student engagement in his book Working on the Work. The first of the eight qualities I'll be writing about is authenticity. Students find authenticity in tasks that have meaning and significance in their lives. When students perceive tasks as authentic, they feel ownership over the results. That feeling of ownership means they care about the quality of their work.
It's tricky for teachers to develop tasks and projects that have high levels of authenticity. Students usually cannot just follow what they are passionate about because state standards so often dictate exactly what students learn. Furthermore, students know when the tasks teachers ask them to do are contrived and inconsequential, and they do not find meaning in these tasks. So it's up to the teacher to craft activities that incorporate what students need to learn in a way they will view as meaningful. Here's a powerful quote from Working on the Work:
Teachers are leaders and like other leaders, they are known more by what they get others to do than by what they do themselves.
This quote makes me think about a teacher trying to "sell" the task he's crafted for his students. The teacher doesn't have to be a salesman because what he is trying to get students to "buy" really sells itself. That's because the teacher has developed an activity that students perceive as authentic so they want to be involved.
Technology is one of the best tools I know to bring authenticity into classrooms, particularly when it comes to publishing online. When students contribute to the Web they know they are publishing for a world-wide audience. Providing students a genuine purpose for what they put online can really increase student motivation and that feeling of ownership.
One activity that many teachers have found quite successful is assigning a daily roving reporter. When I taught fifth grade my students found that contributing to the class log, which we called The Daily Planet, was a meaningful task. Each day one student was designated as the roving reporter and it was his or her job to take photos and write about the learning that took place that day. The photos and articles were published online so that friends, family, and the community knew what was happening in our classroom. Students also knew that at the end of the school year I would put The Daily Planet on a CD-ROM so that they had a log of every day of fifth grade. Today's free and easy blogging services make publishing roving reporter photos and articles online a breeze. Students like writing for a purpose and teachers like that it doesn't take much time to post student work online.
Here are some additional ways to use technology to bring more authenticity to what we ask students to do:
- Create movies, audio podcasts, slide shows, or other products for a specific audience. For example, an eight-grade science class could make projects to explain the scientific process to fourth graders.
- Contribute to a larger regional, national, or world-wide project. For example, students from all over the globe are invited to submit an episode about their city to the Our City Podcast. This way students can learn about places from the kids who live there.
- Bring the outside world into the classroom. For example, a retail business owner talks to a sixth grade class about supply and demand (either in person or online through a video conference service like Skype).
- Use super current, up-to-date information. For example, students use information from the National Earthquake Information Center to plot and predict earthquakes based on current and historical data.
What are ways you make tasks students do as authentic as possible? Please leave a comment!
