Literally Digital Idioms

Building upon Prensky's idea that "Today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors" (p.4) and coupling that with Johnson's ideas about TV and the internet My lesson would be about making idioms literal through a digital medium. 

My lesson would require students will demonstrate thier research and information fluency by looking up various idioms. They will collaborate with one another to select a series of idoms they would like to portray literally. 

Students will choose between at least two projects for this lesson.

1. They can draw out a literal depcition(ex: a picture of a cat sitting on a copy machine would be a "copy cat") of the idioms and create a 'photostory' book. Photostory works a lot like 'windows movie maker' and 'iMovie' that it allows you to take still photographs and arrange them into a video files that will play like a slide show. (this project will work great with the intelligent classroom. Teachers could use their document camera to take photos of the student's work and then import all of the photos into Photostory [their laptops already have photostory]. 

2.The other choice would be for students to create a video of literal idioms. So they might record a fork in the road and it would be a dining utensil sticking up in the street. Students would work in groups to complete this assignment which would address the need for collaboration and communication. Since students are using prior knowledge to generate new products they are applying innovative creativity. 

3. If a student had another idea of how they would like to demonstrate their literal digital idioms I would be open to suggestions.

As an extension to deepen the student's research and  information fluency, students will be asked to look up the origin of the idioms and the culture from which the particular idiom originates. 

How can I change in my practice?

After the readings and our first class, what is something in your practice that needs to change. Is there something that we did or read that sparked something in you.. and made you think - I could be doing something different that would make me more effective in my job, my life, or my role as a student?

After our first class I set a goal to challenge myself to improve in my practice. In class experience has given me new ideas that I would like to explore in my project. The readings by Prensky have also inspired me to reform my instruction.


Working on a wiki that would be useful in our learning team settings will be the perfect improvement to our communication strategies. At each of the schools in Norman we have have a learning team. These are a mixed group of people (all grade levels, some tech savvy, some not tech savvy) who can help us(the professional development facilitators) identify a learning need within the purview of the intelligent classroom initiative. Previously we had been communicating with learning teams through meetings and email. It makes sense to create an intelligent classroom learning team wiki where each school will have their own learning team page where they can communicate their needs and we can tailor our professional development sessions to fit that content. This will be a more effective form of communication and more time efficient.


I have read Marc Prensky's article before but after reading again for this class I found new insight. Prensky states, "The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the predigital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language." When I read this again I thought to myself, "This is a two way street." I consider myself a Digital Native and my job consists of instructing many Digital Immigrants. I have always thought this to be a difficult task, but it wasn't until reading this passage that I realized it is difficult because I am speaking a foreign language to most of my students. I am working on modifying my practice of technology instruction to communicate effectively to my Digital Immigrant students. I don't want to be the kind of instructor whose accent is so thick that you cannot understand the message. So, far what I have found to be the most efficient way to communicate instruction for Digital Immigrants is to allow them to be hands on with the technology while you are present to calm any fears they may have and answer any questions. Many Digital Immigrants are worried they are going to break the technology, once you can get them past that fear and to play around with the tech they reach a new comfort level.
It is a work in progress and I am always open to suggestion on how to effectively instruct and communicate with someone whose thought process is different from mine.

5 suggestions for change in the classroom.

1. Many teachers need to change the focus. Instead of having teacher centered discussions and lessons they need to move toward being more student centered. Let the student develop their own understanding of a topic. 

2. Students understand learning through technology so it would be helpful to tie in a variety of multi-media tools. 

3. Allowing students to use technology is where the classroom needs to move. Many teachers have the technology but are worried to let the kids use it. This is still having a teacher centered classroom. The technology needs to be in the hands of the kids! ( I do understand there need to be guidelines for this and I am in full support of teacher guided student centered lessons incorporating technology.)

4. Kids have shorter attention spans so teachers need to restyle lessons that grab and retain students attention. 

5. Don't be boring!

A Little About Me

If you couldn't tell by the title of my blog my name is Bekah Hightower. I am 27 and a newish mom and have a passion for education. I taught middle school technology and video production for 4 years in inner city Oklahoma City. I am very interested in photography and video making. Last July I changed jobs moving to the K20 Center to work as a professional development facilitator. I provide training for the Intelligent Classroom Initiative in all of Norman Public Schools. I love teaching teachers to use technology but desperately miss my students. I have a huge heart for kids. My teaching philosophy is to teach children through whatever means possible. I often find that technology is a medium that students learn though easily.
I love my family more than anything in the entire world and I feel incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful family. My husband Andy and I met when I was in the 8th grade but did not start dating until 2008. It was one of those things where our paths kept crossing but the timing was always off. He and I both have extremely involved parents which provides a wonderful support system when we need help with our 1-year-old son Easton James(EJ). Easton is the light of my life. I love that boy more than anything in the entire world. Each day I am so thankful to be a mom. My son is often the center of my conversations and if that annoys you, get over it. You don't have to listen. Just kidding...kind of.

This is a picture of me and my husband and son: