Part Deux: Rebooting Digital Natives

The other week I lamented about the lack of technological "know how" demonstrated by my students when starting to integrate Google Drive into class along with Google Forms on top of Moodle. The frustrations experienced were based upon the assumption that students would have a better background then they did.

Reflecting upon where to go after this initial experience, I went back to the drawing board as the first problem based learning project was introduced this week. By ensuring that I better model and demonstrate the technological tools that are being pushed in class, it is hoped that students will become more comfortable using technology for academic purposes.
Thus this project will have students use Google Ed Apps for writing their annotated bibliographies and writing their argumentative paper, and building a site that will host their pieces of propaganda. In terms of research students will utilize the databases that are subscribed to through our library.
Despite the recalibration of how this was delivered there were still frustrations from my perspective in getting students to effectively use Google Ed Apps and perform formal research instead of simply "googling" it. My oft-repeated mantra is that this is a new experience for most of these students and that we are on a journey towards where they need to be at the end of the year. Having students solve "low hurdle" problems is part of this frustration, where if there isn't an answer/solution immediately then they give up.
After this initial first week, I am looking forward to seeing what they have come our first conferences this week and how this project continues to unfold.