Teacher Talk: Teaching Plot & Character Webinar by BirdBrain Technology

 This post will be the eighth—and final!—in my Field Experience Reflections series; if you want to read the seven others you can find them by clicking on the three vertical lines in the left-hand corner of your screen, and then clicking the page entitled Field Experience Reflections, or you can just click this link. In case you need a refresher on what exactly this series of post entails here is the required context:  I will be using these posts to reflect on my field experience by taking the concepts I learned about in special guest presentations and then thinking about how I might apply them to my own teaching. Alright, now that that little introduction is out of the way, let’s get to the reflecting portion of tonight’s entertainment.

            As some of you might recall, when I initially explained how I was going to write up my field experience, I had mentioned that I was going to write about three webinars by BirdBrain Technology. However, as I was calculating my field hours, I realized that I didn’t need to watch three webinars I only had to watch one. ^[1] Due to that discovery, the webinar I have chosen to watch and write about is this one about teaching plot and character using robotics. I think that premise is super cool, and then I was pleasantly surprised that my professor was on the panel in the video. Who knew I was being taught by an internet celebrity?

As I mentioned, this webinar was about integrating computer science, specifically coding and robotics, with ELA content. The exemplar the facilitator, Kelsey, referenced was a lesson that she and her co-host, Matt, used with students the day prior. The focus of the lesson was the scene in William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet where Romeo, Mercutio, and Tybalt are all hanging out and the latter two get into a fight that leaves Mercutio dead and Tybalt hunted by Romeo. Kelsey and Matt constructed a carboard castle with a cardboard robot stood standing in the castle’s window while in front of the castle there were two robots on a circular platform. Each robot had a display in the center of their chest that displayed the first letter of their name. Romeo, predictably, was in the castle, while Mercutio and Tybalt were on the platform. Each robot character was attached to a motor that moved when different buttons were pressed. The students had to edit that code to make the characters move in a way they felt was appropriate (or silly) for the given scene. There was also a cool simulation where the camera perspective changed so that it seemed like you were Mercutio, a cardboard sword in front of you that was controlled by your arrows, and you had to try and hit Tybalt without hitting Romeo who entered into the fray at random moments. It was both impressive and a really neat way to get students interested and invested in both robotics and Shakespeare.

The webinar explained the lesson as I did above, had a discussion on why they decided to combine robotics and coding with ELA, and then went into how they were able to do what they did, with time for questions interspersed throughout. While I definitely appreciated learning about how they were able to do this as well as discovering new resources, such as the BirdBrain Tech website and Microbit classroom, I was probably most intrigued by the beginning conversation. Kelsey, whose background is in ELA, was interested in combining these two subjects due to said background and because she likes the idea of using seemingly “opposite” and difficult concepts/ideas to scaffold and deepen the way students think about each one. As in, the robotics helps scaffold and further how students think about the Shakespeare and vice versa. Another reason that Kelsey and Matt combined these two is because they were inspired by Sue Melon who is a teacher that utilized robotics to talk about poetry. Melon found that when students created a robotics project based on a primary text, the students were forced to return again and again to that primary text while they created their robots thereby enhancing and deepening their thoughts about said primary text.

Another teacher who was participating and worked at Guardian Adventures, reinforced this idea when she discussed how stories provide a context and further the comprehension and retention of STEM topics. In other words, students are invested in the story and see the science as a means to an end for this story that they are already invested in. Dr. Ardito, my professor, mentioned that in his experience, the physicality of robots was helpful in bringing both text and robotics to life for the students. Yet another participant mentioned that when we set up these opportunities for students, they then can take the ideas and run with them and come up with project ideas that the teachers might have never thought of. Kelsey suggested that it divorces disciplines from the abstract and forges a learning community that students have access to. All of these ideas were interesting to hear because I have never dealt with robotics before, nor have I really seen it mesh with another discipline, let alone ELA, before. ^[2]

Onto the final last section of my post that I will ever write: how might I use this in my future classroom? ^[3] I loved the ideas that this webinar provided and inspired for my future English instruction. While I have mixed feelings about Shakespeare, ^[4] I understand both the academic value of studying his works as well as the fact that sometimes I will have no choice but to teach Shakespeare. Due to this, learning new ways to make it engaging for my students is always great, and using robots to do that is extra cool. I can see the benefit of having students recreate the scenes with robots. Often teachers have students act out plays when they’re read in class—partially because plays are meant to be performed and partially to help make students more engaged in reading. This can be an issue with students who aren’t comfortable reading out loud let alone acting out loud. If the students can have their robots act out the play instead of them, that can alleviate any potential stress of reading/acting out loud. Plus, it can sometimes be hard to hear each other with masks if you’re a quiet speaker so again not having to read out loud would work well. Although I suppose that doesn’t work until after you’ve read the play, so the issue potentially still arises. I’d probably just use audiobooks, but who knows, maybe when I’m in the classroom I’ll change my mind. Regardless, as the webinar explains, the robotics project forces students to repeatedly return to the primary text which is especially helpful when it is written in language unfamiliar to modern students. Thus, I can definitely see myself recreating this project with my future students with any Shakespeare play.

Well, I was going to use this next paragraph to expand upon the different ways I can utilize robotics with texts to deepen comprehension of both the text and robotics, but I think my brain has officially given up. ^[5] As always, thank you for reading!

 

 

 ^[1] Who would have thought that the talks I thought were only an hour were sometimes an hour and a half; those minutes add up, haha.

 ^[2] Dr. Lynch, whose presentation I wrote about here, definitely made me realize that this is possible, but he was on a different spectrum of computational thinking since he worked with graphs and other data visualizations. 

 ^[3] I am just putting it out there that I am working on minimal sleep and apparently that means my focus is a bit shot. Thus, I am probably not going to be up to par with my normal amount of wit and charm (if you even think I have that ordinarily hah) nor is it going to be as long as it should be given how long I can already tell this is going to take me to write.

 ^[4] Basically, his written works are certainly great, but our societal over emphasis on everything Shakespeare makes me wary. Why have we not dedicated the same amount of intellectual academic fervor for playwrights that are a) more recent and potentially more relatable to students or that are b) neither White nor English? I mean, I know the answer to the latter, it begins with White and ends with Supremacy, but posing the question rhetorically worked well. Also, for any of you skeptics, yes, I know saying that it’s because of White Supremacy is a hyperbole. What I’m really trying to say, if you must nitpick, is that we live in a cultural and historical legacy of racism which propagates the idea that the only historical achievements worth noting are the ones originating in Europe. Due to this, there are works of literature (and oral storytelling, because yes that too should count as worthy of literary/academic analysis/study) that completed by other cultures before and at the same time as Shakespeare that we (in academia/society) have chosen to ignore. So, going back to my main point, I’m wary of the exaltation of Shakespeare sometimes because of the inequities it inadvertently contributes to (re)producing. Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now. If that didn’t make sense because my brain is borderline mush right now, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to clarify. ^-^

 ^[5] My sincere apologies to my professor who had mentioned in an email that he was eager to read my last reflection, because I’m sure this is a bit mildly disappointing. Thanks for reading anyway! And thank you, as always, for all of your support and encouragement throughout the semester. :D